The Evolution Of Social Role Conflict Theory Of University

Growing within the social boundaries, the University is an important intelligent organ ofsocial organism. It naturally becomes a significant subject in the higher education theory field todiscuss the relationship between the university and society. However, if we analyze theseproblems just from the original political, economic, cultural and other macro perspectives, it hasapparently been unable to meet the needs of knowing. If the concept of role in interaction theoryis introduced, the university is regarded as the protagonist in the social stage, which shows therelationship between the university and all elements of the society, the relationship between theuniversity and the society can be understood from the more micro-level.Based on in-depth analysis and summary of the concept of role in the sociology togetherwith the characteristics of university’s own, the social role of University can be understood as thebehavior pattern which is reflected by the expectations of objects which has an interactiverelationship with the universities in a certain social status. The correlations between universitiesand external objects are the conditions of the social roles; the external objects’ expectations onthe university are the power of universities to play their social roles; the behavior patterns thatthe universities themselves reflect are the forms of the social roles’ existence. Due to the impactof multiple external objects, the university inevitably plays various roles but there are oftencontradictions and conflicts between these roles. According to the above understanding of thesocial role of university, we inspect the conflicts of roles that Medieval Paris University, BerlinUniversity in nineteenth Century and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in twentiethCentury face from three dimensions of interactions, expectations, behavior patterns. The findingsare as follows: the Medieval Paris University with the conflict of roles in religion and secular;the University of Berlin in nineteenth Century with the conflict of roles in humanistic elites andnation-state; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in twentieth Century with the conflict ofroles in government and enterprise. The conflict of University’s social roles has destructive effect,but the kind of conflict has positive effects on the construction of university organizationstructure, management mode and the establishment of the idea of academic freedom.The evolution of conflicts of university’s social roles doesn’t be unable to follow some rules.Since the middle Ages, the university has been controlled by theology, philosophy and science.The change and the development of mainstream knowledge are internal dominant factors of theevolution of the conflict of university’s social role. As for the external environment, theuniversity has also undergone from church to secularism, from humanistic elite to states andfrom government to enterprises. Each replacement of power body will inevitably bring about thechange of the conflict of role. With the human’s thorough exploration on knowledge and the change of social power, the conflict of university’s social role will continue to develop along theboundary built by the two sides.