Study Of The Power Operation Mechanism Of Professor Committee Under Governance Perspective

Professor Committee highly advocates the academic priority and upholds theuniversity atmosphere of university autonomy and academic freedom, injecting newperspective and connotation to the reform of the management mechanism of our nationalhigher education. Its rise and fall are directly related to the future development ofuniversities. As an innovation in terms of policy, professor committee plays a dual roleboth in deepening the reform of the university mechanism and establishing a modernuniversity policy. Creating the policy of professor committee is an effective way tocoordinate the development of internal academic power and administrative power in theuniversity, and also is the objective requirement of universities to adhere to the principleof human-oriented, to fully execute the academic power and to promote the academicdevelopment.However, in reality, the power of professor committee is repressed by theadministrative organization, failing to realize its original intention to highlight academicauthority and to underplay the role of administration. And, to a certain extent, it evenbecomes the vassal of the administrative organization, unable to be effective in practice.A series of problems arises, like the imbalance of power, ineffective operation and so on,during the actual work of professor committee in universities, just because of theexistence of a series of problem such as the lack of necessary legal protection, disorderedstructure, serious problem of academic centralization and the vague roles andresponsibilities in the professor committee and so forth. Governance emphasizes thediversification of the governance body and means and also the top-down interaction; thedirection of its operation is diversified. Moreover, the core of governance ifdecentralization and participation. Based on what have been mentioned above, theconnotation of governance is more likely to conform to the spiritual essence of theprofessor committee policy, reflecting the principle of decentralization, participation and in universities. Therefore, this paper provides a new perspective for the researchregarding the operative mechanism of professor committee from the standpoint ofgovernance.With the reference of the university development model from the United States andGermany and considering the current unique situation of our country and universities,this study tries to explore the genre of power of the professor committee that fits Chineseuniversities, the forming of which takes a great deal of time and effort. It also analyzesthe problems existing in its practical operation and their related solutions. This articlemainly consists of introduction and four parts, as followings:Part1: The basic connotation and characteristics of government are illustrated. Thispart starts from the analysis of existing documents and theories in our country. The coreconcepts of governance as decentralization, participation are analyzed by way ofliterature analysis. The structure of governance, its model and basic features are utilizedas the basis for analysis, on the foundation of which related revelation of this study isconcluded.Part2: The power genre of university’s professor committee, its structure andoperative mechanism are discussed from the perspective of governance. This sectionfirstly discusses the genre of power of professor committee, which primarily includes thebinary power penetration in which the academic power dominates, the binary powerpenetration in which the administrative power prevails, and the binary power separationwith modest penetration. Secondly, the structure of professor committee’ power isanalyzed. Finally, the genre of operative mechanism of professor committee is discussed,which mainly includes three types as the decision-making mechanism, theimplementation mechanism and the supervision and restriction mechanism. This sectionprovides a foundation for the exploration of professor committee’s operative mechanismand related existing problems, through the analysis of its power genre, structure andoperative mechanism, integrating the structure of governance and model and itsconnotation.Part3: Current exploration of some universities in China regarding the poweroperative mechanism of professor committee is discussed. Three universities as Dongbei Normal University, Jilin University and Wuhan University are selected as therepresentatives for this section. Analysis is conducted as to the charter of professorcommittee, its power and operative mechanism and so on, through the depth interview tothe faculties and some professional teachers of these three universities and throughquestionnaires and interviews to college students. Problems existing in the poweroperative mechanism of professor committee are illustrated and the reasons leading tothese problems are also analyzed.Part4: The solution for the improvement of the power operative mechanism ofprofessor committee in our country is analyzed. The connotation of governance asdecentralization and participation and the reference of successful experiences ofNortheast Normal University, Jilin University, Wuhan University and the universityconvocations from the United States and Germany are utilized. Specific countermeasuresfor the improvement of the operative mechanism are proposed, targeting the existingproblem such as the lack of necessary laws, disordered structure and the imbalance ofpower and so on.