A Study On Chinese Government’s Functions Of Higher Educational Evaluation

Higher educational evaluation is one of the most effective mean to ensure thequality of higher education, and the improvement of quality of higher education cannotbe achieved without a series of assessment of higher education. Since the beginning ofthe assessment of higher education in China, in1980s, it has always been led by thegovernment. Although, there were some other institutes in society, their effect is verylimited. The whole activity of the assessment can be concluded as,"from thegovernment, and to the government ". This kind of control-type evaluation of ourgovernment has made significant improvement at start. However, with theimplementation of the market economic system and the reform of management systemof the higher education, the government, this kind of highly-centralized function of thegovernment doesn’t match the requirement of the current higher education qualitypromotion in our country.This paper utilizes the methods of document research, comparative analysis, andsome other research method, to analyses the government’s role in higher-educationalevaluation. This paper also analyses the higher-educational evaluation system in fourcountries, England, Japan, France and America; Concludes their features, histories,andgain some prompt to define the phase of the development of the higher-educationassessment in our country, as well as the problems in it. From the points of this paper,there are a series of problems in the higher educational assessment of our country, suchas the monotonous leadership, the incomplete strategies of assessment,non-standardized assessment indicator, shortage of monitoring system, and Out-Of-Dateevaluation theories. For further development and improvement of ourhigher-educational system, it is necessary to take advantage of the advanced experienceof other countries, and then to create a higher-educational assessment system withChinese characteristics. In this process, the governments should take “the service typegovernment and new public service theory” as guidance. They should change their management function from "operating the rudder" to "do service". They should adopt,lead and develop the private assessment agencies, establish the third-party evaluationinstitutes for the accreditation of the assessment, and enact and improve the rules andregulations related to higher education assessment. Ultimately, a new higher-educationassessment system, with the government’s macroscopic management of colleges anduniversities, the schools’ auto-manipulation, and society’s active participation workingtogether, should be formed gradually.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part, introduction, mainlyintroduces the research background, core concept, objective, train of thought andmethod. The first chapter mainly introduces the theoretical basis of this paper. Thesecond chapter analyses of the advanced experience of the higher education evaluationsystem in some foreign countries, compares it with China’s Higher Education evaluation,and proposes some enlightenment to the reform of our country’s system. The thirdchapter introduces the status and problems of function of our government in highereducation assessment. The fourth chapter puts forward some approaches to reform ofour government’s function in higher education evaluation.