The Study On Classification Of China’s Higher Education Institutions Based On U-Map

Since the university expansion in1999, the quantity, form and scope of universities has gone through huge changes. The new change has brought new opportunities, together with new problems. Irrational classification of higher education institutions would easily cause many problems, such as school modes chaos, shortage and waste of resource allocation and low employment of graduates. From the statistical perspective, the purpose of classifying higher education is to provide a framework on implementing analysis, comparison. Therefore, higher education classification is a fundamental problem which is of realistic and theoretical research significance.European Committee believes that the advantage of European higher education lies in the diversity. It believes that the diversified understanding is the basis of further develop of European higher education and research systems. Therefore, a tool for classifying the European higher education institutions (U-Map) was set up in2005, it builds a framework to describe the European universities classification from universities knowledge course, creating process and the newest policy. U-Map describes the European universities by23indexes on six dimensions including teaching and learning profile, student profile, research involvement, knowledge exchange, international orientation and regional engagement.Although the design of U-Map is under the background of promoting European higher education integration, but the U-Map program group points that it can be used to discuss the specific universities classification issue. In China the universities are on the stage of scale expanding and diversity development, but it is still on the exploring stage on research universities classification issue from down-top, without any recognized classification system. U-Map has its main thought of no grade, no judgment and multiple dimensions, and brings us a new horizon for research universities classification problem in China.This paper systematically analyzes U-Map, then analyzes the existing methods of China’s higher education classification, and finds out the classification problems in our higher education institutions, takes the U-Map’s thought and builds a classification system of higher education institutions suitable for China. This paper is divided into seven parts:The first chapter is the introduction on topic selection, literature review and structure arrangement.The second chapter introduces U-Map. In this part, this paper fully analyzes U-Map, mainly discusses its development history, design principles, classification framework and the results.The third chapter further studies U-Map. To further analyze the U-Map from core content and classification system aspects, it points out the tool has characters of multiple dimensions and multi-index descriptions, client orientation, classification after the event, using the tools on line, openness and dynamic.The fourth chapter is the analysis on the current situation on higher education in China. This paper introduces the present higher education classification situation, points out the limitations and the improvement direction, etc.The fifth chapter is fixing on constructs of China’s higher education institutions classification which is based on U-Map analysis. The paper builds a set of higher education classification systems including teaching situations, student profile, science research, social service and university asset and other18index. This is based on U-Map classification framework, and also combined with our college diversified characteristics.The sixth chapter discusses the classification of Chinese higher education institutions-taking the example of56universities in Liaoning province. By using the quartile method in statistics, this paper puts forward the classification of higher education in Liaoning Province and then analyzes it briefly.The last chapter is conclusions and prospects.Universities classification is a issue that always new. We still have things to do, to meet the need of each profit group on its diversity, using the classification view with multi-dimension and multi-index, respect the universities education rule itself, keep and promote the universities’diversity. And that will be the development direction and entire trend in our universities classification issue.The innovation of this paper is to learn from the U-Map classification thought to carry on the research on universities classification practice in China. The current study of U-Map in China is mainly about introducing and interpreting its classification thought and framework. This paper analyzes systematically the U-Map, combines U-Map classification thought and higher education development status in our country, builds a more comprehensive classification system in China’s higher education institutions and carries on the empirical analysis by the data of universities in Liaoning province.As the limitation of time and research degree, there will be some shortcomings inevitably. The paper only uses the sample data of56universities in Liaoning province to support the classification of China’s higher education institution. Thus it may exist the problem such as lack of sample data and biased, which may affect reliability of the classification results. But we believe that along with more universities’ datum are opened, the classification dimensions, index and results could adjust to improve, to make it more credible and meaningful.