Characteristics Of American Publishing Education, Seen From Its School Running Philosophies

Zhang Xiaoli, a professional in American society and culture, said in his book Analysis of Higher Education in America that "The flexible and practical system which constantly adapts to the real world, as well as the sense of serving the real need of the society, are the main power to promote the development of higher education in America." Pragmatism permeates in every aspect of American culture, education is of no exception. The publication Education in America just typically represents its ways of practical teaching.The publishing education in America is in every way closely related to the publishing industry, from its curriculum to the teaching and internships. Most of the teaching staffs are professionals come from the publishing industry and they also help to set relative curriculums. In addition, some famous publishing-related universities in America, such as New York University, Pace University and Columbia University are all located in New York City, the publishing center of the world. Thus, the strong demand for publishing talents and numerous publishing resources in New York City can undoubtedly promote the development of the publishing education in the above universities.The publishing industry in America has continuously gone through various integration and optimization in the fierce competition, and its publishing education is also experiencing various changes and adjustments. The Radcliffe Publishing program in Harvard transferred into Columbia University in2000, and the Stanford Publishing program transferred into Yale University in2009, are typical events of the integration and optimization of American publishing education. Each publishing-relevant university in America does its most to utilize its own advantages internally (disciplines) and externally (geographical locations), and thus form their own unique characteristics in publishing education. The Publishing Center in New York University subordinates to its School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS) and thus benefits a lot from the outstanding features of SCPS—professionalism and career-orientation. Together with its blessed location, the Publishing Center in New York University aims to cultivate publishers of the new era. The M.S in publishing of Pace University is known for its completeness, involving almost all the aspects of publishing, and strives to provide comprehensive publishing knowledge and skills to its students. While the Publishing program in Emerson College proposed to cultivate publishing professionals with humanistic spirit. The Summer Publishing program in Columbia University is known for its highly concentrated and compact curriculums and it mainly provide practical training and professional guide, featured with its intensity and high-strength. However, in Yale, it targets to cultivate publishing elites and management talents of the publishing industry.Generally, the close relationship with the publishing industry is the most prominent and essential characteristics of the publishing education in America. This very characteristic is specifically reflected in its curriculum and faculty, as well as the close integration of the above two. Namely, not only is every course closely related with the industry practice, they are also taught respectively by professionals who have relevant practical experience. Accordingly, each course can never just be a theoretical talk, but a door into a rich and practical publishing worldThe publishing education at New York University, Pace University, Emerson College and Columbia University is widely known all over the world, and well represents the publishing education in America. They have their own unique features regarding the publishing education, but they are all good at combining their own internal discipline advantages with their geographical advantages, as well as any other available resources to promote the development of their own publishing education. This paper mainly gave an overview of the publishing education of the universities mentioned above, and explored their philosophies for conducting the publishing education by analyzing their target students, curriculums and training goals respectively. Upon this, the paper summarized and discussed the general characteristics of American publishing education and at last, put forward some reasonable suggestions for the development of publishing education in China.