American Federal Consulting Reports And World-Class Universities Development

With the intense international competition of Higher Education,World Class Universities are becoming more and more important for a nation,so many countries are carrying out a series of reform measures to build their own WCUs.As the relative interest groups of HE decisions and subjects of HE knowledge are so complicated,experts from different majors,areas and groups are taking a more important role in the national decision-making consulting system to increase scientificity.This research chooses US as a grown-up example in the area of consulting system and WCU building.In the golden time between 1945 and 1968,based on modern public decision theory,bounded rationality theory and stakeholder theory,with a mixed research design of(literature research and statistics analyses method,starts with important advisory reports and institutions,then discovers the WCU building process from three aspects,including decision making,executing and effect.This research hopes to summarize what characters and impacts these consulting powers showed during the process and propose some suggestions for China.As for the path of building WCUs,this research finds that divided into 3 periods,the WCU number increased from 10 in 1945,32 in 1968,to 56 in 2014.10 WCUs before 1945 mostly depended on themselves,while other emerging WCUs in the golden time were instead growing in series with the lead of the nation,and among them,public universities got a bigger development than private ones.As for the funds,the federal put totally 187 billion dollars for R&D and 18 billion dollars only for universities during 24 years,and the amount also increased a lot year by year.Basic and social science research got more attention and in return drove the rise of graduate education funds.The most influential consulting powers were mainly founded by the federal in the golden time,and they joined the process more and more actively after 1957.Thanks to the large number of high level external experts,these powers did a good job in the whole process.Based on our research and conclusions,this research proposes three suggestions to our government about building WCUs in China.First,the leading role of government during the WCU building process and more relative consulting institutions are important.Second,the universality and specialty of consulting members must be ensured to increase the scientificity of decisions.Third,a professional system and platform to manage and supervise national consulting institutions to increase effectiveness and openness of their work should be founded by the government.