From Cai Yuanpei To Hu Shi:forging The Character Of Modern Chinese Universities

The century-long plan,education-oriented,increasingly fierce international competition,the competition in knowledge-based economy society,in the final analysis,is the competition for talents.Therefore,in recent years,in the documents on the development and construction of higher education,the state has repeatedly stressed that it should focus on "Chinese characteristics" and "world-class",devote itself to improving the overall quality of China’s higher education,and give full play to the role of higher education in promoting the sustained and healthy development of social economy.That is to say,to build a "world-class university" with Chinese characteristics is not only pure academic ambition and high-level academic productivity,but also has a strong sense of social responsibility.However,driven by the concept of "first-class",universities are gradually "kidnapped" by various rankings,and become a pile of various rankings,while ignoring their own character and spiritual temperament.Based on Cai Yuanpei’s and Hu Shi’s thoughts on university education,this study focuses on refining the core contents of the modern university character created by them,and analyzes their contributions to the forging of modern university character,with a view to providing enlightenment and reference for the construction of modern university character in China.This paper is divided into three parts.The first part is the introduction,which clarifies the background,research significance and research problems of this study,defines the core concepts,and combs and analyzes the relevant literature materials of Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shi’s university educational thoughts,so as to further clarify the ideas and methods of this study.The second part is the main body of this paper.It mainly includes four aspects.First,the ideological background of Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shi’s modern Chinese university character formation: firstly,the social and historical factors of their modern university character formation are analyzed,that is,the Qing government is dying day by day,and modern Chinese intellectuals have to seek a new way to save the country;Secondly,it analyzes that their modern university character is formed under the dual effects of Chinese traditional culture and western advanced educational culture.The second is to refine the core content of their modern university character,which is mainly reflected in four aspects: first,academic freedom,which is divided into four dimensions,namely,freedom of thought,inclusiveness,academic responsibility in academic freedom and freedom of teaching and learning.Secondly,the spirit of democracy,which is put into practice,is mainly reflected in the thought of "professors running schools" : emphasizing democratic running schools,democratic teaching management and democratic development of professors.Finally,comprehensive and research,both of which are necessary for the development of modern universities,are embodied in the comprehensive construction of disciplines and the cultivation of "complete personality";The research character is mainly reflected in the basic functions of universities,the development of research institutes and the promotion of postgraduate education.In the third part,based on the objective evaluation of the two universities’ outlook on character,combined with the reality of building China’s world-class universities,the author puts forward some inspirations for the construction and development of China’s universities today.