知识商品化及其对高等教育公共性的侵蚀

知识是组织高等教育活动的基本材料和学术生活的基础。传统上作为公共产品的知识正在发生转向,其商品属性和交换价值趋于增强,成为兼具公共产品与私人产品性质的一种混合型产品。在高等教育领域,知识商品化具有多种表征形式,侵蚀了高等教育的公共性。本文结合哈贝马斯和布迪厄的理论框架,阐述了以下观点:知识的公共产品性质是高等教育的公益性、高校的公共形象和学术人的公共身份的基础,也是基础研究的核心价值观之一。坚持知识的公共产品性质,抵制知识商品化的消极影响,既是知识的内在要求也是高等教育的内在要求。     

知识商品化及其对高等教育公共性的侵蚀

在全球化和知识经济的双重背景下,受新自由主义这一管理全球经济和构建世界新秩序的思想意识形态的波及,世界各国"竞争型政府"强调知识的经济价值,导致知识的公共产品性质弱化,私人产品和商品性质增强,知识逐渐演变成兼具公共与私有性质的混合产品,乃至成为可在市场上交换的国内商品和可贸易的国际商品。在过去二三十年间,高等教育商品化、商业化和市场化趋势,均可看做是知识商品化的体现。     

知识商品化:高等教育的福音还是灾难

正在全球化和知识经济的双重背景下,受新自由主义这一管理全球经济和构建世界新秩序的思想意识形态的波及,世界各国"竞争型政府"强调知识的经济价值,导致知识的公共产品性质弱化,私人产品和商品性质增强,知识逐渐演变成兼具公共与私有性质的混合产品,乃至成为可在市场上交换的国内商品和可贸易的国际商品。在过去二三十年间,高等教育商品化、商业化和市场化趋势,均可看做是知识商品化的体现。     

后现代视野中知识商品化与高等教育的相关性研究

知识的性质在后现代视野中发生了变化,知识商品化是其特点之一。知识作为高等教育的重要要素之一,其性质的变化必然引发高等教育的变革。知识的商品化改变了基础研究与应用研究的分配比例;知识商品化促进了学术界与产业界的合作;知识商品化影响了高等教育的教学内容。虽然知识商品化理念渗透到高等教育领域,但是学术界应确立自身的坐标,按照自身逻辑获得发展的源动力。     

论高等教育的社会导向与学术导向

高等教育的社会导向,以社会为本,注重满足社会现实需要;高等教育的学术导向,以学术为本,注重人类精神理性的满足。高等教育主要受外在动力和内在驱力影响,使得社会导向和学术导向常常此消彼长。高等教育社会导向的哲学基础是政治论,高等教育学术导向的哲学基础是认识论。高等教育的社会导向与学术导向的关系是相辅相成的,两者必须携手并进。     

高等教育产品属性及其财政职能定位

高等教育产品包括高等教育服务和知识。高等教育服务属于准公共产品,知识产品属于纯公共产品。因此,公共财政对高等教育服务和基础科学研究应是两种不同性质的支出,前者应该是一种补贴,而后者才应该是全额支出。同时,公共财政对不同类型高等学校的支持力度与其纯度(指与纯公共产品的接近程度)密切相关。     

学术资本主义与高等教育系统变革

在高等教育系统的外部环境与内在结构发生剧烈变化的年代,学术资本主义作为市场与学术对话的产物,正在成为影响高等教育的重要力量,并正以极具象征性的方式冲击着高等教育的各个领域,改变着高等教育机构的组织文化与传统形象,使得高等教育系统融入了更多的市场因素。高等教育仍然努力地延续着学术传统的核心价值,但在学术资本主义营造的美丽新世界里,高等教育系统的景象更加多元与开放,高等教育机构学术行为的合法性基础也需要从学术与市场对话的新角度加以解释。     

高等教育市场的影响与限度

过去30年间,许多国家高等教育发展的一种重要政策和实践是引入市场机制,进而形成高等教育市场。高等教育市场的形成对高等教育效率、质量和公平产生了深刻的影响。由于高等教育中存在信息不对称,教育竞争主要是一种地位竞争,并且由于知识具有公共产品性质,高等教育市场是一种不完全市场,具有内在的限度,需要对其进行必要的监管。     

何谓"为学术而学术"-纯学术观的类型学考察

本文认为,纯学术观的两个源头分别是古希腊和启蒙时代的德国。启蒙时代的学术观深受古希腊哲学的影响,但又有所拓展。基于这两个时代的观念,可以分离出纯学术观的三种意涵。首先,这一观念认为知识本身即是目的,具有内在的价值,它强调知识的非实用性,这种观念也是古典自由教育的知识论基础;其次,纯学术观是一种自我合法化的话语,它强调学术或理性作为一个领域的独立性,拒绝用经济、政治的标准来衡量学术,它同时也是学术自由的学理依据;最后,为学术而学术作为一种独特的学术人的职业伦理,它强调的是“科学动机”的非功利性,要求学者将学术研究摆在第一位。     

从大学的本质看我国大学学术管理制度建设

无论社会和大学如何发展,大学以知识和学术为核心的组织系统的本质仍基本不变。因此,学术管理是大学管理的核心和本质就成为我国大学管理体制改革的内在诉求。学术、大学学术、高等教育管理和大学学术管理之间有着既有联系又有区别的本质内涵。历史上的我国大学学术管理制度虽然有过良好开端和颠峰时期,但总体上呈现一种积弱积贫的状态。因此,从国际比较的视野建构中国特色的现代大学学术管理制度,是我国高等教育制度以及大学内部管理制度改革的目标和方向。     

Public universities and the neoliberal common sense: seven iconoclastic theses

Neoliberalism has utterly failed as a viable model of economic development, yet the politics of culture associated with neoliberalism is still in force, becoming the new common sense shaping the role of government and education. This ‘common sense’ has become an ideology playing a major role in constructing hegemony as moral and intellectual leadership in contemporary societies. Neoliberal globalisation, predicated on the dominance of the market over the state and on deregulatory models of governance, has deeply affected the university in the context of ‘academic capitalism’. The resulting reforms, rationalised as advancing international competitiveness, have affected public universities in four primary areas: efficiency and accountability, accreditation and universalisation, international competitiveness and privatisation. There is also growing resistance to globalisation as top-down-imposed reforms reflected in the public debates about schooling reform, curriculum and instruction, teacher training and school governance. Many question whether neoliberal reforms attempt to limit the effectiveness of universities as sites of contestation of the national and global order and thus undermine the broader goals of education. Neoliberal reforms have limited access and opportunity along class and racial lines, including limiting access to higher education through the imposition of higher tuition and reduced government support to institutions and individuals.     

Public university governance in China and Australia: a comparative study

There are several common trends and challenges in the higher education (HE) system around the world, like expansion and diversification of HE, fiscal pressure and orientation to markets, demand for greater accountability and great quality and efficiency (e.g. The financing and management of higher education: a status report on worldwide reforms, 1998; Internationalisation of higher education and global mobility 43-58, 2014; Global policy and policy-making in education, 2014; Higher Education Policy 21:5-27, 2008). These trends and changes have reshaped university governance as well. Public universities are the main institutions to carry out HE in Australia and China. The engagement between Australia and China in HE sector has become closer and closer in recent years. To conduct better and further cooperation and collaboration between Australian and Chinese universities, it is critical to understand and acknowledge the differences in two nations’ university governance. Moreover, by conducting this comparative study of two nations, it also helps us to figure out the changes in university governance over times under the global trends and the interactions between global and local factors. This comparative study focuses on the university level and attempts to identify the differences of university governance in Australian and Chinese public universities in three dimensions, state-university relation, university internal governance and university finance. This paper sketches the university governance in Australia and China and finds that the relationship between government and university is looser in Australia than that in China and Australian universities enjoy more autonomy and power than Chinese universities; as to university internal governance, Australian universities use a more business-oriented management mechanism; funding associated with full-fee paying international students has become very important for Australian HE while Chinese government funding has been decreasing as well but funds from international students play a minimal financial role.     

构筑人类命运共同体:大学治理全球化的中国逻辑

大学治理离不开全球治理的国际政治环境,西方"逆全球化"动向与中国人类命运共同体战略形成价值张力,大学治理模式出现新的可能性。人类命运共同体是中国全球化战略的理论和实践支点,为讨论大学治理全球化提供了思想资源。理论上的大学治理全球化存在统一模式,但不是当前模式的任何一种。中国大学治理模式"强政府"的制度特征和兼容并蓄的文化基因为全球大学治理提供了更多可能性。人类命运共同体是中国大学治理全球化的实践逻辑,为大学治理全球化提供了在组织、国家和全球层面的治理框架:构筑以信任为特征的大学内部治理,构筑以提升大学治理能力为核心的大学外部治理,构筑以人类命运为支点的大学治理全球化。     

The impact of SSCI and SCI on Taiwan’s academy: an outcry for fair play

The increasing importance of the competition in global university ranking has resulted in a paradigm shift in academic governance in East Asia. Many governments have introduced different strategies for benchmarking their leading universities to facilitate global competitiveness and international visibility. A major trend in the changing university governance is the emergence of a regulatory evaluation scheme for faculty research productivity, reflected by the striking features of the recent changing academic profile of publication norms and forms that go beyond the territories of nation-states in the East and West. With the expansion of the Taiwanese higher education system in the last two decades, the maintenance of quality to meet the requirements for international competitiveness has become a key concern for policy makers. Since 2005, the Ministry of Education has introduced a series of university governance policies to enhance academic excellence in universities and established a formal university evaluation policy to improve the competitiveness and international visibility of Taiwanese universities. In so doing, the government has legalized a clear link between evaluation results and public funding allocation. Research performance is assessed in terms of the number of articles published in journals indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and in terms of citation rates and associated factors. Therefore, evaluation has taken on a highly quantitative dimension. Despite the efforts of concerned parties to encourage academic excellence, the abovementioned quantitative evaluation indicators have resulted in bitter complaints from the humanities and social sciences, whose research accomplishments are devalued and ignored by the current quantitative indicators. In this paper, the authors describe the recent petition for collective action initiated by university faculty to protest the privileging of SSCI and SCI publications as critical indicators for academic performance regardless of faculty discipline and specialization. The article concludes its argument with a group petition calling for more diverse and reliable indicators in recognizing the research of different natures and disciplines while creating culturally responsive evaluation criteria for social sciences and humanities in the Taiwanese academe. The article not only sheds light on academic evaluation literature, especially on the uncertain paradox of globalization and market economy, but also proposes alternatives to the evaluation system for humanities and social sciences in higher education.     

Globalization and educational restructuring: University merging and changing governance in China

This article sets out in the context of globalization to identify, examine and discuss issues related to structural adjustment and educational restructuring in China, with particular reference to university merging and changes in higher education governance models. While it is basically an historical and documentary analysis of policy change in Chinese higher education, this article focuses on restructuring strategies that the Chinese government has adopted to make its university systems more competitive and efficient in the global market context. University merging in China should not be simply understood as a pure higher education reform but rather a fundamental change in higher education governance model from an ‘interventionist state model’ to an ‘accelerationist state model’. Rather than globalization bringing about the decline of the nation state, this article shows transformations taking place in Chinese universities may not necessarily diminish the capacity of the state but instead make the Chinese government a more activist state in certain aspects.     

When state centralism meets neo-liberalism: managing university governance change in Singapore and Malaysia

With strong intention to enhance the global competitiveness of their university systems, both the Singapore and Malaysia governments have introduced reforms along the lines of ideas and practices embedded in neo-liberalism. In the last decade or so, we have witnessed reforms being introduced to the higher education sectors in these Asian states, particularly when corporatization and incorporation strategies are adopted to transform national/public universities. With particular reference to how academics evaluate the impact of the reforms on their academic life, this article reports and analyses findings generated from campus visits and field interviews conducted in Singapore and Malaysia from 2007 to 2009. Although the senior management of corporatized/incorporated universities in these Asian states has been given more discretion to decide how to operate their universities, most of the front line academics that we interviewed have not experienced major differences in university governance after the reforms took place. Instead of feeling ‘emancipated’ and ‘empowered’, many academics feel more pressures and control from the university administration and government ministries. Despite the fact that both the Singapore and Malaysia governments have tried to embrace the ideas and practices of ‘neo-liberalism’ to transform university governance, academics still see the state’s reluctance in withdrawing from steering/controlling higher education development. Such observations clearly reflect the ‘clash’ of two major governance philosophies, namely, ‘state centralism’ and ‘neo-liberalism’. In short, this article critically examines how far the proposed university governance reforms by adopting the corporatization/incorporation strategies have actually transformed university management and academic life style in Singapore and Malaysia.     

大学排名的演变、迷思与治理——基于市场逻辑的探讨

大学排名的产生、演化及其治理，有其特定的市场逻辑。出于政府、高校以及社会公众在大学综合信息占有上的非对称性，这些利益相关者演化为大学排名的首要需求者。当社会过分依赖排名识别高校办学水平信息、政府更多依据排名结果配置高等教育资源时，大学排行榜逐步完成了“知识—物品—商品”的属性转变，大学排名也成了既受追捧又受诟病的商品生产，迫使政府和公众在大学排名上做出无奈化决策和模糊化认同，高校在大学排名中予以选择性参与。要求得大学排名由“乱”向“治”的转变，需要在更好发挥政府作用的基础上，以市场规律为核心优化大学排名资源配置，统合行业自律和政府引导，实施“排名机构成长专业化”和“高等教育治理现代化”的统筹发力。     

一场对“大学自治、学者治校”的深入反思： 2004-2006年牛津大学治理改革案例分析

近四十多年来,为了在激烈的国际竞争和广泛的社会变革中保持世界一 流,牛津深入反思了大学的宗旨和原则——“学术卓越”和“民主自治”,并 对治理体制进行了一系列的改革探索。2004-2006年的牛津治理改革大讨论是 现代大学治理模式在学术与行政权力之间的一场激烈冲突。牛津的改革努力激 励着世界的其他大学反思自身的办学之道,反思大学的本质和未来。本文系统 分析了这场改革的背景、过程、特点和影响。     

Global Trends,National Policies and Institutional Responses: Restructuring Higher Education in Malaysia

A significant global trend during the 1990s is the restructuring of higher education systems. The essence of this restructuring process is a redefinition of the relationship between institutions of higher learning, the state, and the market, and a drastic reduction of institutional autonomy. This article is an analysis of the restructuring process in the forms of privatisation of higher education and corporatisation of public universities in Malaysia. This analysis highlights the context of higher education reforms in the era of globalization, major trends in higher education reforms and Malaysias responses to these global trends. By focusing on the institutional level, this article examines the expansion and diversification of private higher education as well as the change in the governance and culture of public universities brought about by privatisation and corporatisation.     

Cybernetic institutional management theory and practice: A system of flexible workload for university teachers

In the past three decades, higher education reforms have taken place almost everywhere in the world, and governance or the way that higher education is or should be coordinated has become a global topic. The governance reform in Chinese higher education emerged against such a background. The current studies on Chinese higher education reforms mainly tackle the reform processes and treat the Chinese government as the driver of the reforms, whereas how the Chinese government is susceptible to international pressures has remained under‐researched. This article examines the mechanisms that facilitate the spread of global governance reform ideologies in Chinese higher education through the Chinese government, drawing on the concept of institutional isomorphism. Based on analysing recent literature and documents, it concludes that the Chinese government is affected by the global reform ideas and practices that have been legitimatised through international organisations' rhetoric and other countries' successful experiences.