Localizing the Collegiate System for Educational Improvement: A case of University T

• In Event: Educational Improvement: Fundamentals, Comparative Perspectives, and International Cases

Proposal

Collegiate System can be traced back to the University of Paris in 1180. After spreading to Oxford and Cambridge in the 13th century, it gradually developed into the British collegiate system with well-established facilities and rich cultural connotations. Since the end of the 19th century, many universities in the United States have followed the Oxford model to build residential colleges and adapt them to the local context in terms of institutional and cultural aspects. In the 20th century, the collegiate system was introduced into Asia and has been highly appreciated recently, with universities in mainland China having been experimenting with it for over a decade. The collegiate system of Chinese universities can generally be divided into two categories: the elite collegiate system, which is the one only for a small group of elite students; the whole-staff collegiate system, which means that all students in the university are enrolled to different colleges for management. Xinya College, established by University T in 2014, is a typical representative of the former one.

In 2020, China's Ministry of Education officially released the Plan for Strengthening Basic Academic Disciplines (强基计划), mandating over 30 selected research-based universities to recruit and cultivate innovative talents in certain basic academic disciplines, such as mathematics and physics. University T combining this national policy requirement with its own educational improvement targets has set up another five colleges (one college for Basic Science, one college for Basic Humanities, three colleges for Science+Engineering) as a new platform for the cultivation of students enrolled in this plan. These colleges are different from the residential colleges in Europe and the United States, and they are mainly the sub-systems with academic, cultural and social functions in the same institution. In the following three years, University T built up three more colleges with different educational goals. At present, the number of students affiliated with colleges has exceeded one-third of the total number of undergraduates at University T. The collegiate system has been explored by University T as a major form of learning and teaching of undergraduate students. Such a form of institutional improvement, its relationship with the still existing academic faculties and departments, and its future development, have been widely concerned.

This study looks at higher education institutions as social behavior subjects with multiple organizational characteristics. Their operation and development often follow multiple institutional logics. With the goal of educational improvement, the construction and reconstruction of university organizational forms, to a large extent, involve the negotiation and integration among logics of the nation, market, academics, and administration. Taking University T as a case, this paper introduces its collegiate system under the background of national policy demands, explores the key features of the collegiate system in the context of Chinese higher education, examines its roles and challenges in promoting the realization of multiple functions of universities, and reflects further on the diversified organizational logics of colleges in Chinese universities.

Authors

• Xuemeng Cao, Tsinghua University

• Ianwen Zhang, Institute of Education, Tsinghua University

• Tianle Shi, Institute of Education, Tsinghua University

• Wanyi Xie, institute of education,Tsinghua University