中国高等教育行政制度の原型形成過程 : 多数省庁による所管分担方式の導入をめぐって

A study on the process of formulating the prototype of the present system of higher education administration in China : adoption of a method of shared governance

Ohtsuka Yutaka

教育學研究

One of the most striking characteristics of higher education administration in contemporary China is the fact that the power to establish and manage universities and colleges is shared by central and local educational authorities as well as by other ministries and authorities. For example, as of 1985. only 36 out of 325 centrally-governed higher education institutions were administered by the State Education Commission (formerly known as the Ministry of Education). while the other 289 institutions came under the jurisdiction of different central ministres. Focusing on this unique feature of the system of higher education administration, this paper has coined the term "shared governance" by various ministries and authorities to describe it, and traces how and why this system was introduced in the early days of the People's Republic of China.

In the North China region, prior to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, all institutions of higher education came under the jurisdiction of the higher education committee of the region. At the time of the formation of the central Ministry of Education of the new nation, the department of education and the higher education committee of the North China region were taken as the main base, and the same way of governance as the region was adopted. In contrast, in the Northeast region, control of higher education institutions was shared between many departments, and many higher education institutions came under the jurisdiction of departments other than the department of education.

The way of governance in the North China region was identical to that of the Kuomintang or Nationalist era. On the other hand, the Northeast region seemed to have inherited the practices of the Chinese Soviet regions or old liberated regions, where the method of shared governance in its primitive form could be found. While the impact of the method of governance of Soviet Russia on China in these early days cannot be documented, there are many sources to indicate that China tried to positively learn from and introduce Soviet methods in the days just before and after the establishment of the PRC. Information about Soviet education was collected and translated mainly in the Northeast region and then distributed to other areas.

A major concern of the new government in 1949 and 1950, as reflected in the provisions of relevant regulations, was how to separate the power to govern higher education as between the central Ministry of Education and local administrative regions. Meanwhile, the government's concern shifted away from this central-local relationship and came to focus on the relationship among various ministries, as can be seen from the changes in the provisions of the "Revised Regulations on Higher Education Governance" issued in 1953. These changes were clearly caused by active learning from the Soviet model. However, what is worthy of special mention is that China judged the method of shared governance to be most appropriate to its current situation and adopted this method of its own volition despite being fully aware that Soviet Russia had reexamined this system after World War II and changed it in the direction of concentrating administrative power in the Ministry of Higher Education.

Education [ 370 ]

jpn

日本教育学会

日本教育学会

[ISSN] 0387-3161

[NCID] AN00056578