中美大学办学规模比较研究及其启示

大学：小的抑或大的？
——中美大学办学规模比较研究及其启示
中国人民大学教育学院 项贤明

提要：大学办学规模不断扩张已成为近年来我国高等教育发展的一个普遍趋势。高等教育发展资源过于集中和资源配置方式过于单一，追求规模效应和赢者通吃的社会心态，忽视社会和市场需要的计划经济思维惯性等，是导致这一状况的主要原因。美国高等教育发展的经验证明，尽管小型大学有其弱势，但它们在教学质量和人类培养方面的独特优势，包括其简单的组织结构和高效的管理，尤其是更多的师生互动机会，使得我们不可小觑它们在高等教育体系中的独特作用和重要地位。在高等教育大众化发展过程中，我国高等教育体系要实现多样化和层次化发展，就应当给小型大学让渡出一定的发展空间，这不仅是高等教育自身发展的需要，也符合社会发展和人才培养的需要。

关键词：大学；办学规模；高等教育；比较教育

作者简介：项贤明（1965—），男，安徽人，教育学博士，中国人民大学教育学院教授、博士生导师，北京100872

Bigger or Smaller: A Comparative Respect on the Scale of Universities in US and in China

Xian-ming Xiang

Abstract: It has become a general trend in our higher education development that the universities eagerly extend to bigger and bigger. The unitary and centralized way of developing resources distribution, the social attitudes preferring the size effect, and the inertial thinking of planned economy, are the principal causes of this situation. The experiences of higher education development in the United States tell us that, even small colleges have their weakness, but they still have many evident merits, especially on respects of the teaching, the efficient simple organization, and the interactions between teachers and students, by which we cannot underestimate their significant status in our higher education system. In the massification process, we should enfeoff more developing space for the small colleges, to build a higher education system which is diversified horizontally and vertically. That is not only the request of national development and of talents preparation, but also is the demand by the development of higher education system itself.

Keywords: University; Scale of college; Higher education; Comparative education

Introduction of the Author: Xian-ming Xiang (1965- ), PhD of educational sciences, Professor of comparative education, the school of education, Renmin University of China. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Beijing, 100872.