Can Vocational University Avoid Academic Drift?Based on the Comparison of Britain and Germany
Preventing academic drift is an imperative for promoting the development of vocational university in China nowadays.Organizational field theory provides a highly explanatory theoretical framework for analyzing academic drift of vocational university.Although both British post-92 universities and German dual universities were upgraded from non-university higher education institutions with distinctive characteristics of vocational education,the former experienced academic drift while the latter remain vocational.This shows that the academic drift of vocational university is not inevitable,and also shows that the"vocational education gene"of the original institution is not an guarantee to avoid the academic drift of vocational university.The key to preventing the academic drift of vocational university relies on constructing a new higher vocational education organizational field by institutional entrepreneurship,which is based on the industrial logic and separated from the traditional higher education field.The institutional elements underlying such a field highly depends on the regulatory element of policy orientation and funding mechanism,the normative element of industrial recognition and benchmarking,and the cultural-perceptual element of cultural traditions and social evaluations.Therefore,in order to prevent the academic drift of vocational universities,China should focus on strengthening policy support and funding,deepen industry-education integration to strengthen industry's status,select high-quality colleges as benchmarks,and shape cultural-cognitive concepts to create the social atmosphere in which skills are highly valued.
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