Longdong University recently issued the "Notice of the Committee of Longdong University of the Communist Party of China on Adjusting the Number of Relevant Internal Institutions and Posts", and decided to adjust the number of relevant internal institutions and posts of the school.
The notice clearly mentions that "the independent and department-level establishment of the International Cooperation and Exchange Office will be abolished".
PART.01
Reform of internal institutions and sprint to change the name of the university!
This is not the first time that Longdong University has issued a notice on adjusting the number of internal institutions and positions.
In the past two years, the school has made many internal adjustments, involving a number of changes in the number of positions at the department level, deputy department level, and section level.
At the beginning of December 2022, Longdong University issued a notice to abolish a number of division-level and department-level positions: the alumni office was abolished and set up as a section-level institution; 1 director-level position of the director of the alumni office was abolished; Abolish the division-level establishment of the College Student Psychological Counseling Center, abolish the number of director-level posts of the director of the College Student Psychological Counseling Center, and the number of full-time deputy director and deputy director-level posts by 1; 1 post of deputy director of the Party Committee's Propaganda and Traditional Warfare Department was revoked, and 1 post of executive deputy director of the Nanliang Spiritual Research Center was revoked; The number of departments and section-level posts within four sections, including the school family planning office, will be abolished.
In mid-January 2024, Longdong University once again issued a notice mentioning that the Cyber Security and Information Center and its departments will be abolished; The notice in mid-March of the same year mentioned that the establishment of the College of Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology was revoked.
According to the article "Longdong University Completes a New Round of Optimization and Adjustment of Secondary Colleges" released at the end of March this year, it can be seen that since January 2022, the school has adjusted and optimized the secondary colleges step by step, adjusting the original 20 secondary colleges to 13 according to the discipline optimization, and reducing the number of secondary college institutions by 7.
Longdong University, which has formulated a three-step development strategy of "applying for a master's degree, changing its name, and rushing for a doctorate", anchors the goal of building a high-level applied university in the western region, focuses on optimizing the structure of disciplines and majors, and adjusts the setting of secondary colleges to do "subtraction", so as to improve the quality of connotation construction.
PART.02
The internal institutions of colleges and universities have been reformed, and the number of department-level posts has been reduced by more than 9%!
In recent years, many colleges and universities have optimized and reformed their internal institutions and personnel through mergers, cancellations, and reorganizations.
✦Northwestern Polytechnical University: reduce institutions, cadres, and management personnel
At the beginning of October last year, Northwestern Polytechnical University held a mobilization and deployment meeting for institutional reform, and reported in detail the "Overall Plan for School Institutional Reform" discussed and approved by the Standing Committee of the Party Committee of the university. Li Yanrong, secretary of the party committee of the school, proposed that to solve the problem of "three more" (more institutions, cadres, and management personnel), the first thing to do is to clarify the "three reductions" (reducing institutions, cadres, and management personnel).
✦ Beijing Normal University: The number of director-level positions has decreased by 9
In 2018, Beijing Normal University, which was adjusted by the organs, adhered to streamlining and efficiency, set up posts according to needs, strictly controlled the number of cadre posts, and improved management efficiency. In that year, the number of departments and departments of the school was reduced by 8 and the number of posts at the department level was reduced by 9.
✦Central South University: The number of director-level and deputy division-level institutions in the logistics department has been reduced by 3
Around 2015, Central South University implemented the reform of the "majority ministry system" in logistics. After adjustment, the number of principal and deputy division-level institutions of the logistics department has been reduced by three, the number of centers has been reduced from eight to six, and the number of logistics centers and subordinate institutions has been reduced by 28.
✦Shandong University: Division-level cadre posts decreased by 9.3%
In 2015, Shandong University, which completed the reform of its management structure, that is, the "three determinations" (job responsibilities, internal institutions and staffing and the number of leadership positions), effectively reduced the number of internal institutions, staffing and department-level posts in the university's organs and directly subordinate units: after the reform, a total of 111 internal institutions were approved by 36 units, a decrease of 36.9% compared with before the "three determinations"; 1,038 personnel were employed in the establishment, a decrease of 14.6%; There were 156 cadre posts at the department level, a decrease of 9.3 percent.
PART.03
The layout of the internal institutions of colleges and universities is "both good-looking and top-notch"!
"Colleges and universities shall independently determine the setup and staffing of internal institutions such as teaching, scientific research, and administrative functional departments in accordance with the actual needs of running schools and the principles of streamlining and efficiency. Encourage colleges and universities to promote the pilot project of abolishing the administrative level of internal institutions, and implement the staff system for management personnel. The Ministry of Education and other five departments issued in 2017 "on deepening the reform of streamlining administration and delegating power and delegating power to optimize services in the field of higher education" proposed.
"In recent years, there have been news reports that both prestigious and ordinary colleges and universities are carrying out institutional reforms at different levels and to different degrees." Luo Zhimin, a professor at the School of Education of Hangzhou Normal University, talked about it with Max Research.
Regarding the thinking on how to reform the internal institutions of universities, Professor Luo Zhimin believes that colleges and universities should make the layout of institutions "both beautiful and useful" through the necessary design.
Professor Luo Zhimin mentioned in his recent article "The "Subject" Logic and Thinking Transformation of University Institutional Reform" that the institutional reform of colleges and universities should focus on the creative institutional layout of thinking and solving problems, and no longer use the nature or characteristics of the institution as the criterion for judging and dividing a certain power subject, nor match its corresponding institution according to a certain power subject or governance body, but from the perspective of what the school needs, what teachers and students need, not only to do a good job in the top-level design of the university's macro organizational structure. Do a good job in the underlying design of a single organization and its functional configuration, and also achieve a closed-loop connection between the top-level design and the bottom-level design in terms of responsibilities and operational processes.
For example, he said that in view of the current problems such as the large number of high-level meetings of universities and the difficulty of secretaries and presidents to form a joint work force, it is necessary to break through the thinking inertia and path dependence of previous institutional reforms, and make a creative layout of the university decision-making organization system. For another example, in view of the common governance problems in colleges and universities, such as multiple government departments, independent affairs, and inability to discuss major matters and small matters, it is necessary to integrate those deliberation and coordination matters and related organizations on a platform.
At the same time, creative institutional layout needs to be accompanied by creative institutional arrangements and operational process design. Because institutions are primarily composed of and operated by people, the personification of institutions forces organizations to put in place systems and mechanisms to create effective incentive structures, provide relatively stable expectations, overcome opportunistic behaviors, and enable organizations to act in concert in the face of change and demand. For example, we can focus on the three to six transaction flows of decision-making and execution, coordination and collaboration, and reflection and response that occur most frequently in university governance, and make a university-level closed-loop integrated design for the operation process, that is, the integrated process of decision-execution, the integrated process of coordination and collaboration, and the integrated process of reflection and response, so as to shorten the distance and time of the acceptance and circulation of governance elements in each transaction flow. This can not only reduce the "intermediate link" and make the principal-agent relationship clearer, but also help the governance elements quickly reach the management terminal and improve the efficiency of transaction processing accordingly.
PART.04
epilogue
The purpose of the adjustment of the internal institutions and personnel of colleges and universities is to optimize the allocation of resources, stimulate innovation and vitality of running schools, and make their internal operations more efficient. However, university organizations have special complexities, and all parties need to be cautious in the adjustment process, in-depth research and careful planning to avoid unreasonable measures to bring new problems. It is expected that more colleges and universities will take solid steps in their internal management systems through comprehensive and in-depth reforms.
Key References:
[1] Longdong University website, Northwestern Polytechnical University website, Beijing Normal University website, Ministry of Education website, etc.
[2] Shandong University. Far-reaching regulatory reforms [EB/OL]. Shanda Perspective, 2015-7-16.
[3] Luo Zhimin. The "Juche" Logic and Thinking Transformation of University Institutional Reform [J] . Educational Research,2024(1):100-110.
Source: Redirected from Max Research