Author(s)

Weijia Zhang, Zhijun Yang

Corresponding Author

Weijia Zhang

Abstract

China’s independent colleges have gone through a trilogy of creation, development, and conversion, which has resulted in several important policy changes, but now the policy implementation of "merger and conversion" has been blocked, accompanied by the coexistence of multiple social crises. Based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the development and transfer process of independent colleges can be divided into policy exploration, policy advancement, and policy deepening stages according to the landmark policies introduced in each period, and the interaction between advocacy coalitions and changes in external or internal conditions of the system in each stage lead to different policy adjustments. The "changes" and "unchanges" in the process of policy change reflect the policy meaning of "seeking change in stability" in higher education development and reform. The study found, there are "changes" in the process of policy changes in terms of the establishment of independent colleges, policy attitudes and contents, and policy effects, and "unchanges" in terms of policy goals, policy attributes, and policy styles, which coexist and are unified in the logic of "seeking change in stability" in governance. Future work should reconstruct the policy or promote the policy change with the governance logic of "Seeking change in stability", promote the high-quality development of higher education and realize the transfer of independent colleges. In order to achieve the smooth transition of independent colleges and universities.

Keywords

Policy changes; advocacy coalition; independent colleges; independent college conversions; seeking change in stability