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| Dynamic Balance Between Autonomy and Accountability: The Guarantee of Higher Education Governance Reform |
| Liu Shuhua, Lu Ke |
| College of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China |
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Abstract The balance between university autonomy and higher education accountability is a key issue to be solved in the process of higher education governance modernization. However, for a long time, this issue has not attracted enough attention from policymakers. In the reform practice, there often exists a problem of binary opposition thinking in dealing with the relationship between them: either a one-sided emphasis on university autonomy or a one-sided emphasis on higher education accountability. Therefore, it is necessary to further understand the dialectical relationship between university autonomy and higher education accountability.In fact, they are both antagonistic and unified. The relationship between the two reflects the tension between the internal academic and external social nature of higher education institutions. On the one hand, autonomy and accountability have heterogeneous and opposing sides, and there is tension and confrontation between them. Excessive autonomy leads to its abuse or misuse by higher education institutions, which directly affects the implementation of higher education accountability. Excessive accountability often evolves into borderless intervention, causing harm to the traditional spirit of autonomy. On the other hand, there is a unity and complementarity between autonomy and accountability. The two complement and compensate each other. Autonomy is the premise and root of the implementation of accountability. As a prerequisite autonomy can effectively ensure the universities’ performance of their own mission and national responsibilities. It promotes accountability and makes accountability more meaningful. Accountability is the result and guarantee of autonomy. It is an important way and means for universities to maintain their own independence and prevent excessive interference from the outside world and the government. Therefore, in the practice of higher education governance reform, maintaining a dynamic balance between autonomy and accountability is the key to policy-making and institutional design. They are like the two wings of an airplane. Each side can survive and develop in the unity of opposites with the other. If only one side is inclined, it will inevitably lead to the failure of higher education governance reform.Firstly, it is necessary to ensure their coexistence in parallel. Autonomy is limited and accountability is limited as well. “Limited autonomy” shows that while colleges and universities enjoy autonomy, they need to adhere to their internal logic and strengthen self-restraint. “Limited accountability” shows that outside intervention in colleges and universities can only be moderate, and it is necessary to respect the self-prescriptive nature of the higher education system and maintain reasonable expectations. Secondly, it is important to make a positive match between autonomy and accountability, integrate them in the necessary tension, and establish accountable autonomy and accountability based on autonomy. The so-called accountable autonomy refers to higher education institutions fulfilling their social responsibilities for different stakeholders while fully exercising their autonomy. The so-called accountability based on autonomy refers to the accountability of higher education institutions by external stakeholders on the basis of maintaining the traditional mission of higher education and adhering to the spirit of university autonomy. The balance between autonomy and accountability in the reform of higher education governance is not static. The more popular relationship between them is an unstable equilibrium. They tend to be in dynamic balance while the boundaries of the two are always in a state of constant change.
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Received: 23 June 2022
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2023, Vol. 53 
