如何应对高等教育适龄人口下降：美国与日本之比较

How to Cope with the Declining of Age-appropriate Population in Higher Education:Comparing America with Japan

美国和日本在20世纪80、90年代高等教育适龄人口下降之前采取了不同策略,导致两种截然不同的结果。一个是高等教育规模持续增长,彻底走出了适龄人口制约高等教育发展的怪圈;一个是许多大学因生源严重不足正面临生存危机。两国的经验和教训提示我国高等教育应逐渐突破传统的适龄人口的束缚,逐步扩大非适龄人口生源市场;适度控制高等学校数量增长,切实采取措施增强学生学习的选择性。

America and Japan had adopted different strategies before the declining of age-appropriate population in higher education in the 1980s and 1990s, which had led to two entirely different results. One was the sustainable growth of higher educational scale, completely breaking away from the circle of restricting higher educational development by age-appropriate population; the other was that many universities were facing the survival crisis due to severe short supply of students. The experiences and lessons of both countries have called attention to our country that our higher education should gradually break through the restriction of the traditional age-appropriate population, gradually enlarge non-age-appropriate population source of student market. Meanwhile, we should moderately control the quantitative growth of universities and concretely take measures to strengthen the students＂ learning selectivity.