美国现代大学荣誉教育发展演变的制度逻辑——基于历史制度主义的分析视角

Institutional Logic of Honors Education’s Development in American Modern Universities: Based on the Analytical Perspective of Historical Institutionalism

荣誉教育是美国现代大学精英本科教育的重要表现形式。为了探寻荣誉教育发展演变的制度逻辑,借用历史制度主义的分析框架,梳理荣誉教育在美国高等教育中的发展过程,可见荣誉教育发展是在宏观经济、国家战略与治理结构等制度环境的约束下,关键行动者遵循特定的选择路径,进而采取行动策略的结果。总体上,美国现代大学荣誉教育的历次发展呈现出以高校为主体的制度发展逻辑。分析荣誉教育的发展脉络,启示我国高等教育改革不仅应当关注并推动深层次的教育体制变革,允许市场等多种力量作用的发挥,更要从根本上重视并培养高校的自主性,发挥关键人物在教育改革中的引领作用。

Honors education is an important expressive form of elite undergraduate education in modern US universities. In order to explore the institutional logic of honors education, this article borrows the analytical framework of historical institutionalism and summarizes its developing process in American higher education. It concludes that the development of honors education is the results of key actors that follow certain paths and take certain action strategies under restriction of institutional settings like specific macro-economy, national strategies and governance structure. Overall, the development of honors education demonstrates higher education institution-centered development logic, which affords us lessons that our reform of higher education, should not only pay attention to deep-seated educational system reform and allow the third party like market force to develop proactively, but also highlight and cultivate the autonomy of universities and colleges, and perform the core leadership of key actors in the process of educational reform.