New Forms of Higher Education: An Examination of the Learning Contract

摘要- 0451310古德曼这项研究探讨了新的，创新的高等教育形式。研究问题包括：这些新机构的形式或结构特征是什么，它们与传统的研究型大学有何不同？这些新机构的启动过程是怎样的？“学习契约”的概念如何帮助我们理解这些新形式的高等教育以及其他学习型组织的演变？这种多学科的研究借鉴了组织变革文献，角色理论文献，心理契约的最新工作，以及有关高等教育机构创新形式的文献。 该项目包括四个研究型大学创业公司的相关研究。前两项研究将依靠丰富的民族志方法，包括访谈和观察，以及档案记录，以捕捉这些机构的形式和他们在启动阶段的过程。第三项研究将开发和验证调查工具中的量表，挖掘学习合同结构。第四项研究将使用前三项研究的数据来审查初步成效指标。最后两项研究依赖于结构开发、假设检验和定量方法。本研究的潜在更广泛影响包括：1）帮助美国大学保持其历史上的竞争优势，同时由于环境因素，如政府支持有限，教师招聘和保留成本不断上升，怀疑选民的学费压力下降，较低成本的内容传送系统（例如，电子学习）和美国式教育的全球化; 2）新的和现有的研究和教学大学的教育政策的形成;和3）在大学环境中学习合同的发展将为机构和政策制定者提供新的框架和测量工具，以评估组织有效性的各个方面。

Abstract - 0451310 GoodmanThis study examines new, innovative forms of higher education. The research questions include: what are the forms or structural properties of these new institutions and how do they differ from traditional research universities? What is the startup process of these new institutions? How can the concept of the "learning contract" help us understand the evolution of these new forms of higher education as well as other learning organizations?This multi-disciplinary research draws on the organizational change literature, role theory literature, recent work on psychological contracts, and the literature about innovative forms of higher education institutions. The project includes four related studies of research university startups. The first two studies will rely on rich ethnographic methods including interviews and observation, as well as archival records to capture the form of these institutions and their processes during the startup phase. The third study will develop and validate scales in a survey instrument, tapping the learning contract construct. The fourth study will use data from the first three studies to examine initial effectiveness indicators. These last two studies rely on construct development, hypothesis testing, and quantitative methods.The potential broader impact of this research includes: 1) helping U.S. universities maintain their historically competitive edge while under severe pressure to change due to environmental forces such as constrained governmental support, escalating faculty recruitment and retention costs, downward tuition pressure from skeptical constituents, lower cost content delivery systems (e.g., e-learning), and globalization of U.S. style education; 2) educational policy formation for new and existing research and teaching universities; and 3) the development of the learning contract within university settings will provide institutions and policy makers with new frameworks and measurement instruments to assess aspects of organizational effectiveness.