Qingxia Zheng

Modern universities, as core organizations for knowledge production and talent cultivation, are not only issues of educational management in terms of their internal governance structure, but also embody deep institutional economic logic. This paper takes new institutional economics as the theoretical perspective, leveraging Coase's transaction cost theory, North's institutional change theory, and property rights theory, to attempt to analyze the economic logic behind university governance structures. The results show that: first, the widespread application of the university-department-faculty three-tier structure is mainly to reduce coordination and information costs brought by knowledge differentiation; second, the separation of administrative power and academic power not only ensures organizational efficiency but also serves as a institutional protection for the 'academic property rights' of scholars exploring truth; third, core institutions such as tenure and academic evaluation were formed under the context of high uncertainty in academic output and prominent information asymmetry, serving as long-term incentive and reputation mechanisms. On this basis, this paper examines the evolution of the 'government-university relationship', the discussion on 'de-administration', and the internal logic of faculty system reform in the context of China's university governance reforms from the perspective of path dependence. It finds that the effectiveness of governance depends on whether a balance can be achieved between reducing transaction costs and stimulating academic innovation. The process of China's universities moving toward governance modernization must respect their inherent institutional logic, avoid simply applying corporate models, and both strengthen formal rules while unleashing the endogenous momentum of grassroots academic communities.

Institutional Economics; University Governance; Transaction Costs; Institutional Change

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