Governance Reform of Colleges and Departments in Chinese Universities in the Internet plus Era

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the technology application in the Internet Plus Era could impact the governance reforms of Chinese universities. The study takes a qualitative approach by collecting research data through personal interviews with twenty-six educational leaders from fifteen top research universities in China. The data of the study were analyzed by examining the common codes and emerging themes from the interview data to generate the answers to the research questions. The findings of the study indicated that the university leaders perceived the rapid development of technology offering great opportunities for the university governance reform. As part of the governance reform effort, programs of different disciplines need to seriously consider for integration in sharing a big dataset. In the technological development era, the university leaders also urged for practically implementing the authority decentralization policy and the close collaboration between administrative and academic staffs. Recommendations are offered by the researchers to foster university governance reforms in the Internet Plus Era.