College Student Population Size and Management Strategy

• 1.    Introduction

  With the enrollment extension of our country's universities as well as merge and restructuring, so the students of colleges and universities have been generally increasing. According to the number of the national statistics of 2008, the colleges and universities evenly develop from 4,000 people of 1998 to 14,000 people of 2008, the number of the students is nearly a thousand even over the thousands in a internal secondary college, the number size of the students in a secondary college is almost equal to that of a school of 1998 years ago, because the student population size expanded rapidly, and we urgently establish correspondingly management strategy to attain the effective management to the large-scale student groups.

• 2.    THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE POPULATION SIZE RESEARCH ON THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT

According to the change of the population size, different management strategies are important premise of guaranteeing the student groups, and the change of the population size will lead to a variety of changes within groups, when the population size reaches a certain critical value, it will also be a qualitative change, so the non-dominant ideas are active, and all kinds of incidents increased significantly and the management effect weakens. Mainly because:

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• A.    The bigger the student population size, the less the education chance

Because the teachers don't increase in exact proportion to the increasing number of students, with the increase of the group numbers, the direct exchange opportunities between the teachers and the individual student or the opportunities the individual student are educated directly by teachers relatively decrease, and the influence of the teachers to the student groups will be weakened gradually.

Along with the increasing of the number of students, if we still take the management mode of a small population size (refers to below the critical value), then every student’s opportunities, such as participating in activities and served an office, may be relatively reduced, and accordingly positive regulation function and education function will be weakened gradually.

• B.    The greater the student population sizes, the smaller the group cohesion

• 3.    THE DEFINITION OF THE CRITICAL VALUE OF THE POPULATION SIZE

Along with the increase of the student population size, and various nationalities, beliefs and people of many different cultures will get together, so the differentia of each group member increase, so does the contradiction, the degree of the mutual understanding will be more low, and the probability of forming the conflict will raise, the cohesion will drop, and will become more difficult for us to manage the student groups.

With the increase of the student population size, the whole society-relationship of the students has become more complex, and the social ideas and cultures will permeate to the student groups, so the student groups become a distributing center of different thoughts and cultures of the society. If we don’t adopt the advanced mainstream culture to integrate effectively various thoughts within students, it will present ideas multipolarization in the student groups, the ability of student groups to maintain common goal also correspondingly weakens, the possibility of generating clique within the group increases accordingly, which usually will reduce the whole cohesion of the student groups[1].

The expansion of the student population size is always accompanying with the increase of the specialty quantity, the more the specialty quantity, the more complex the student groups thought system. Because the different specialty has the different measurement criteria, the different employment direction and the different industry standard, these will form the different professional thoughts and behavior pattern, and make the factors of the education management to the student more diversified.

• A.    The critical value of the population size

The population size refers to how many people a group is made up, and the population size is a relative concept. So-called big and small-scale is connected with the total amount (full-time teachers + counselors + management personnel + other) of a school entity faculty (such as a college), and is differentiated by the ability of the faculty to directly and effectively educate and manage students. According to the sociology research, a small group of 5-7 people is relatively ideal, and has more opportunities each other and greater influence. As a secondary colleges，if the number of the students is 7 times of the faculty, theoretically speaking, the faculty can control and influence the students effectively, considering the synthesis influence of the whole educational environment of the school, the division proportion of the student groups size will float, and the amplitude will be ±2, it is also to say, the critical value of the population size division is that the teacher-student ratio is 1 : 5~9, when the number of the students in a school entity is below 5~9 times of the total number of the staff, which can be regarded as the small group (below the critical value), when the number of the students is above 5~9 times of the total number of the staff, which can be regarded as the large group (above the critical value). The author had an investigation of grasping student degree to the counselors of this unit, and the number that the counselors thoroughly understand all aspects of students (A thorough understanding including individual, family, study, emotion, ambition, and so on) is not more than ten, also indirectly corroborated the proportions of the critical value 1 :5~ 9

• B.    The floating factors of the critical value of the population size

The critical value of the student population size, theoretically floating 1 : 5~9, and the specific floating proportion is decided by the following comprehensive factors:

1 ) The better the style of study, the higher the critical value;

• 2)    The more opportunities the teacher and student contact, the higher the critical value, contrarily lowers;

• 3)    The stronger the desire of students and teachers’ communication, the higher the critical value, contrarily lowers;

• 4)    The stronger the group's goals, the higher the critical value;

• 5)    The stronger the group cohesion, the higher the critical value

• 6)    The farther the distance between the teachers’ living places and school, the critical value lowers;

• 7)    The more the teacher’ s social part-time jobs, the less chance the teachers’ communicate with students, the critical value lowers;

• 8)    The better the individualized education, the higher the critical value.

• 4.    THE POPULATION SIZE AND THE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

• A.    Establish the core value system, the management focus transition from the system management to the target management

The small group focus on the standard management, we basically can realize management expectation according to the regulations, because the number of students in the small group is less and the thought dispersion degree is not high, and the mainstream management culture and the teachers' thoughts in the school affect students greatly, the compulsory and binding of the various rules basically can affect students' thought and behavior. Along with the constant expansion of the student population size, the social relationship the students is more diversification, and do the social ideas. So the student groups of the universities are also a place where various ideas are put into play, and the diversification trend of the values in student groups will present, while the multipolarization trend of the values itself reduces the constraint force of the rules, and only the pure standard management is not enough, so we must make student group form unified mainstream thoughts, in accord with the mainstream thinking to strengthen the standardized management. How to form the mainstream thinking? Target Education is the key, and on the basis of investigation and study, we form the core values system of a school and college, and then use the values to educate the students, including educational goals, ideas, spirit adhering to, etc. So when the student groups break the critical value, we must pay more attention to refining the value system in education management, and use the various platforms and opportunities to instill the values to the students, then practice them in the specific activities, make the values internalization and externalization, and become an inexhaustible driving force of leading the students along the correct direction consciously to go forward.

• B.    Establish an effective mechanism, strengthen the teachers’ influence to student group

When the population size of the student is smaller, the opportunities of the direct contact between teachers and students is relatively more, the direct influence of the teachers, such as values, ideology, personhood and working style, etc. is bigger to the students. In addition, because now many universities consist of several schools merged, it is very common for the teachers to have class in multi-campuses universities. And the distance between the working place and the dwelling is far, at the same time, the phenomenon of having class in multi-campuses universities is common, therefore, which makes the teachers decrease contact chance with the students both time and space, and reduce the energy of spending on the students, these changes all lower the direct influence of the teachers to students.

Along with the student group increase, it is very important work to enlarge the direct influence of the teachers to students. We should start from the following aspects: First, we strengthen the sense of mission and the sense of responsibility education; Second, we perfect the teachers' knowledge structure, improve practical ability of the teaching, mainly including: improving humanism quality; understand comprehensively domestic and international macro political and economic situation, relevant industry development status and cutting-edge technology dynamic, and familiarize with the national employment policy and the relevant regulations as well as the student education management prescription. This can either guide students from a big vision and macroscopic perspective or has the specific guidance to students' career planning and the smooth completing studies from a microcosmic perspective, improve the course information and fully exploit the education element of every subject, increase the influence of each class to students and achieve both teaching and educating people. Third, we establish an effective effect mechanism. Establish an effective convenient communication mechanism, reduce the space distance, and improve the time availability[2]. According to establishing qq and the fetion platforms between students and teachers, the teachers can make an appointment with students to conduct online tutoring and answer questions, as well as the depth exchange in other aspects. Build tutor system, select the teachers with the high quality and the high teachers' ethics level as tutors, and every tutor bring 3 ~ 7 students, who regularly report all the aspects of the study and life to their tutors, the tutor will target for guidance in education, science and technology innovation, career planning and emotion aspects. Fourth, we use a variety of publicity carrier to propaganda teacher's achievement and enhance the indirect influence[3].

• C.    Do the personal cultivation well with all strength, satisfy the demands and needs of developing multi-polarization

With the constant expansion of the student population size, the student individual with various specialties is increasing, and the special type is also increasing, the students' aspirations and development goals present multi-polarization state. In this case, we must do personal cultivation well, because this kind of multi-polarization is consistent with the multi-polarization needs of the society for talents, however the direction of the training plan is relatively less, and it can't adapt to the multi-polarization needs. In addition, with the increase of the student population size, the student individual with various specialties and ambitions increases unceasingly, and the students with the same specialties and the ambitions may constitute a certain population size, conveniently organize and implement targeted education and training to students[4]. This main work include: we conducted a comprehensive statistics to the students with various specialties and the ambitions, according to the statistics situation to build a platform for students, provide the condition and counseling, and make the specialty improve constantly and the ambition strengthen constantly, and develop the specific work in order to realize the ambitions. Concretely speaking, we can build the professional skill training direction and the different carriers of the cultural art direction from the specialty training, and take participating in various competitions as the carrier, strengthen the cultivation of specialty. We regard the ambition target direction as the standard, and divide students into the Postgraduate Exam, the Civil Service Examinations, teachers and employment etc. and different direction does targeted training.

Through the individualized training, we make the students get all-round development and satisfy largely the needs of the student development, create the student to become various talents with the basic knowledge of solid and the specialties, thus make the schools become the training base of the talents and plug in successful wings for students.

• D.    Strive to cultivate the student cadre, improve the work ability and level

With the increase of the student population size, the discrete force of the group member increases, but the cohesion reduces. So we will strengthen the organization construction and play the organization's cohesive force. When the population size steps up, we will establish an appropriate student organization system and a complete student cadre system, which makes the student party organization, the league, the student union and various communities harmonious and unified, and the various cadre systems will extend to the dormitory, improve the organization's influence. The total number of the student cadre should be controlled in 1/5 ~ 1/7 of the student population, and ensure the enough number, because of along with the increase of the student population size, we need to put more organizational resources into specific routines, coordinate the relations between the members and effectively organize the activities.

Implement the competition system for the cadres, and ensure the advance of the student cadres.

Along with the constant expansion of the student population size, the student cadres are playing the more and more major roles in self education and the management processes, and their minds and the level of awareness and work ability directly determine the students' overall level and state. Therefore, we should establish the regular training mechanism, and use the party school as the platform to educate them, such as, the national situation education, “three views” education, policies and regulations education, student management science education, the core values of educational organization education, and so on, and we comprehensively promotes the student cadre's minds and the level of awareness and the ability of the self education and the self management

• E.    Fully grasp the safety engineering, build a good educational environment

Along with the increase of the student population size, so the probability of the minds conflict and the conflict is increasing among the students, for instance, academic problems, physical and psychological problems, emotional problems, these potential crisis factors are also increasing, and the quality difference of the internal personnel in the student groups is growing constantly, plus the social environment, the probability of producing all sorts of security incidents is growing quickly. If we don't carry out the security work well, this will become the major obstacles that influence the students on learning successfully, and will become the biggest threat of the harmony and stability of the college campus[5]. Major work includes:

• 1)    Divide the hazard type, aim to carry out the work

According to the sources of the risk factors, the hazard can be divided into: the academic hazard, (mainly students couldn't finish college on time or drop out. Produce this situation: they are addicted to the network games, undertake the criminal responsibility due to the major safety accidents, academic record doesn't meet the requirements, etc.) the life and property risk and the political risk (mainly illegal power of religion infiltration, domestic and foreign secessionist forces infiltration, and hold correct politics direction in the face of right and wrong).

• 2)    Establish an effective safety system, popularize the security system

It is a basic way to improve prevention ability in order to effectively prevent safety accidents. According to different safety type, we formulated the early warning mechanism and the emergency mechanism, made the prevention and treatment work formulation, standardization and seriousness. Because we organized the teachers and students to learn the system deeply, and one time each semester, this not only improved the safety consciousness, raised the ability of the emergency foresee and handling, but also avoided the maximum safety accidents and properly handle the safety accidents, so we minimized the negative aspects to the happened safe accidents.

• 3)    Establish an effective security mechanism, improve the handling ability of the critical incidents

• 5.    CONCLUSION

We establish the crisis student individual archives, target to educate them at ordinary times, so constantly reduce the crisis factors, and we stress the safety from the source. We also establish the information clerk system, each class will has the information clerk, encourage all the students to inform the information promptly, thus the safety hidden information will be collected to the student management departments in the fist time. Besides, the duty phone will be set up in the student management department, and the duty personnel will be responsible for the safety work, who will warn timely and properly handle all types of security incidents.

According to the paper mentioned, it is very effective to manage students using the group critical value and management strategies ,the group cohesion enhance, study atmosphere become more strong, graduate examination and employment rate increased significantly, and all kinds of vicious incidents were obviously reduced.