The Choice of Comprehensive Reform Path of Business Administration

Looking back on the development history of business administration majors in colleges of China, the author conducts an analysis on the distribution of colleges offering business administration majors and market demands for these graduates, according to the results of market survey. It finds that there is a large gap between market’s requirements on business administration graduates and their real abilities. Based on the principle of system dynamics, it is necessary to construct a path choosing model of comprehensive reform of business administration majors, emphasize normal and scientific research and prediction on employers’ requirements, explore advantages and characteristics of colleges, find the orientation professionally and accurately, define the objective of cultivating undergraduates of business administration majors, reform and optimize the talent training system of business administration majors, improve the structure of teachers team, integrate experimental and training resources in colleges, and cultivate students’ abilities in practice and employment.


Development history of business administration majors in China
It has been almost 100 years since business administration major (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) was first offered in China.According to the self-evolving feature of this discipline, environmental difference of undergraduate education of business administration majors in different ages, and the change of address, the development history can be divided into five stages [1] .At the first stage (before liberation, from the late Qing Dynasty to 1949), the main feature is that it was expanded from a single business discipline imported from the West to multiple disciplines that were subject to business.Economic disciplines were excluded.This is the introductory stage of business administration majors in China, showing exogenous, exotic and special features as well as the immaturity of business discipline [2], [3] .At the second stage (1950-1987), it was expanded from business discipline to the whole finance and economics major, focusing mainly on economics.The main feature of this stage is the quick response of the major to national reform of the economic system [4] .According to the requirements of socialist planned economy reform, and learning from the Soviet mode, business administration education was rarely kept in courses and comprehensively replaced by finance and economics major [5] .At the third stage (1988-1992), on the one hand, the ever-accelerating reform of China's economy cried for administration disciplines to solve various administrative issues in development; on the other hand, learning constantly from western administrative science and technology, relevant scholars and administrators applied this administrative technology into real economic work extensively and achieved good results.Therefore, economics discipline differentiated gradually into two categories, namely economics and management science, which highlighted the effect of management science in economic and social development of the nation.Rudiments of the two disciplines were thusly formed [6] .At the fourth stage (1993-1997), China was in its preliminary stage of socialist market economy, where economics played a dominant role.Majors of business administration closely related to market economy and interlinked with international conventions were set as subjects of economics.The stage has developed into an age where two secondary disciplines (economics and management science) coexisted.The number of former majors of economics and management science was diminished from 48 to 31.At the fifth stage (1998-now), socialist market economy has developed to a certain degree and a large number of specialized talents of business administration were in demand.Finally, business administration is defined as an independent discipline of management science, which no longer belongs to economics [4] .Business administration discipline in China, as a firstlevel discipline of management science, has been developing for 20 years.For undergraduate education, there are six majors, including business administration, human resource management, marketing, accounting, financial management and tourism management.Under-graduate majors' catalogue was adjusted in 2012, when majors like tourism management and hotel management were set as an independent major (tourism management) of management science.Business administration discipline contains only five undergraduate majors, that are business administration, human resource management, marketing, accounting and financial management.Here, a study is carried out on these five majors of business administration based on the classification of national majors' catalogue in 2012.

Current development status of business administration major in China
It is not too long since business administration was set as a class of majors in China, but it develops rapidly.On the one hand, there are a number of colleges offering business administration majors in China, details of which are shown in Table 1.Colleges offering marketing major occupy the most, reaching a total of 586, while colleges offering human resource management major occupy the least, reaching a total of 373.All the universities of 985 and 211 provide majors of these kinds.Lots of colleges offer multiple majors of business administration at the same time.On the whole, ordinary colleges take a larger proportion among these offering business administration majors.Ordinary colleges offering financial management major account for 87.5%, and the number of those offering business administration majors is the least, yet accounting for 77.3% of the total.It indicates that ordinary colleges undertake the important responsibility of cultivating talents of business management [7] .On the other hand, colleges offering business administration majors are from different provinces (and municipalities) and of various directions, including comprehensive, science and engineering, agriculture and forestry, medical and pharmaceutical science, normal, language, finance and economics, politics and law, physical education, art, nationalities, and military (refer to Table 2 for details).Colleges of comprehensive, science and engineering, finance and economics and normal take a larger pro-portion, while those of physical education, art, language and military take a relatively smaller proportion [8] .3).It finds out that there is a great similarity among colleges of different levels in terms of cultivating objectives of knowledge, capability and ethical structure [9], [10] , that is to attach great importance to the improvement of students' ideology, morality and political accomplishment, emphasize the cultivation of students' abstract thinking and logical thinking, and pay attention to the combination of liberal education and professional education, especially the professional knowledge of management emphasized by each and every college.It can be also seen that although there seems to be a great disparity among colleges of the three categories in combination and decision-making of knowledge (management, hu-manity culture and science technology, laws and regulations), capability (innovation, leadership and communication, international insight, problem analyzing and resolving) and ethics [10] , differences among colleges of different level cannot be essentially reflected.Therefore, there is an increasing symmetry among business administration majored graduates, which is to the disadvantage of society and market in terms of requirements on talents of different types, personalities, abilities, cultures, pursuit and characteristics.Especially for ordinary colleges with different backgrounds and cultures, if markets cannot be effectively combined and accurately positioned, students will graduate with poor competitiveness and even face unemployment [11], [12] .

The analysis on employers' requirements on business administration majored graduates
A sampling survey is conducted in order to clearly know about and master such important factors as quantity, knowledge and capability structure, and performance of management of business administration majored graduates needed by markets [13] .Ten regions are selected for the survey, including architecture, chemical industry, mechanics, business, automobile, electronics, bank, real estate, government, communication and steel.Questionnaires are filled by employers of relevant industries and business administration majored students with more than 3 years' working experience in order to guarantee the representativeness of samples and make sure that questionnaires are professional and symmetric, so that requirements that are close to the fact can be acquired.
Questionnaires are distributed by professional teams.1000 questionnaires are distributed to 1000 employers and 949 questionnaires are taken back, the recovery rate of which is as high as 94.9%.The number of questionnaires distributed to each industry is related to its total number of enterprises and impact.Details are presented in Table 4.

Survey on quantities of business administration majored graduates required by employers
The results of the survey on quantities of business administration majored graduates required by employers each year (Table 5) show that employers with a quantity need of 1 to 2 business administration majored graduates account for 18.9% of the respondents and employers need-ing 3 to 5 graduates account for 21.4%.Employers needing 6 to 10 graduates take the largest proportion, which is 34.6%.Proportions of employers needing 11 to 20 and more than 20 graduates are respectively 17.7% and 5.4%.It can be found from a simple analysis on the data that employers needing 5 graduates or less take a larger proportion, the total of which is 40.3%.

The survey on capabilities of business administration majored graduates required by employers
According to the design of preliminary questionnaire, capabilities of 10 categories and 21 specific abilities and concepts are selected for the survey.It can be found from specific requirements of employers on capabilities of business administration graduates [14] (

Comprehensive reform paths of business management majors
According to the current cultivation situations of colleges offering business management majors in China and employers' demands on quantity and abilities of these graduates, it is believed that the supreme goal of offering majors of these kinds is to satisfy the objective needs of employers.With this goal as the standard, colleges of different levels and types are able to set and improve cultivating objectives, standardize cultivating specifications, and optimize structures of knowledge, capability and concept according to their own features and main employing regions of graduates.For this reason, reform of business administration majors should never be the single integration of cultivating objectives, or the courses reform, or the integration of practical training bases, or the improvement of teaching methodology, or the optimization of faculties or the simple reform of combination.It is believed that the reform of business management majors should be comprehensive, systematic and overall.Thus the comprehensive reform path choosing model of business administration majors based on the principle of system dynamics is constructed in this paper (Figure 1).The path choosing model is in an environment full of dynamic changes, which influence the change of the whole system.The adjustment of a certain subsystem would also influence functions of the system.Colleges should never get the reform done once and for all.It is obliged to keep in step with markets and adjust the condition of each subsystem so as to obtain a better effect.

Scientific and normalized investigation and prediction on employers' requirements
In order to clearly know about the needs of markets and employers on professionals of business administration, it is suggested that investigation and prediction on employers' needs should be taken as an essential step of establishing colleges of business administration type.On the one hand, unlike western countries, where students are equipped with engineering or other disciplinary knowledge or come to learn business administration with definite needs after having gained certain practical experiences, these majors in China are only offered in undergraduate education.On the other hand, unlike majors with strong technicality and specialty and stable professional needs, business administration majors are not quite stable in professional needs.Employers' requirements on capabilities of business administration majored graduates would response quickly with changes of markets.But quite a few colleges set the needs of employers according to their own subjective needs.It can be learned from marketing theory that sometimes there is a large difference between employers' needs set by colleges and their actual needs.Thus it seems necessary to investigate and predict the needs of targeted employers with a scientific method, which should also be normalized, so as to correct differences in investigation and prediction and accurately know about the needs of employers.

Explore advantages and features of colleges for professional and accurate positioning
Since China stepped into the stage of popularized education, there are more and more colleges offering business administration majors, especially local colleges.Many colleges fail to explore their advantages and features as well as rationally plan and accurately position, resulting in the exactly same objectives, schemes and models of cultivation.Even some colleges are blind and tend to compare with other colleges in positioning.As a large country of education with a vast territory, China has a large number of colleges offering business administration majors of irregular levels and in different areas.With various disciplinary backgrounds, these colleges have different advantages and features.For example, the positioning of 985 colleges cannot be adapted to 211 colleges, and the positioning of 211 colleges should not be adapted to 985 and ordinary colleges either.There should be differences in positioning between eastern colleges and central and western colleges, and between engineering colleges and financial colleges, as well as between colleges in developed areas and in under-developed areas.Therefore, before scientifically setting the cultivating objectives of business administration majors, it is necessary to carry out the scientific and accurate positioning through combining value orientation, schooling concept, schooling level, relevant disciplinary background, schooling objective, service area, orientation of activity, regional economic state and objective needs of employers, so that advantages and feature of different colleges can be put into full play and business administration majored graduates can be cultivated to satisfy various needs.

Set the cultivation goal of business administration majored undergraduates
Accurate positioning of the cultivation goal is a fundamental task of high education.For business administration majors, it is not only the starting line of educational work but also the final destination of the major cultivation.The cultivation goal of business ad-ministration majors is to cultivate graduates to meet the comprehensive requirements on orientations, specifications and various abilities.Actually, in some sense, the cultivation goal refers to pursuing schooling objectives and expected results of educational activities under certain constraints, which is also the pursuit of expected development states of students.Therefore, colleges of different levels, areas, disciplinary backgrounds and economic environment should determine their cultivation goals by combining market demands for these majors investigated and predicted by colleges in accordance with their overall posi-tioning.These cultivation goals have to be individualized and diversified, reflecting features of capabilities, industries, regions, levels and majors, as well as employment prospects.

Reform and optimize professionals training system of business administration majors
After years of exploration and practice of higher education reform, colleges have made great progress in enrollment system, employment system, funds management and incentive mechanism.But there are still a lot of unsolved problems.For example, many colleges started to expand their scale since the enrollment expansion of colleges in 1998.Numbers of students in some local colleges are directly related to national appropriations, because their educational funds are allocated by the nation.The enrollment expansion scale of business admin- istration majors is even larger.Under this circumstances, the quality of business administration majored graduates will directly influence employment.Thus it is extremely necessary to reform and optimize the training system of business administration majors.

Convert the educational concept of cultivating business administration majored students
The supply-demand contradiction of business administration majored graduates becomes increasingly prominent in recent years.It is even reported by some media that business administration is one of the top 10 majors with bad employment.In fact, colleges only cultivate students of these majors in line with their own traditional ideas, so students fail to satisfy the needs of markets.For this reason, it is quite necessary to convert the educational concept of cultivating business administration majored students.Market needs should be taken as the guide so that graduates can truly meet the needs.We should change the former schooling idea that is too subjective, strengthen investigation and prediction on needs of business administration talents, and stipulate the development strategy of these majors with overall consideration and gradual promoting so as to achieve a virtuous circle.

Optimize enrollment scale and guarantee sufficient teaching resources
Because of expanded enrollment and limited teaching resources, lots of colleges provide classes in large scale and almost pay no attention to practice and internship when cultivating business administration majored students.This severely influences the cultivating quality of students and finally makes them unable to graduate successfully.In order to solve the problem effectively, colleges should avoid the marketing myopia that focuses only on short-term benefits according to their resources distribution.By taking into account their long-term goal, colleges should combine investigations and predictions on market needs and adjust enrollment scale so as to ensure sufficient teaching resources and cultivate highquality business administration professionals to satisfy market needs.

Revise and improve the scheme of cultivating business administration majored students and optimize curriculum content
For colleges with accurate investigations and predictions on talent needs, scientific positioning and suited cultivation goals of business administration majors but without high-quality cultivating scheme and relevant curriculum content, all the efforts would still be in vain.Curriculum combination determined by the cultivating scheme is a fundamental guarantee for students' capabilities.Each and every single course should never be neglected.Otherwise, the standard required by the scheme cannot be satisfied.Thus, for scheme revising and improvement of business administration majored students and curriculum optimizing, it is suggested to start off with the system by taking into account foresight and practicability so as to optimize the whole curriculum system and content.

Optimize the structure of faculties and construct teaching teams of business administration
Faculties with high quality provide a fundamental guarantee for cultivating high-quality students.Lots of colleges introduce faculties rapidly for enrollment, most of which join faculties directly after graduation.And there are even phenomena of "inbreeding" among colleges.Thus, optimizing faculties' structures in terms of age, knowledge, institute, education background, title, experience and gender, and constructing teaching teams of business administration on this basis can effectively avoid inertia of faculties and lengthen the shortest board in Buckets effect, helping to improve the whole level of faculties and promote faculties to fully understand their position, pursue their cultivation goal and implement their cultivation scheme scientifically and strictly.Two points need to be highlighted in colleges.Firstly, in college faculties, there have to be certain proportions of teachers with full practical experiences coming from enterprises, public institutions or government (Structures of education background and knowledge accord with colleges' requirements), in order to meet requirements of the cultivation of students' practice capability.Secondly, faculties of business administration should attach great importance to the reform of methodology and teachers should be encouraged to strengthen learning and investigation of advanced teaching methodologies at home and abroad.Create class atmospheres that are close to scenes of targeted needs through teamwork and combination of curriculum and students' knowledge base.Educate students in accordance of their aptitude with such advanced teaching methods as cases, enlightenment, elicitation, experiments, expanding training, etc.

Integrate experimental and training resources and cultivate students' abilities of practicing and employment
For colleges of cultivating business administration majored undergraduates, although there are large quantities of experimental and training resources and some colleges (like Guangdong Business College) are even equipped with large simulated experimental and training center for students' experiments and internships, it is still impossible to satisfy the needs of students.After all, colleges are unable to contain all the aspects of markets.So, it is obliged for colleges to establish a series of experimental and training bases outside colleges according to the cultivation goal so as to supplement resources and natural defects.
Quite a few colleges only highlight the importance during experimental and internship training of students and conduct employment guidance in the last year of college, which are quite imperfect.It is believed that systematic cultivation of students' experimental and training capabilities and employment abilities can acquire the best effect, which means business administration majored students should be fully aware of such aspects as social and market needs, cultivation goals, capabilities and qualities required, experimental and training experiences needed for improvement from the very first moment when they enter colleges.Disperse social and market needs and cultivation goals into each course, combine systematic cultivation of students' knowledge and capabilities together with employment closely, carry out simulated on-site recruiting and find problems and deficiencies for future revising, so as to systematically develop students' capabilities in employment.

Dilemma and the solution of comprehensive reform of business administration majors
It is a rational choice to find a comprehensive reform path for business administration majors.However, some colleges would make some irrational choices due to various reasons and finally be unable to cultivate graduates satisfying market needs.

Dilemma of comprehensive reform of business administration majors
It can be seen from the relation schema of schooling cost and quality (Figure 2) that the abscissa stands for students' quality and the ordinate stands for schooling cost.So there are four quadrants.Generally, quadrant II (low cost leads to low quality) and quadrant III (high cost brings high quality) conform to laws, which are rational choices.Quadrant I (low quality from high cost) and quadrant IV (high quality from low cost) do not conform to schooling laws, which are irrational choices.For decision-makers in colleges, quadrant I is never the choice for them due to limited funds.However, they always choose the quadrant IV irrationally for the purpose of building high-quality colleges and cultivating high-quality graduates with low schooling cost.For colleges offering business administration majors, irrational choices are more likely to appear, especially when these majors are not key disciplines or preponderant discipline.This irrational choice will lead to a dilemma of comprehensive reform of business ad-ministration majors.The main reason for this dilemma is the misunderstanding of colleges on schooling quality, which is reflected as utilitarian, formalized, parochial and isolated understanding on schooling quality [15] .Utilitarian schooling is reflected in two aspects.On the one hand, the pursuit of input-output ratio (benefits), which means increasing benefits by reducing cost and neglecting the relation between quality and cost; on the other hand, being anxious for success, which means expecting to long-term effects in short time, paying attention only to surface quality, like the establishment of libraries, laboratories, teaching buildings and dormitories, and failing to play the role of resources in cultivating students' qualities.Formalized schooling is mainly reflected in fabricated quality plan and scheme, lip quality objective and formalized organizations for quality assurance, which means little importance is attached to the implementation of plan and scheme, realization path and specific implementation of quality objective, and the supervisory role of quality assuring organizations.Besides, quality concept and consciousness, quality monitoring system, and quality evaluation and rectification system are not formed effectively.Parochial schooling is mainly reflected in the fact that only superior departments are taken into account while students and markets are neglected, which means there are no thoughts and actions concerning students and market demands as long as schooling quality can meet the requirements or evaluation needs of the nation's relevant management departments.Isolated schooling refers to considering quality onesidedly without a systematic analysis.Schooling quality is related to schooling cost, traditions of colleges, faculties, hardware facilities, college culture, cultivation scheme, schooling concept, etc.It is obvious that effects would be very poor if schooling quality is taken into account without the above-mentioned aspects.

The solution of comprehensive reform of business administration majors
After the selection of comprehensive reform path of business administration majors and the analysis on the reform dilemma, it can be found that the only way out is to break through the dilemma.According to the above analysis, problems of offering business administration majors can be only solved by correct understanding.Follow-up working groups of Bologna Process once pointed out that "the fundamental impetus of pursuing higher quality should be derived from college--internal control system of quality and quality culture" [17] .Thus it is obliged to make decision-makers in colleges be aware that schooling quality is the lifeline of survival and development of business administration majors and improving the schooling quality is the central task of the comprehensive reform of business administration majors.Colleges should convert their concept about the quality of offering business administration majors and truly avoid their utilitarian, formalized, parochial and isolated understanding on schooling quality [16] .Firstly, colleges should get a correct understanding of the quality standard of offering business administration majors, attaching importance to the formation of quality behavior and system construction, quality concept and quality image.Secondly, colleges should construct quality objectives, structure and management system as a whole.Last but not least, colleges should build up a quality assurance system for these majors and gradually create a college atmosphere with comprehensive quality culture, providing a guarantee for the comprehensive reform of business administration majors.

Conclusions
With the principle of system dynamics, a path choosing model of the comprehensive reform of business administration majors is constructed in this paper, and important links of this model are analyzed as well.By referring to this path choosing model, colleges offering business administration majors can carry out reflection and comprehensive reform on these majors, avoid misunderstanding of schooling quality, and build up the quality culture of the comprehensive reform of business administration majors.Business administration majored graduates with various features, distinct personalities, prominent capabilities and high comprehensive qualities will certainly be cultivated in future China, improving the reputation and status of these majors in markets.
In this research, the path choosing idea is proposed in this paper.But concrete links are not discussed in detail, which will be empirically studied in follow-up research for a better practical operability.
There is a prominent positive correlation between higher education quality and schooling cost, which means relevant resources and funds should be added more for the improvement of higher education and teaching quality.For this reason, in cultivating business administration majored students, there are contradictions between scale and quality for colleges who are in short of funds.How to resolve the contradiction and how to be operational will be the key point of the next study.

DOI: 10
.1051/ C Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2015

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The comprehensive reform path choosing model of business administration majors.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The relation schema of schooling cost and quality.

Table 1 .
The number of colleges offering business administration majors of different levels.(Unit: one college)

Table 2 .
The number of colleges offering business administration majors of different types.(Unit: one college)

Table 3 .
A comparison of undergraduate cultivating objectives of colleges in China in terms of aspects of business administration majors.(knowledge, capability and ethics)

Table 4 .
Distribution of questionnaires.

Table 5 .
Quantities of business administration majored graduates required by employers each year.

Table 6 .
Employers' requirements on capabilities of business administration graduates.