Administrative orientation of higher learning institutions in China owes its basis to deep jurisprudential and legal logic. The current situation has resulted from an obscure identification of the legal status of higher learning institutions in existing educational laws, imbalance of right distribution between higher learning institutions and government and expansion of governmental power and decline of autonomy of higher learning institutions. As a rule, the higher learning institution as a special executive subject owns its own executive power and schoolrunningautonomy mindset against restrictions of administrative norm and judicial review, thus causing abnormal practice in exercising executive power and violation of relevant human basic and leading rights. Even worse, defects in corporate governance of higher learning institutions has led directly to the concentration of executive power and shrinkage of academic power. A basic project of institutional construction in modern universities calls for the identity of public higher learning institutions as special public corporations to be established, and academic freedom to be emphasized as the value of basic rights imposed by the Constitution so that higher learning institutions will develop in a free, selfdisciplining and selfcriticizing way. Illegal and improper intervention of educational administration must be avoided to further complete the pattern of collegiate governance structure and project the core position and theoretical value of academic power in collegiate governance.

administrative orientation of higher learning institutions; executive subject; executive power; academic power; corporate structure of governance