Abstract With the economic exchanges between eastern and western countries, both Chinese and American social cultures are blending and colliding. So do their campus cultures, one of the most important parts of social cultures. This paper mainly focuses on the comparison and analyses of the differences between Chinese and American campus cultures from the following three aspects: campus tangible culture, which is reflected on buildings and facilities; campus institutional culture, which includes regulation and extracurricular activities; and campus intangible culture, which mainly contains teaching ideas. Meanwhile, the elements that contribute to the above differences are analyzed too. In the last part, this paper gives some suggestions to the construction of Chinese campus culture, which are based on the analyses of what kind of enlightenments American campus culture can bring to us, hoping that they can provide worthwhile experience for the construction of campus culture as well as the education in Chinese universities. 54469

Keywords: Chinese and American; campus culture; comparison and analyses; enlightenments

摘要随着中西方经济的交流，中美两国的社会文化也在日益交融与碰撞。作为社会文化最重要的部分之一，校园文化也是如此。本课题主要从以下三个方面对两国的校园文化进行对比分析，即建筑设施方面的校园物质文化、涵盖管理和活动的校园组织文化和以教学理念为主的校园精神文化。同时对造成中美两国校园文化差异的因素进行了分析；最后在就美国校园文化能给我国校园文化建设带来的启示的基础上，对建设中国校园文化提出了一些建议，望能为我国的高等院校校园文化建设和教育工作提供值得借鉴的经验。

关键词：中美；校园文化；对比分析；启示

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 The Definition of Culture 1

1.2 The Definition of Campus Culture 1

2. The Comparison between Chinese and American Campus Culture 2

2.1 Comparison between Tangible Campus Culture 3

2.2 Comparison between Institutional Campus Culture 4

2.3 Comparison between Intangible Campus Culture 6

3. The Reasons for the Differences 9

3.1 Different Economic Systems 9

3.2 Different Social Values 10

3.3 Different Traditional Cultures 11

4. Suggestions for Chinese Campus Culture 12

4.1 The Present Situation of Chinese Campus Culture 12

4.2 Suggestions for Improving Chinese Campus Culture 13

5. Conclusion 14

Works Cited 15 

1. Introduction 

1.1 The Definition of Culture

The root of the word “culture” is “cultus” from Latin, which originally contains semantic meanings including planting, farming, living, as well as cultivating of animals and plants. From an etymological point of view, "culture" contains the meaning that people work in nature and get things they need from nature. However, the exact meaning of this term is hard to define. In different contexts, “culture” can be interpreted in different ways. In 1990s, statistics by some scholars had even shown that there are nearly 200 kinds of ways to interpret the concept of culture. To analyze different campus cultures, it is definitely necessary to give an acceptable definition of culture. Here, one is presented in this paper, which is the dichotomy of culture. Namely that culture can be understood in both broad and narrow senses: broad culture manifestations the extent that human physical and mental strength has reached in the process of historical development; narrow culture refers to a value system, with social ideologies like religion, politics, morality, arts, and philosophy as its main components.