The Research On Convergence Of Regional Higher Education

Since reform and opening-up, the development of higher education in China has made remarkable achievements, both the number of college students and higher education grass enrollment rate has a significant enhancement. In the process of rapid development of higher education, another"stylized facts"that the regional disparities of higher education development become increasingly evident. Uneven regional development of higher education will inevitably result in regional differences in quality of the population, and thus produce a series severe influence of regional economic development. In this paper, I make systematic researches on the convergence of the development of Chinese regional higher education with the methods of the Gini coefficient, Theil index, and panel data analysis, in order to find dynamic characteristics of the change in the development of Chinese regional higher education. And thus reveals the important factor of impacting on differences of the development of Chinese regional higher education as well as the mechanism of regional differences to expand or shrink.The main content of this paper is as follows:First, With mathematical methods, the convergence of higher education is given a strict definition. On the base of ascertaining related concepts of the convergence of higher education, this paper determine the steady-state balanced growth path of higher education system from two perspectives that human capital and higher education production function as the starting point, thus, explain the convergence of higher education internal mechanism in theory.Second, With the method of the equivalent average comprehensive evaluation, the development of regional higher education was measured. On this basis, Gini coefficient and Theil index were used to verifyσconvergence of regional higher education in China and using the method of panel unit root to extend the research onσconvergence of regional higher education. The results show that the differences of higher education development levels in different regions trend overall expansion in the study period, and the higher education were not signs ofσconvergence whether China or eastern China, central China and western China areas.Third, In the study of absoluteβconvergence in regional higher education, use the, relationship between average growth rate of regional higher education and regional higher education level of the initial development to judge initially the absoluteβconvergence of the Chinese regional higher education. And then further testing of absoluteβconvergence of regional higher education, through establishing the panel data model of absoluteβconvergence, and using seems unrelated regression method. In the study of conditionalβconvergence of regional higher education, this paper uses the method of panel data focused on the impact factors of conditionalβconvergence.Fourth, This paper uses the econometric methods such as panel unit root test, panel cointegration test and panel error correction model to study the convergence path of higher education of China and the East China, central China and western China areas.