Research On China's Education Investment

The basic analysis of education investment. Education is the foundation of improving laborer's quality, developing science and technology and training talents. For its leading and overall role in modern construction, it must be given the highest priority. Developing education undertaking is the only way for our country to realize the socialist modernization. Education investment is the material guarantee for education development. We must increase education investment to ensure its preferential and strategic position. Therefore, it has an important theoretic and practical significance to research into China's education investment. In order to fulfill that, we should do some basic analysis of education investment firstly. Education investment, also called educational devotion,refers to the summation of the manpower, material resources and financial resources that devoted to education field according to the needs of a nation's education development. In the other word, it is the monetary representation of manpower and material resources used to educate and train labor force and special talent, as well as to improve the intelligence of labor force. As to investment object, it is composed of two parts: one is the part invested in different level and all kinds of schools to train reserve labor force and special talents; the other is used on adult education to raise the intellectual level them. As for the main body of investment, education investment mainly includes national investment, collective enterprise or other units'investment and personal education investment. As the basic category of education economics, educational investment reflects external relation as well as the internal relation. The former refers to the education's effect on economy and the proportion that education investment accounts in gross national economy. The latter reflects the main body's structure of education investment and the internal allotment proportion of education investment within the education department. Education investment with the characteristics of continuity, stability and progressiveness affects the scale, speed, structure and quality of education. Since education investment plays an important role on the development of both education and economy, it is inevitably demanded to keep a certain proportion. The proportion of education investment generally refers to the proportion of education investment to gross national product and total expenditure of finance. With the accelerating process of production's socialization, the diversity of economic activities is especially striking. But the diversity of economic activities relies on the diversity of education. At the same time, the diversity of education relies on the diversity of investment sources as well. On the premise of solving the investment sources of education, the rational distribution structure and valid allocation methods must be guaranteed. Education is a social welfare undertaking and can't take profits as its aim, education-industrialization deviates from the purposse of education. The former thought on education investment. Marxist economic theory, even the western economic theory embodies the ideology of education economy and education investment. Although the western economic theory is unscientific in its ideology as a whole system, it does lend some explanations to some economic phenomena. Marx and Engels expounded profoundly the importance of education on the reproduction of labor force and scientific knowledge as well as cultivating specialized labor force. They pointed out that the education and training expenditure the laborer paid was part of the labor force value. Western economists have successively analyzed the key role of education in cultivating mature laborer and promoting economic growth. In their view, the laborers ought to pay for their intellectual and skill-oriented training. However, the western economists regard the laborers'investment as a behavior of capital increment, which reveals apparently the theory's unscientific nature. It should be pointed that, Engels'thought that under the socialism condition, society should be responsible for the laborers'education expense is undoubtedly of great significance. Marx points out:" Education can produce labor capacity ","The reproduction of the working class includes the impartation and theaccumulation of skill from generation to generation ". "To change the general person's nature and endue him with some certain skill to become professional workforce needs certain education and training". These scientific statements suggest that education is a really important way to reproduce working force. So-called workforce's reproduction, on one hand, it refers to the recovery and the maintenance of the existing force; On the other hand, it includes the continuation and training of the new force. Education is the necessary step to foster and train working force. Through education, non-skilled workforce can become skilled and the quality of their working ability is certainly improved; Through education, simple and general workforce can process to experienced and professional ones; Moreover, through education, science can be passed, accumulated and developed, eventually transformed into production technology. Workforce can create new value. While the new value is absolutely not a natural made one, and this process is not a natural process either, it is closely related to education level of the workforce. In general cases, the amount of the social wealth that the workforce creates is in direct proportion to the education degree of the workforce. The western economists' thought on education investment was contained in their education economics theory. Adam ·Smith is the first one to link education with economy together and became a pioneer of western education economics theory. Schultz expounded the human resource theory in an all-round way and started a new era of western education economics theory. Spenser and some others put forward the screening theory, which made the western education economics theory enter into a new period. Chinese scholars have carried out analysis and research into education economy and education investment in many aspects. They thought education is a kind of social activity of training people. The education's impact and function on society are mainly realized through training people. However, the process of training people is completely different from the process of producing physical product. Both the superstructural and economic attribute can be found in education. The economic attribute of education is not because of certain economic behavior (such as collecting the tuition fee), but for the reason it cultivates high-quality laborer by imparting scientific knowledge andserves economic construction. It also exhibits some indirect and lagging attributes in its contribution to economy. Certainly, the education (mainly means higher-education) can be linked up with economy directly through the development of intelligence and technology too. It contributes to economic development directly, but the scientific research activities and their industrialization are the function of university, not the education activities themselves. The actual condition of China's education investment. The profound change of education investment condition and rapid development of education undertaking are realized during the reform of economic and education System. The 14th National Communist-Party Congress confirmed the objective of reform is to establish socialism market-oriented economy. The process of establishing socialism market-oriented economy also demands to establish a new education system in return. The basic content of the new education system means to keep the government's main body position, with all other sociality parties as a plus. The corresponding education Investment and Fund-Raising system come into being with the formation of the new education system. Because of the rapid economy development and profound reform of education system, more positive changes were seen in education investment, such as a more reasonable proportion in education investment, diversity of funding source and others. After an analysis of the fluctuation in education investment ratio to GNP, it is shown to us that, before 1993, the education investment ratio presented a downward trend. The share of education investment in GNP tended to decline. Either the proportion of government appropriation for education or that of budgetary education funds in GNP went down year by year. And it was evident that the increase in education expenses was much lower than that of fiscal revenues. In addition, the disparity of budgetary education funds ratio in different places was relatively large. After 1993, however, the education investment ratio increased obviously. The government appropriation for education maintained rapid and steady growth. And the education funds ratio in GNP mounted up year by year. Besides, there was a prominent increase inthe appropriation ratio of regional budgetary education funds. To diversify the source of education investment and meliorate the use of education resources, a new pattern of education investment has taken shape progressively, in which the financial appropriation at all levels and taxation used in education are the primary source, with the support from various funding resources, such as students'tuition and fees, incomes from school property, donation from the society, and the foundation of education fund. The country is the biggest and the ultimate gainer in educational incomes, while corporations and individuals are the direct ones. Therefore, it is advisable to establish a multiplied co-investment system, in which government investment is dominant, and the whole society shares responsibilities with it. The experience of education investment abroad. Whether the developed countries or the developing countries, they all keep in the environment of economic and social development. They have a lot of common grounds in developing education and education investment. The overseas experience of education investment shows that: the ratio of the education investment to GNP in the developing countries increased faster than that of developed countries; The education investment in proportion to the fiscal expense is also higher than their counterparts; The source of the education investment in the developed countries is more diversified. The government's investment is the main source of the education, and tuition constitutes the important source of the non-compulsory education; Most of developed countries have established laws and rules regarding the education finance, which prescribe a lot about education expense; During the development of economy and education in one country, the education investment's stress is changing from the primary education to the higher education. The gap of education expense per students is shortening with economic development. All the experiences are useful and important reference for us to recognize and solve the education investment problems. The level of education investment in developed countries had kept stable since the 1980s, but at the same time, their investment system and investment structure had changed a lot. The general and regular education had already met the needs of the individuals and the whole society, and the space for furtherdevelopment is limited. On the other hand, the informal education such as corporate education and on-job education had expanded, which need more and more investment. Most of the developed countries had enacted laws and regulations to finance the education, to ensure the supply and demand of the education expenses. And there were also principled regulations in the constitution of some countries, others enacted special laws to raise and distribute the education fund, some even made definitely regulations on education expense. Enactment and implement of the education law in developed countries must be ensured by the corresponding finance. However, different countries, especially countries under different management system have their own characteristic on the education fund. In the components of education investment, education undertaking takes the main part all along, and the wage take up most of it. In a way, the distribution of the education fund in one country reflects its education structure and emphases, which affects the whole features of the education undertaking. To ensure the healthy development of education and social economy, any country should invest proper proportion in education, and allocate rationally among all types of schools. The future trend of China's education investment. The shortage of the investment in education will still exist as a contradiction for a long time in the development of education undertaking in China. This is determined by the basic national conditions that our country is a large developing one. We can alleviate the contradiction presented above through three ways. Firstly, as the main channel of the education investment, national finance should increase the investment in education to satisfy practically the basic demand of education development. The national finance is responsible entirely for the funds of compulsory education, partly for the common higher education. In addition, the national finance should also subsidize the public-run schools; Secondly, the development of the public-run education plays a very important role in the development our national education, so we should increase its proportion in whole education fund. Thirdly, the tuition should be reduced, while the service funds should be expanded step by step in a long run. The shortage of education recourse means the unbalanced state that supplement of education is less than the requirement of it. This unbalanced...