A Study On Fund Raising Of Colleges And Universities In China

With the advancement of higher education popularization, the scale of colleges & universities increasingly expands, and the society holds higher and higher expectations for them. And accordingly, the development of colleges & universities will encounter more and more complicated changes in terms of management, and also will rely more and more on supports from the whole society. Of all the difficulties, the most overhanging is that of raising funds for operation.This paper probes into the issue of fund raising for colleges & universities in China, based on transformational background of marketization. The transformation of market economy is the immediate cause that leads to the reform of fund raising mechanism for colleges & universities. In an environment of constant marketization, as a ready-supplier of public higher education, colleges & universities participate in the collocation of social resources by way of meeting the social demands, and also obtain necessary funds for operation. The fund-raising channels are partly rest on the market as well as on non-market, i.e. the public financial funds of the government.In the middle and late 1990s, there was a shortage in national financial support after colleges & universities in the whole world experienced expansion. Scholars all over the world, from both theoretical and practical perspectives, had researched on how to reform the public fund raising system of higher education and on how to expand the source channels. Through studies in the fields of cost sharing mechanism, direct and indirect financings from monetary markets and etc.,they tried to finds ways and channels to relieve the situation of shortage of fund. Previous studies on this issue by domestic scholars focused on macroscopic studies of fund raising of higher education, while little attention was paid by the academic society to the significant function of methods and management of fund raising, which, in most cases, are still misunderstood and wrongly defined. This paper consists of a series of studies with colleges & universities as the main objects.The fund raising mechanism of higher education discussed in this paper consists of three elements (fund raising channel, fund raising method, and social environment). The core idea of this paper is that:Despite different viewpoints, and with the transformation of market-oriented economic system, such market factors as the competition mechanism, efficiency concept, considerations about consumers'(including students, employers etc.) desires and demands, etc. play a more and more important role in the higher education reform. Transformation of social system provides higher education with system guarantee for the establishment of a diversified, competitive, and need-oriented fund raising mechanism. In addition to that,conditions are mature enough for higher education to choose from different fund raising methods on their initiatives, and therefore to establish different management models fitting to different types of colleges & universities.Every fund raising channel and method has its theoretical basis. Of all theories addressed in this paper, some effectively promote government to transform social economical management mode so as to provide system and law support for higher education fund raising; some enhance the government's enthusiasm to invest in higher education;some deepen different market subjects'understanding of investment and supports to higher education,and extend fund raising channels; others offer new perspectives and methods to expand fund raising channels, and to achieve innovations in fund raising mechanism.Compared with colleges & universities in developed countries such as America and others, the diversification of fund raising in China is still at its beginning stage;most Chinese colleges & universities still fail to regard fund raising strategies and tactics as the effective measures,which lead to the lack of initiatives in fund raising, irrelevance to the development of its own course and certain arbitrariness.In face of sever situation of shortage of higher education funding, any conventional concept and experience can't handle difficulty. If the government turns a deaf ear to the difficulties and challenges faced with higher education, worse problems and even crisis will occur. In the market economy circumstance, the most direct way is for the government to increase its investment, however, the government's financial force has its limits. More important is that , under the premise of increases in its investment, the government shall take bold steps to initiate reasonable system arrangement and innovation, which means that besides the improvement of governmental funding mechanism and system of tuition setting,focus shall be shifted to exploring new funding mechanisms for higher education, for example, the institutionalization and normalization of systems for donations,bringing the functions of policy-related banks into full play,public issuance of higher education lottery, imposing"tax on human resource employment","tax on graduates employment"so as to constantly broaden the source channels for higher education funding and to boost up the total funding. On top of the aforementioned,the government shall grant privately-operated colleges & universities with proper financial supports,in an attempt to optimize the funding system environment, so as to support the development of privately-operated colleges & universities. Thirdly,the government shall take measures to promote the perfection of rule and regulations related to fund raising,to create a non-formal system environment for fund raising,and to enable them to adopt multiple funding methods to raise funds in a sound system environment and social environment, and for the final solution to the current financial problems.After the above discussion, taking into account of the current situation of colleges & universities in China, the paper advances the concept of optimization and combination of higher education fund raising in the three major channels, to put it in another way, efforts shall be made to apply for special funding and competitive funding in the government funding channel,and to improve the efficiency to use the special funding; strategy of differentiation charging shall be adopted for funding channels aimed at the consumers of education;and for funding channel that are open to the market, bold trials and innovations are required to absorb social funds and donations for operation, with the purpose of constant promotion of the socialization of logistics. Emphases are made on the establishment of management models of fund raising strategies that are matched to the objectives of development. And three types of fund raising models and fund raising breakthrough points are put forward for colleges & universities that are run by ministry of the central government, local governments or individuals.Based on the researches made by other scholars, and by adopting theoretical analysis, comparative analysis, and date and survey research, this paper did a profound research on the issue of Chinese higher education fund raising. This paper is innovative in four aspects: first, construction theory of higher education fund raising; second, stratification analysis on the current situation of china's higher education fund raising; third, the overall-oriented research among channel of fund raising, method of fund raising and government responsibility; in depth researches of the three aforementioned questions with the help of theories of multiple disciplinary. From the perspective of economics, and placing fund raising under the current economic background, this paper analyses and explains existing problems by adopting the theories of management sciences and pedagogy, which endow the research results with considerable theoretical and practical values.