Performance Accessment System Of High-Level Education And Empirical Research

Since colleges increased their enrollment intake in 1999, higher education in China has made a rapid transition from elite education to mass education. However, the financing of higher education in China suffers from many problems. For example, owing to the lack of various financing methods and the limited size of raised funds, higher education is impeded by an insufficient investment resource. With the establishment and development of the market economy, colleges need diversity in their financing methods and use the raised funds effectively in order to reform the higher education financing schemes, to stimulate sustainability of higher education and to transform the pattern for economic growth.Creating a system for evaluating the financing performance of China’s higher education, provides an indicator for efficiency and fairness in the domain of higher learning. The 1960s input-output dynamic principles and the 1980s 3E principles were applied to evaluate the fiscal expenditure for higher education. The developed set of indicators focused on economy, efficiency, effectiveness, equality and environment, as well as on input, process, output and influence. In this work, based on the previous achievements of Michael Leszczensky (2008), Wang Dingxun (2008), LvWei and Wang Weitong (2007), Maldovan and Alexandra (2012), the two principles are combined to propose a new system for evaluating the financing performance of higher education that is applicable to most colleges. On one hand, the proposed system can measure 5E performances. On the other hand, it can represent the dynamic process of obtaining funds, fund investment, fund output and fund influence. The proposed system includes but is not limited to the performance of the government’s expenditure. Although the government is the manager of higher learning, the starting-point for assessing higher education is not in the allocation of funds to higher education but at the earlier fund raising. Hence, the proposed system covers the source of funds (indicators for the volume of funds and the structure of fund sources). The model proposed by Qiu Qihua (2012) is adopted to cover the manpower, material and financial investment in higher learning whilst taking into account stock and flow of the raised funds. The financing output includes both quantity and the quality of the output. Finally financing influence is investigated. Based on theoretical analysis, the emphasis is placed on influence of the higher education financing on human capital, economic growth and birth rate. The innovations of this paper are reflected in the process of creating the proposed evaluation system.Performance evaluation methods abound although features of the method for evaluating the performance of financing higher education follow the "multiple input-multiple output" mode, which is typically evaluated by the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. The idea of this thesis is to first use the rigorous mathematical theories to process the collected data of performance indicators. Next the DEA approach is adopted to analyze the process of financing higher education. Hence, comprehensive evaluation of performance in this thesis are carried out in three steps:(1) evaluate the source-output efficiency to measure the performance of financing higher education overall, (2) evaluate the source-input efficiency, and (3) evaluate the input-output efficiency. The latter two evaluations are largely performed to identify the causes of financing inefficiency in higher education, leading to conclusions and suggestions on how to improve financing performance:First,the source-output efficiency evaluation shows that in 2003-2011, up to 26.6% of units suffer from inefficiency. So there is scope for improvement in the performance of financing China’s higher education. Second, the source-input efficiency evaluation shows that efficiency in most cities is high. Therefore, the raised funds are properly utilized. In general, source-input efficiency is not the major contributor to source-output inefficiency. Third,the input-output efficiency evaluation shows a low efficiency for the financing of China’s higher education. The teaching outputs are redundant and research outputs are inadequate. Relaxation analysis demonstrates that an increase in the number of graduates should be stalled and yet research outputs have great potential for growth. For a given output, considerable savings in manpower, materials and financial investments can be achieved if funds are appropriately raised for higher education.Financing influence is not analyzed together with output because influence takes a long time to manifest itself and has a random nature. Also an influence will not be evident other than in social and economic contexts. Therefore it is inappropriate to directly evaluate financing influence according to the old situation. The PVAR model is selected to analyze the effect of higher education financing on human capital, economic growth and birth rate, using panel data. The research shows that the source of higher education financing is proportional to human capital and economic growth but has little effect on birth rate.Finally, based on the investigation above, strict recommendations are offered to improve the performance of financing higher education. First, higher education can raise funds through tax preference, revenues of social services, revenues of enterprises operated by the colleges and the education financial market, reducing dependence on national finance. Secondly, budget control should be maintained to prevent the emphasis being placed on teaching to the detriment of scientific research, ensuring constant and sustainable development for financing of higher learning. In addition, the evaluation system should be put into practice, with market competition being introduced to enhance performance. Finally, legislation on evaluation and accountability should be improved in order to provide a congenial monitoring environment.