Research On The Information In The Individual Choice Of Higher Education

Choosing the entrance opportunity of higher education is a special kind of market transaction behavior between educatee and their families as the buyer and Higher education as the seller in the market of higher education. It is also a kind of decision-making process. Decision theory considers that the individual is dependent on the information in decision-making, the number and quality of the information in each stage directly affects the decision-making level. The influence that information works on trading decisions has long been noted by economist. Joseph Stiglitz and others used "asymmetric information" for market analysis, and had won the 2001 Nobel Prize. Then, "Information Economics" is used on many fields of research as a new discipline.According to the special market behavior, the existing related research mainly expanded in rational and complete information as the basic assumption under the traditional economic analysis paradigm. It is not realistic, and has difficulties in the interpretation of some problems. At the same time, the basic assumptions also led the researchers to ignore the important role of information factor in individual choice of higher education. The reality tell us that students and parents have little information about the higher education. The incomprehensive and inaccurate information has become an important cause of making mistakes in education decisions.Using the analysis method of Information Economics to discuss the information in individual choice of higher education, not only provides a new angle for the research of the relationship between supply and demand of higher education, but also widen the application range of the Information Economics theory. At the same time, it can improve the prediction and control ability about the individual choice behavior of higher education, and guide the family to make reasonable education investment, then, reduce the decision risk, and also provide the basis for the establishment of higher education policy.In order to study the case about the information obtaining, information cognition and information utilization in individual choosing of higher education, the study reconstructed individual choosing model of higher education that based on literature review. The model selects the demand of higher education and the motivations as the logical starting point to build a comprehensive multi-dimensional mode1.It puts individual choosing of higher education as a behavior process composed of several continuous decision-making problems. It integrated individual factors, family factors, economic factors, social factors, cultural factors and so on. Then, from the angle of information, each variable converts to information variable, and constructs information tree model of individual choosing of higher education, and provides basis of tools design for subsequent empirical research.The study adopts questionnaire survey and individual interviews as primarily empirical research methods. Through giving out the self-developed questionnaire to senior students and freshman, and combining with individual interviews about senior teacher in charge, senior students and high school principal, the study used SPSS software to describe,to make correlation analysis and differences test. During the formal investigation, the researcher visited 34 high schools in 22 cities of 7 provinces, handed out 3605 valid questionnaires in high schools and 1463 valid questionnaires in universities, and interviewed with 151 people.Large-scale survey found that there were insufficient and inaccurate information during the choosing of higher education entrance opportunity, and exist information asymmetry between individual and higher education, and also exist significant differences among different individuals. Specific performance:(1) there are fewer channels for individual to get information. On one hand the channels that provide useful information are less and traditional, on the other hand the individual lack of information consciousness (2) the individuals have inaccurate coginition. According to the results of the survey,the individual has varying degrees of cognitive ignorance and deviation on such as the cost of higher education, economic benefits of and social benefits of investment in higher education, professional learning universities, professional employment, quality evaluation of higher education, the higher education personnel training, etc.(3) the individuals’ information ability is limited. According to the performance of the college application stage, the individual has weaker ability in information demand, information acquisition and information using. (4) there are significant differences in possession of information sources, the accuracy of the information cognition and information ability among different individuals, the difference caused by the difference of individual characteristics, family background and school factors, etc.Combined with the interviews, the study considers that there are 6 aspects reasons resulted in information asymmetry. Mainly includes the incomplete information released by universities, unsmooth information transferred between universities and high schools, inaccurate information disseminated by social media, lacking of information consciousness, lacking of development guidance courses in high school, the weak guidance ability of teachers and parents, etc. The situation can easily result in "adverse selection and moral hazard" alleged by information economics, and harm the allocation efficiency of higher education resources and the benefit of public. So, the study give some advices for the government, universities, schools, and other social media body, such as the implementation and supervision of universities’information publication, setting up information intermediaries, establishing long-term effective mechanism of information transmission between universities and high schools, setting up development guidance courses in high schools, standardize dissemination of the media information, so as to reduce asymmetric and incomplete of the information.