An Study On The Mechanism And Effects Of Tertiary Education Expansion Influencing The College Premium In China

Since China implemented the large-scale expansion of tertiary education in 1999,the supply of college degree workers in the labor market has increased dramatically.There is an accompanied social phenomenon so-called the idea of uselessness of college education.The possible reason of this social cognition is the decreasing of relative income of college degree or college premium because of the expansion of tertiary education and the rapid increasing of college graduates.However,the development of knowledge economy requires the tertiary education expanding theoretically,to promote the skill biased technological change and increase the relative demand for college degree workers,and then expand the college premium.Therefore,the direction of tertiary education expansion influencing the college premium is opposite between the realistic judgment and the theoretical analysis.So,whether the effect of tertiary education expansion on the college premium is to increase or to decrease after all?With respect to this problem,this thesis proposes to clarify the mechanism and estimate the effect of tertiary education expansion on the college premium no matter from the theoretical perspective or the practical aspect.On the basis of issues abstracting,the paper raises several specific research questions as following.How to describe the mechanism and path of tertiary education expansion affecting the college premium?Based on the influencing mechanism,how to construct a mathematical model between the tertiary education expansion and the college premium?Whether the expansion of tertiary education has an effect on the college premium by testing the empirical data?Whether the specific effect of tertiary education on the college premium is to increase or decrease?The above research questions are this article attempts to explore and answer through the theoretical analyzing and empirical testing.Focusing on the theme,this paper combines normative analysis and empirical analysis methods to research the subject.The thesis structure is composed of two sectors of mechanism analyzing and effects estimating.The mechanism analyzing sector takes the shunting function of tertiary education expanding as the penetration point to depict the transmission path and the mathematical model.The effects estimating sector regresses the model by using the macro-level data and micro-level data.And the thesis is divided into seven chapters to study in detail.The main research contents of each chapter are arranged as follows.The first chapter introduces the main concepts,research ideas and research methods of this paper briefly.The second chapter reviews the existing literature.The third chapter analyzes and expounds the forming and fluctuating rule of college premium based on the main relevant theories.And this chapter depicts the influencing mechanism and the transmission path of the impact of the tertiary education expansion on college premium.Based on the theoretical depiction,this chapter attempts to analyze the mechanism through taking the shunting function of tertiary education expanding as the penetration point,and introduces the tertiary education expansion into the relative demand and supply framework and the multi-sector equilibrium established by Acemoglu and Murphy to deduce the mathematical model of the expansion of tertiary education affecting the college premium.The fourth chapter tests the effect of the tertiary education expansion on college premium in China.This chapter establishes the econometrics model and tests the effect by analyzing the panel data from 2004 to 2010 of 31 provinces in China empirically.Then the chapter examines the robustness of the empirical results through three methods,such as transforming estimation method,replacing the explanatory variables and substituting dependent variable.Finally,this chapter summarizes the macrocosmic impact of the tertiary education expansion on college premium in China.The fifth chapter estimates the impact of the tertiary education expansion on college premium from the perspective of educational funds investment in China.This chapter combines influencing mechanism analysis and the relationship between the educational funds investment and the efficiency of human capital accumulating in the tertiary education,constructs the panel model of tertiary educational funds investment affecting the college premium.Then,the paper tests the scale effects of the public and private educational funds investment on college premium.And the chapter estimates the structure effects of tertiary educational funds investment from the dimensions of institutions level and type.The sixth chapter analyzes the microcosmic effects of the tertiary education expansion on college premium.This chapter constructs the Mincer model to estimate the microcosmic college premium according to the review of existing literature in the second chapter,and uses the CGSS data from 2003 to 2013 to measure and calculate the micro college premium in China.Meanwhile the paper test the fluctuating and varying tendency of microcosmic college premium during the period.Then,the paper builds triple difference model based on the difference-in-differences model and tests the microcosmic effects of the tertiary education expansion on college premium by using the CHNS cross-section data from 1989 to 2011.In order to recognize the effect difference among college student samples,this chapter utilizes the quantile regression method to examine the coefficient of interaction terms in different income level groups.The seventh chapter summarizes the main conclusions and proposes several related policy suggestions for the future development of the tertiary education expanding based on the empirical testing results.In the concrete study course according to above research framework,this paper mainly attempts to make some innovations in the following four aspects.Firstly,this thesis selects the shunting function of tertiary education expanding as the penetration point to depict the influencing mechanism and the transmission path model of the tertiary education expansion influencing the college premium.This paper combines the human capital heterogeneity theory and labor market supply-demand equilibrium theory to decompose and analyze the forming mechanism and fluctuating law of the college premium.Then,the research deduces the transmitting path from the diverting middle school students function of tertiary education expansion to induce the fluctuating of labor market supply-demand equilibrium,and then lead to the varying of college premium.On the basis of effect mechanism and transmitting path,this paper constructs the econometric model trough introducing the tertiary education expansion into the college premium determining function evolving from the relative supply and demand framework and the multi-sector equilibrium mathematical model.Thus,this paper depicts the impacting mechanism and transferring path of tertiary education expansion affecting the college premium from two aspects of theoretical analysis and quantitative model.The two aspects analyzing may enrich and advance the existing researches.Secondly,the study examines the validity of the mathematical model and the conducing path of higher education expansion affecting the college premium based on the practical materials and the provincial panel data of China.Meanwhile,this article utilizes the tertiary education scale expanding as the general dimension and the fund investment as the structure dimension to test the specific effects.Because the relative demand effects is greater than the relative supply effects in the framework of relative supply and demand,the tertiary education expansion presents a positive macrocosmic effects on the college premium significantly.That is,the tertiary education expansion does not reduce the college premium,on the contrary,increases the college premium.The paper launching the concrete analysis and discussion from the macrocosmic level plays a certain complementary role to the most existing microcosmic researches.Thirdly,this research attempts to utilize the stochastic frontier analyzing method to calculate and measure the human capital accumulating efficiency of tertiary education in China.In the SFA method,the tertiary educational funds including the public and private investment indicates the inputs and the heterogeneity structure of labor force which induced by tertiary education expanding represents as outputs.And the article compares the human capital accumulating efficiency among different areas and provinces of China.The calculating results shows that the tertiary education human capital accumulating efficiency of eastern region is the highest,the central region is the lowest and the western region is in between.To measure the human capital accumulating efficiency of tertiary education is helpful to deepen the analyzing the relationship between the tertiary funds investment expanding and human capital structure promoting,and enrich the research perspective of tertiary education human capital accumulating efficiency.Fourthly,this paper attempts to synthesize the two levels of macro and micro empirical analyzing to study the specific effects of tertiary education expansion on college premium more comprehensively.In the macrocosmic analysis level,the thesis divides the tertiary education expansion into the scale dimension and structure dimension to estimate the corresponding effects.In the microcosmic research level,the article tests the general effects through triple difference model,and compares the composition effects between different income level groups by quantile regression method.Thus,the research expects to acquire a greater depth and more comprehensive studying about this theme that how the tertiary education expansion affecting on college premium through multiple dimensions empirical analyzing.Finally,the thesis summarizes the main conclusions based on two levels empirical results of macrocosmic and microcosmic.The research results prove that the tertiary education expansion generally increases the college premium significantly instead of causing the college premium declining continuously.This empirical conclusion also demonstrates that the idea of uselessness of college education is not caused by the expansion of tertiary education immediately.The public funds investment of higher education has a significant effect on the efficiency of human capital accumulating and then promotes the relative supply of skilled labor,and results in the reduction of the college premium.In contrast,the tertiary educational private funds investment increases the college premium level apparently.In addition,the significant existence of the college premium shows that there is an abundant relative profit to choose tertiary education and obtain a college degree.While the college premium declines with the increasing of the income level group,the distribution indicates that the expansion of tertiary education is not only conducive to promote education fairness but also beneficial to increase income and reduce poverty,especially to the low-and middle-income groups.