A Study On The Effect Of Financial Investment In The Extracurricular Activities Of Universities

The development level of higher education is an essential indicator of a country's progress and potential.It is also an important basis for judging the degree of realization of the “The Strategy of Reinvigorating China through Human Resource Development.” Higher education finance is one of the five topical issues of international higher education research since the 21 st century.With the implementation of budget performance management by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council since 2018,it has been effectively enhancing the efficiency of financial resource in higher education allocation and improving the quality of higher education services to pay attention to the effect of financial investment in higher education.Extracurricular activities in universities are an organic component of higher education,and it is of practical significance to study the effect of financial investment in universities' extracurricular activities.Unlike many previous macro studies,this study selected one university with long-term data of extracurricular activities,various forms of data,and complete coverage of students involved in extracurricular activities.Instead of directly analyzing how the university makes financial investments,which is difficult to distinguish and observe,this study analyzed how students in the university chose to invest their time in extracurricular activities in the form of credit.The student participation is naturally divided into three modes: ordinary teaching mode,application-approval mode,and duration conversion mode.Corresponding independent variables and dependent variables were selected to analyze the specific effects of financial investment in the extracurricular activities in the case university,and suggestions for future improvements were also given.Based on the aforementioned research design,this study analyzed the collected data by means of literature review,interview,questionnaire survey,and quantitative analyses,such as regression discontinuity design,differences-in-differences model,and so forth.The main results are as follows:First,after investments were put into the teaching and activity courses in the extracurricular activities,a significantly positive effect on promoting students' performance in classroom learning,knowledge application,and ability development was shown on the students who were able to participate in program courses with sufficient funding and scientific management,such as ideological guidance programs,general education programs,and international training programs.The campus culture programs were found to be conducive to the students getting to know their peers and exercising their social ability.However,due to the scattered financial investment and numerous courses,it squeezed out the students' study time in school to a certain degree.Studying in community activity programs was positively related to the students' comprehensive evaluation and further study.Due to intervention of social factors,the employment and entrepreneurship programs presented no significant correlation with students' academic achievements,but showed a negative correlation with the level of students' scholarship.Second,after the financial investment was applied to the extracurricular activities' application-approval of scientific research projects,it had not produced the expected positive effect on scientific research-related academic achievements under certain circumstances.On the contrary,analysis of the data showed that students who received scientific research funding and participated in scientific research projects did not improve their scientific research outputs,and even reduced their willingness to study in graduate schools or go abroad for further study.Based on the student survey results,this phenomenon was mainly caused by an insufficient investment of scientific research funds to students and instructors,as well as an insufficient supply of scientific research-related auxiliary resources.Third,the study found that financial investment exerted a positive impact on students' classroom learning outcomes and employment quality after the investment was applied to students' voluntary service courses.Specifically,the incentive policy supported by financial investment increased the volunteer service time of the involved students by 70.613 hours on average,increased anaverage grade point of 0.033 an academic year,and improved the employment quality by 0.343 compared to the non-involved students.In addition,this study found that voluntary service had a positive effect on cultivating of students' teamwork ability but it was insufficient for the cultivation of personal ability and leadership ability.In the cultivation of students' sense of individual responsibility,sense of collective responsibility and comprehensive sense of responsibility,an increase of 100 hours as a unit led to the increase of the scores of comprehensive sense of responsibility,individual sense of responsibility and collective sense of responsibility by 0.3,0.3 and 0.2 respectively,which highlighted the critical value of voluntary service in cultivating students' social sense of responsibility.Finally,based on the research findings,this study proposed three suggestions to improve the effect of financial investment in the extracurricular activities of universities: First,highlight the value orientation of the evaluation of the financial investment and make it closely aligned with the goal of talent training,reorganize the target system based on financial investment,consolidate and create more high-quality projects and scientifically design the “default setting” under the condition of asymmetric information.Second,construct an extended scope of financial investment evaluation standards,and establish the core standard under the premise of steady-state,the supporting standard under the premise of rotation,and the environmental standard under the premise of openness.Third,form a comprehensive system for evaluating financial investment effects that support students' development,implement a scientific evaluation system,set up incentives of awards and appraisals,and enhance the guidance of public opinions.