Research On Coupling Coordination Between Higher Education Development And Economic Growth Quality In China’s National Central Cities

The construction of national central city(NCC)is a major innovation of China’s building of a new urbanization system with Chinese characteristics in the new era,an important driving force to coordinate and promote regional development,and also serves as an important portal and carrier for representing China to participate in international competition and cooperation.The study on the coupling coordination of higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs could not only help us to review objectively the achievements made on the national central city construction in the past few years,but also provide us with an angle through which to examine the coupling coordination situation of higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs,to sort out the relevant inter-city differences among them with the hope of analyzing the influencing factors and putting forward some policy suggestions.On account of this,this study,under the guidance of multidisciplinary theories,constructs an interaction model of the coupling coordination between higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs,and conducts multiple empirical analysis of the temporal-spatial patterns and the influencing factors of the two systems,providing some targeted suggestions for their better coordination.On the basis of literature review and description of the stylized facts,the thesis firstly defines what is meant by the connotative development of higher education and the quality of economic growth,and then constructs the theoretical framework of the coupling coordination between the two systems.Next,the comprehensive levels of higher education development and economic growth quality of the NCCs are calculated respectively by using the methods of index construction and entropy weight.After that,based on the models of coupling coordination and spatial weight matrix,the paper empirically analyzes the temporal evolution and spatial patterns of the coupling coordination between higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs.Finally,OLS regression models and fixed effect model are employed to identify out the key factors influencing the coupling coordination between higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs,providing policy enlightenment for the high-quality development of NCCs.The main conclusions of the paper are as follows:First,there exists a strong coupling coordination mechanism between the development of higher education and the quality of economic growth in NCCs.On the one hand,higher education development can promote industrial upgrading and structural optimization,enhance the technological and managerial innovation in enterprises,increase the national literacy and human capital,and strengthen the urban culture and cultural cohesion,all of which help to improve the quality of economic growth in NCCs from perspective of its stability,innovation,sustainability and sharing.On the other hand,high-quality economic growth can provide a guaranteed material basis for higher education development in NCCs,enabling higher education system to deepen its reform in various fields,expand the employment channels for the college graduates,thus promoting the connotative development of higher education in NCCs.The relationship between higher education development and economic growth quality is not a one-way mode,as has been discussed in previous research,but a coupling relationship of mutual promotion and coordination.Second,although the coupling degree between higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs is relatively high,however,the two systems fail to coordinate very well.During the sample period,the two systems of higher education development and economic growth quality consistently coupled at a high level,but their coordination degree,after experiencing a long evolution period,has just reached the intermediate phase,leaving a large room for improvement.This indicates that although the development of higher education and the quality of economic growth in NCCs have strong force in mutual influence and mutual restriction,the mutual promotion and coordination among them have not been fully formed,which hinders their coordination degree.This also confirms the applicability of the coupling coordination model in the analysis of this paper.Third,although the coupling coordination degree of higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs continues to increase,it is not high on the whole,with the obvious inter-city differences and weak spatial agglomeration effect.Drawing on the coupling coordination degree model and spatial weight matrix,with the help of Arc GIS software,the paper conducts various empirical tests,with the results indicating that the coupling coordination degree of higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs has increased a lot over the sample period,from the maladjustment and declining phase to the intermediate coordination phase.But there is still much room for improvement.9 NCCs fall into 4 different coordination phases,showing obvious inter-city differences.The NCCs in the eastern China bear striking advantages in coordinated development,while the coordination in central and western Chinese NCCs is not good,with distinct spatial differentiation and weak agglomeration effect.Fourth,to further promote the coupling coordination degree between the development of higher education and the quality of economic growth in NCCs,the influencing factors should be analyzed with due consideration of the internal and external environment of the whole system,and the promotion strategies be formulated according to different regions and city types.Based on the dynamic model of the coupling coordination between higher education development and economic growth quality in NCCs,multiple regressions and robustness test are conducted to find out that the openness of NCCs to the outside market is an important external factor affecting the coupling coordination degree.Among the internal factors,the optimization degree of the faculty structure in higher education system and the upgrading degree of the urban industrial structure are the strongest driving forces.Based on this,relevant policy enlightenment is put forward.This study can provide theoretical and practical guidance for the high-quality and sustainable development of NCCs,and can also provide valuable experience for the construction of new urbanization in China.