Optimizing Higher Education Structure From Economics Perspective

China's tertiary education has been expanding rapidly since 1990s, and has now reached 19% gross rate of enrolment. According to the tertiary education development model proposed by American educationist Matin Trow, China has already passed the threshold of popularization of higher education. In the process of popularizing higher education, the structural problem of higher education is attracting increasingly attention and cannot be overlooked. Supply and demand, and resource allocation are two issues in this respect. The structural imbalance of higher education system has led to the surge of the supply and demand disorder problem of college and university graduates in the job market, causing severe structural unemployment on the one hand, and the waste of limited educational resources, reducing educational investment efficiency, therefore unfavorably affecting the full play of the promotional role of higher education in economic development on the other. For this reason, optimizing higher education structure has becoming an urgent issue.This paper tackles the issue of optimizing higher education structure with the aid of analytical method of economics, and in following three dimensions:(l)Why is there a need to establish an optimal higher education structure? This question is explained in the second part of this paper. Through stating the evolution process of industrial structures, the relationship between industrial and professional structures, scale efficiency of higher education, cluster effect and so on, this paper theoretically identifies the innate linkages between higher education and industrial structures, between work force and employment structures, and the constraint of higher education structure to scale efficiency, etc., thus provides theoretical basis for positive analysis.(2)What is the present higher education structure in China? The third part of this paper makes a detailed analysis of the present higher education structures in China and Zhejiang province by curriculum levels and discipline structures, and of the outcomes of present structure, as well as the negative impact on the higher education structure. The analytical tools employed in this part are. Cobb-Web model, capital marginal efficiency function, and over education theory, etc. This is the key part of this paper.(3)How to adjust China's higher education structure? Part four of this paper discusses this question from three aspects. First, it deliberates the overall goal of China's higher education, emphasizing that the underlying principle is education adaptability, while adaptability is embedded in the rational structure; Second, it introduces the experience of foreign countries, trying to find the restructuring direction for optimal higher education...