Educational Vouchers And The Research On Public Education Expenditure Effect

Education is the cornerstone of national development. As a quasi-public product, education should be mainly based on the government public finance. Currently the absolute total amount of public education expenditure is increasing, but not by much in terms of relative amount. The public education expenditure shows an irrational structure with low proportion of basic education and obvious gap between urban and rural areas and also the east and the west. In the current public education expenditure system, basic education is based on local financial investment and national financial investment and educatees share the cost of higher education together with local and national finance subsidizing schools directly. In this system, there is close relationship between the development of basic education and local economy. Educatees don not have the "option" of school because of geographical reasons, showing the unclarity and inequity of "consumer sovereignty". The development of higher education is also strictly controlled by the educational administrative department. Without favor and support, private colleges and universities and private education develop difficultly, which leads to the failure educational resources allocation and inefficiency of educational operation mechanism.Educational voucher is a kind of market or quasi-market "media". The principle is to promote favorable competition among schools with the purpose of enhancing the education efficiency and improving the education quality by means of the "Choice Mechanism". In practice, some countries and areas emphasize equality by offering opportunities of education for disadvantaged groups. Since "Educational Voucher" was proposed by Milton Friedman, the winner of the Nobel Economics Prize in 1955, they have been put into practice in many countries and areas both at home and abroad. In the system of educational voucher, schools earn the "Educational Voucher" which can be used to exchange cash and pay cost from the government by selling education and getting sources of students. In order to obtain funds for running school, they (including public and private schools) identify their own responsibilities and improve themselves because of competition. Government's withdrawing from the micromanagement of schools reduces the burden on it and improves school-running autonomy. Survival of the fittest schools determined by the market leads to the improvement of education efficiency and optimization of resource allocation. Private schools can also earn the "Educational Voucher" to develop the richness and diversification of themselves. For those needy students, " Educational Voucher" can be used to promote the educational equity by reducing the pressure of educational cost and increasing more opportunities for high quality educational resources. The traditional way of public finance subsidizing schools directly was broken. The establishment of new "Government-Student-School" mode reduces the cost, improves the efficiency and reflects the equity, changing the difficulty situation of public education expenditure in China at present. Some results of practice also indicate that "Educational Voucher" system will exert positive influence on the form of public education expenditure, which is both helpful and practical in China.