Research On The Influence Of Higher Education On Economic Growth In Hunan Province

With the development of knowledge economy, the sources of economic growth transformed from natural resources, physical capital and labour to human capital, technological progress and system innovation. Higher education undertakes the important tasks of developing science and technology, training high-quality personnel and promoting modernization. As the main driving force of technical progress and the main mode of human capital investment, higher education plays more and more important role in the growth and development of socio-economic. Therefore, it is very meaningful to study the influence of higher education on economic growth both in theory and in practice.Based on the basic theories of modern economics, this paper studies influence of higher education on economic growth in Hunan province by comprehensively using various analysis methods. At the beginning, the paper introduces the contation and characteristics of higher education as well as the basic theory of modern economic growth. It also explores the mechanisms of higher education on economic growth. Following that the current status of higher education and economic growth in Hunan province are explored. And then it empirically examined the influence of higher education on economic growth in Hunan province from overall and regional level by using the data of 1985-2008. Finally, it draws basic conclusion and puts forward some policies and suggestions.The results are as follows: In the overall level, there is a long-term equilibrium relationship between higher education and three industries with the elastic coefficient of 0.779, 0.986 and 1.591 respectively. The Granger causality test shows that the positive role of higher education is not obvious. In the regional level, there is a long-term equilibrium relationship between higher education and regional economic growth, and higher education has a positive effect on regional economic growth in Hunan province, but the influencing degree varies in different areas. Higher education in XiangBei area, XiangNan area, XiangZhong area and XiangDong area has a significant effect on economic growth with the elastic coefficient of 0.102, 0.084, 0.081 and 0.246, but with 0.031 in XiangXi area. The Granger causality test shows that the positive effect of higher education was obvious in XiangBei area, XiangNan area and XiangDong area, however there is no Granger causality between higher education and economic growth in XiangZhong area and XiangXi area. The main innovations are as follows: Firstly, using time series model, this paper studies the influence of higher education on economic growth in Hunan province from three industries in the overall level. Secondly, according to the geographical location, economic development and other factors, it divides Hunan province into five areas, that is XiangBei area, XiangNan area, XiangZhong area, XiangDong area and XiangXi area, and empirically examines their influences of higher education on regional economic growth respectively, thus enriching the research contents of higher education and regional economic growth in Hunan province.