| Government’s financial input is an important source of tertiary education funding, and the development of tertiary education is largely dependent on the constituted quota and the organizing forms of government financial supports. Since the implementation of tax reform from 1994, the national government has gradually built up fiscal decentralization system which is proved to amplify the national financial capability, strengthen the macro-control ability of central government departments, and trigger the restriction among intergovernmental fiscal operations and the finance administration in higher education system. The execution of financial investment in higher education also follows to change accordingly. In current stage, provincial government takes the primary responsibility for tertiary education financing, so higher education which depends on provincial fiscal expenditure appear to show imbalance in different provinces. In order to improving the overall quality of tertiary education and to balance the district difference, The study of financial mechanism under fiscal decentralization is the necessary step for setting up fairer measures to motivate provincial government financial inputs and coordinate national fiscal expenditure structure on higher education. Under the frame work of fiscal decentralization, our paper case-studied Anhui Province and focus on the provincial government aid in higher education finance, and draw the following conclusions:1.Anhui Province has achieved rapid and integral growth on financial investment of higher education. Up to 0.46 of total revenue on higher education is stably input back on higher education outgoing to ensure that government financial investment on tertiary education is absolutely dominant. From1998 to 2011, the average growth rate of financial budget in public higher education reached 25.1%, with an annual net investment of 800 million Yuan.2. The disequilibrium in financial investment of higher education per capita can not be ignored in our investigation. In per capita term, average annual growth rate of the public budget of colleges and universities in Anhui was only about 6.6%, which was equivalently 4000 Yuan less than the corresponding national standard. Typically, the situation in local universities was particularly severe. Considering the defective structure of financial allocations in budget, the investment mechanism in higher education in this province lacked long-term planning. And input ratio for each higher education unit fluctuated annually and showed no clear trend.3. Fiscal decentralization had very limited promotion on increasing the financial input of higher education in Anhui and the impact of decentralized fiscal system on the financial investment of higher education even showed slightly negative correlation. The higher the proportion of the provincial government’s own revenues account for the total expenditure of the provincial government, the less the provincial government’s financial investment in higher education was.The author believe that problems in the poor external and internal fiscal decentralization system result in mismatch of fiscal right and administrative authority at local government, and also become the obstruct to local government officials offering positive factors on higher education financing. So I propose multi-angle measures to promote the provincial financial investment and to achieve more balanced and high-quality system of national higher education, and the hypothesized rectification majorly include clarifying the division of the government powers and responsibilities under a clear fiscal decentralization system, updating the central fiscal transfer payment system, building a shared framework of regional finance in higher education, designing the official assessment system with public services involvement, optimizing financial investment evaluation system for higher education, and introducing appropriations Committee system in higher education. |
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