An Empirical Study On China's Higher Education And Regional Economic Growth

In the era of knowledge-driven economy,human capital and advances in technology have become the core elements of economic growth.As the key factor that driven the formation of human capital and advances of technology,higher education plays an increasingly important role in social development,as well as causing wide attention from all circles.Viewed as the foot stone of the national revitalization and social advance,the development of education is endowed with great priority.And the connotative development of higher education is the key to enhancing education quality.The basic data of the paper riles on the provincial panel data of China between 1990 and 2013.The average schooling years is chosen as the measure index of human capital.Meanwhile,GDP per capita,material capital stock per capita,student-teacher ratio and students' average expenditure in higher education are the main indicators in the paper.Besides,the econometric model in this article also takes trade dependency ratio,urbanization level and the proportion of workers in state-owned enterprise as control varieties.And the multiple regression is applied to analyze the relationship between education,especially higher education,and economy.The results show that the urbanization level,which indicates changes in industry and industrial structure optimization,has significant positive correlation with economy.However,both the trade dependency ratio and proportion of workers in state-owned enterprise are negatively related to the economy,while the former shows the national openness and the latter interpret the level of economic reform.Both the professional human capital and general human capital in higher education have significant positive correlation with economy,while the contribution rate of professional human capital is higher than that of general human capital.There is no significant relation between human capital structure and economy.The student-teacher ratio has significant positive correlation with GDP per capita,and students'average expenditure in higher education has no significant relation with GDP per capita.Based on theoretical research and empirical analysis,the thesis aims at discussing the relationship between higher education and economy growth,and then putting forward a series of policies and measures to promote the development of higher education and economy.In conclusion,suggestions are made with the aim to improve regional economy through higher education,which consist clearly redefining the school running level,flexibly setting up specialties,enhancing employment guidance,promoting technology transformation and inter-school collaboration.