Research On Fiscal Policies For Higher Education Fairness By Government

Higher education fairness is an important part of social fairness, and plays an indispensable role in building a harmonious society. The popularization and scale-up of higher education in China provide opportunities of higher education to more and more people. However, the higher education fairness stays unsolved despite of the realization of target of popularization, and tends to deteriorate. Based on this fact, the research on how to guarantee higher education fairness by government's fiscal policies is an urgent need in current society. This research will provide theoretical bases and important practice methods for solving higher education fairness, promoting the healthy development of higher education, and is of an realistic importance to the building of harmonious society.The article will focus on government fiscal polices for guaranteeing higher education fairness, and research the main role of government in guaranteeing this fairness. Based on analyses of the history and status quo of fiscal policies for higher education fairness since the establishment of our country,'the article discusses the surface and underlying causes of the current fiscal policies for higher education fairness, and makes a point that the government should realize higher education fairness through improving the higher education public fiscal system. The article is of both realistic and theoretic significance.The article consists of 7 chapters. Chapter one is Introduction. Chapter two-three targets at theoretical analyses, while four-seven focuses on realistic thinking. The main contents and viewpoints are as follows:Chapter one:Introduction. The main task of this chapter is to bring forward the proposition, i.e. fiscal policies for higher education fairness by government. Firstly, the chapter starts with the origin of the research and its significance and the value of the article. Secondly, based on abundant existing research documents, it points out the direction of the research. Thirdly, it expounds the logic framework of the analyses, research thoughts and methods of the article. Lastly, it brings forward the strong points and weak points of the article.Chapter two:Define and Discriminate Higher Education Fairness. Through discrimination of the concepts of fairness, education fairness and higher education fairness and discussion of the development of the theories, the article concludes, on basis of the previous researches, the different levels of assessment standards for higher education fairness. At the same time, the article holds the opinion that it is necessary to make researches on how to tackle the focused problem, i.e. distribution unfairness of current higher education opportunities. This viewpoint becomes the feasible theoretical basis for the next analyses and researches on the countermeasures.Chapter three:Theoretical Analyses of Higher Education Fairness by Government. Firstly, through dissertation on positive externality of higher education, higher education and economic growth, higher education and distribution of income, and education and social development, it makes economic analyses of investment into higher education by government. Secondly, it makes theoretical analyses of higher education fairness through the viewpoints that to maintain and promote higher education fairness is an important duty of modern government and higher education fairness is a special public goods. The article analyzes the market mechanism and problems faced by nonprofit organizations, and demonstrates that nongovernmental organization cannot guarantee higher education fairness. At the same time, the article makes a specific analysis of the mechanism of fiscal policies guaranteeing higher education fairness.Chapter four:History of Higher Education Fiscal System of Chinese Government and Higher Education Fairness. Based on the changes of the cost sharing system of higher education and fiscal assistance policies, the article analyses in phases the history of fiscal policy in the Chinese higher education. This chapter mainly looks back upon the free higher education system and people stipend system, and analyzes the impact of these fiscal policies on the higher education fairness.Chapter five:Current Investigation on China's Higher Education Fiscal System and Higher Education Fairness. In order to understand the details of higher education fairness after more than 20 years reform in China, this chapter focuses on the main changes of fiscal policies in the period of China's higher education toll system, and demonstrates the impacts of higher education cost sharing system and student subsidy system on higher education fairness. During the research, the article points out China's achievements in guaranteeing higher education fairness, and the unfairness in the development of our higher education on the other hand. And what's more, this unfairness is accelerating.Chapter six:Analyses of the Origin of Lack of Higher Education Fairness--from Fiscal Science Viewpoint. Firstly, the article analyses the defects of higher education cost sharing system and student subsidy system that lead to the current unfairness of higher education. Then, the article points out that the underlying cause thereof is the direct impact of market economy reform on higher education fairness during the system transformation period, i.e. weakening of the responsibility of competent government departments for higher education fairness, the imperfection of public fiscal system, and deviation of excessive adoption of market principles in higher education reform.Chapter seven:Improvement of Public Fiscal System of Higher Education and Realization of Higher Education Fairness. The core mission of public finance is to maintain the social harmony. In order to guarantee higher education fairness, the government should establish a higher education public fiscal system that suits the public fiscal system of our county. In order to realize the higher education fairness, the article discusses the establishment of higher education public fiscal system on aspects such as restructure of fairness concepts in government responsibility, improvement of the system of investment in higher education funds, establishment of higher education cost sharing system that is fair and scientific, improvement of student subsidy.Because of the numerous and jumbled researches on the fiscal polices of higher education fairness and the lack of reference materials, a systematic research on fiscal policies and higher education fairness is beyond the author's anticipation. Nevertheless, the article brings forward new ideas on the following aspects:Firstly, fresh topic selection. The article pays attention to the research of fiscal policies for guaranteeing higher education fairness by Chinese government. Prior to this article, there are few systematic researches on this topic from the viewpoint of government fiscal policies. The existing researches mainly target at the higher education fairness in pedagogic and sociological viewpoints. Articles investigating in fiscal viewpoint are mainly in some academic periodicals. There are few monographs combining the fiscal science and pedagogy. Therefore, it is innovative to select the topic of higher education fiscal policy promoting the realization of higher education fairness.Secondly, breakthrough of research of viewpoint. Higher education fairness is not purely an economic problem. The pure economic understanding of higher education fairness or economic analyses of higher education fairness is inadequate for analysing the whole fairness problem. The article makes a perspective view of the immanence from many sciences such as pedagogy, administrative management, political science, philosophy, economics, sociology, the law etc. The article combines many sciences into the research of the problem, and establish an open knowledge system, which lays a firm theoretical platform for the research of the problem.Thirdly, expanding the definition of higher education fairness. Higher education fairness concept is an extremely complicated problem. The article makes a in-depth analysis of the concepts of "fairness", "education fairness" and "higher education fairness", and points out the difference with the current concept of "higher education fairness", which is limited to "equal opportunities in higher education". Based on the previous research findings, the article makes a expanded explanation of the concept of higher education fairness, and brings forward the highest criterion for higher education fairness evaluation, i.e. to promote an all-around and free development of every social member. And this criterion is put into 4 levels:current target, medium target, long term target and ultimate target. At the same time, according to the status quo of higher education fairness in China, the author believes that to promote the fairness of higher education opportunities distribution is our chief problem at present, and thus specifies the current higher education fairness in China from 3 viewpoints:equal opportunities to enter higher education system, equal opportunities to obtain higher education of different quality characteristics, and equal opportunities to share public education resources, all of which are the standards to examine the fairness of current higher education fiscal polices in our country.Fourthly, it makes an all-round and detailed review and investigation of the evolvement of higher education cost sharing system and student subsidy system and their impact on higher education fairness since the establishment of China, and makes an in-depth examination of the impact of higher education fiscal policies on higher education fairness. Based on higher education cost sharing system which is closest to higher education fairness, the article divides the history of higher education into two periods:free system period (1949-1984) and toll system period (1985 up till now). The article selects higher education cost sharing system and student subsidy system that have direct relation with educates, the microcosmic subjects, as the contents, and makes an in-depth analysis of the impacts of higher education finance in the free system period and toll system period.Fifthly, in-depth thoughts on the causes of current unfairness in higher education in our county.During the analysis of higher education unfairness in our country, the article brings forward 2 different causes that impact the higher education fairness in the viewpoint of government finance:the first is the systematic defects of higher education cost sharing system and student subsidy system in higher education fiscal policies, which is the surface cause; the second is the direct impact of market economy reform on higher education fairness in China's transformation period, which is the underlying cause. The latter is mainly reflected by the weakening of higher education fairness responsibility of competent government departments, imperfection of pubic fiscal system and excessive adoption of market principles during the higher education reform. Thus, the author raises suggestions to help realize higher education fairness by promoting higher education public fiscal system. Therefore, this article is different with common researches on higher education fiscal policies, for it breaks through the shackle of the traditional research that "only discusses higher education finance from the viewpoint of higher education finance".Sixthly, the author puts forward the opinion that the way to improve higher education fairness is to improve higher education public fiscal system. And to improve this system, we should first reconstruct the government's ideas and responsibility of fairness, and then keep improving this system through higher education fund investment system, higher education cost sharing system and student subsidy system. Thus, the author proposes beneficial suggestions on building higher education fiscal polices under public fiscal system in our country.