Study On The Supply And Demand Of Higher Education In China

There are contradictions between supply and demand in higher education just like other goods such as private good,s,public goods and quasi-public goods,and the development of higher education in a country cannot separate from supply and demand.However,unlike general goods or services,higher education helps bridge two demands.One is come from individual students and their family,and the other is enterprises or employers.Hence,in fact,there are two types of interrelated and differentiated supply and demand in higher education.Specifically,the interrelated and differentiated supply and demand refers to the individual's demand for higher education services and the corresponding supply of higher education,and the social demand for higher education "products" and the corresponding human resources supply.These two types of supply and demand are respectively in the "entrance" and "export" of higher education,which jointly affect the development of higher education in a country.In this paper,the supply and demand at the "entrance" and"export" of higher education are respectively named "the first type of supply and demand" and "the second types of supply and demand".Under the,special higher education system of China,the second type of supply of higher education,whether in quantity or structure,largely depend on the first type of supply.Put is it in another way,the number of students enrolled and these students' major distribution often determine how many students graduate and graduates' major distribution.This implies that China's higher education has the characteristics of one supply from universities and two demands both from students and enterprises.Universities,students and enterprises form a special triangle of supply and demand.In this triangle,these two types of demands for higher education are likely to have a certain degree of dislocation due to inconsistencies in their goals,which has led to an asymmetric pull in higher education.This will make higher education run into a dilemma.Therefore,it is of great academic significance to carry out systematic empirical and theoretical research on this issue.Unfortunately,a large number of literatures are limited to one type of supply and demand at present.There are few researches,in the existing literature,has put these two types of supply and demand together,which is exactly what this dissertation is going to do.This study mainly focuses on the structural contradictions of supply and demand in different majors,and can be divided into two parts:fact analysis and normative discussion.In fact analysis,this paper makes a descriptive statistics of the distribution of universities' supply and students' demand in different majors in Chinese universities,which can give a first impression on "the first type of supply and demand" and "the second types of supply and demand" in different majors.We take the size of enrollment and average size of potential applicants as the proxy variables to respectively measure the first type supply and demand in different majors.According to the statistical results,the differences between different majors are very significant both in the measurement of the size of enrollment or average size of potential applicants,showing an obvious feature of agglomeration.However,a major with larger size enrollment is not necessarily equal to the major with larger size potential applicants.In order to investigate how well the first type of supply fits the first type of demand,we should make a correlation analysis between them.The result shows that there is a prominent structural contradiction between supply and demand of first type of higher education in china.Accordingly,we also uses the employment data of different majors to evaluate the second type of supply and demand in China's higher education,and finds that structural contradictions also exist,but they are somewhat weaker than those of the former.In fact,due to the contradiction between the two types of demands,there is a contradiction between supply and demand,both at the "entrance" and "export",in our higher education.In this case,higher education in China is bound to face a dilemma.The first choice is to improve students' satisfaction in order to balance the supply and demand in first type,and the second choice is to enhance the social adaptation by adjusting major' s structure to balance the supply and demand in second type.Of course,a compromise can also be made to take care of both ends.However,each policy orientation is difficult to perfect.More importantly,the data itself can only explain "what is the current situation of higher education",but it does not provide us with the "what is the ideal" and "how to build the ideal"information.Hence,we must turn from factual research to theoretical research,and carry out value analysis with a series of related reasons,logical reasoning and philosophical criticism in a normative sense.In this paper,we put forward two outstanding ideas that are beneficial to resolving this contradiction:1)Using market rules,rather than the planned way,in the supply of higher education.This is the only effective way to deal with the contradiction between supply and demand in higher education.2)Balancing the contradictions between supply and demand should be student-centered.This is a strategy with comprehensive coordination function.These two ideas are the "general solution" and"special solution" to the dual structural contradictions of supply and demand in China' s higher education,and make the contradictions move towards the direction of settlement.After defining the basic idea of "what is the ideal" and "how to build the ideal",this paper further explores the realistic way to constructing it,and puts forward eight directions that policy can make a difference.They are some policy ideas on how to build the ideal balanced model and how to make the best use of it.At the end of this paper,we point out that the eight schemes must form an organic whole,and put it in practice to constructing ideal model in a complementary way.Only in this way can the multilateral structural contradictions of supply and demand in different majors of higher education go into dynamic balance under the effect of long-term mechanism.This can addresses the root of the problem,and avoid providing specific,static,standard answers based solely on data for different majors.This is also the profound meaning why this dissertation combines the fact research with value research.