Graduate Education Cost-benefit Analysis And Related Policy Research

From the view point of economics, to obtain the postgraduate degree belongs to a kind of human capital investment, obeying the behavioral analysis model of investor completely. As a kind of rational investment behavior, the returns of its education investment will certainly attract people's attention. In human capital theory, it is an index which can reflect the economic benefits of postgraduate education investment, and to some extent, its size reflects whether the postgraduate education investment is good or not. So it can provide policy-making reference for both the individual and society to invest in the postgraduate education. As a significant index to formulate and evaluate the economic, educational and employment policies, individual education returns ratio is put into full focus by countries all over the world. However, the research pays comparatively less attention to the postgraduates in our country.This article attempts to take some graduate students who are either at school and have already graduated from universities in Jinan (Shandong Province) as examples and obtain the cost of the postgraduates as well as their expected income after graduation by means of questionnaire. Based on it, the article can calculate out the individual education returns ratio by referring to certain measurement model concerned. Therefore, this article first defines several concepts, such as the types of postgraduate students, the cost to study as postgraduate students and their income after graduation. Then according to Samuelson's public product theory and exterior effect theory, this article defines the graduate student product as personal product in order to provide the foundation for the sharing of the cost of postgraduate education. Afterwards it introduces the theoretical basis of individual education returns ratio that is Schultz's human capital theory and economic explanations that are concerned.In order to quantitize the individual returns ratio of postgraduate students investment, after introducing briefly such basic models of the human capital investment cost - income analysis as the Net Present Value, the Domestic Return Rate of Education, the Mincerian Rate of Return, it takes both the in-school postgraduate students and students who have already graduated three to five years ago as samples and makes a questionnaire on the cost, the income. Meanwhile, combined with statistics in the ten issues in the Reports on Talents'Salary on the www.ChinaHR.com from the first half year of 2000 to the second half year of 2004(Mainly their anticipated income growth tendency), it works out postgraduate students'expenditure cost data and the graduated students'anticipated income data. Connected with the above measurement models, with the aid of the computer VC++ programming and the SPSS statistics software,we calculated out the related returns ratio data. The computed result shows that the anticipated returns ratio to invest in the postgraduate education is quite high, and it is quite profitable to invest in the postgraduate education.The economic analysis to the postgraduate human capital investment indicates that it is not only profitable, but also it can make a great deal of money. This article has already defined the postgraduate students product as personal product according to the public product theory and exterior effect theory. Meanwhile, from Schultz's human capital investment theory which states that the education is not only a kind of expense, but it can bring the huge benefit as well as Johnstone's education cost share theory, the article proposes the policy to charge the graduate student appropriately but we should avoid overcharge. The writer considers 3000 Yuan as suitable. Moreover, it analyzes the problem of education equality that may be caused by the charge and then proposes to take the development level of the social economics and the national capacity to bear of our people into full consideration. Especially, we should pay attention to people who have generally low income and those from the countryside .The fees should not be too high because we endeavor to achieve education equality. And we must improve the systems of the university scholarship, the student grand, the loan and so on and maintain fairness for the postgraduate students education in the greatest degree.Although the article accepts that the postgraduate education is quite profitable, this article finally advises that people should be rational to invest in the postgraduate education. Because theoretically, any investment has risk and the graduate student education can not be exceptional. Based on this, schoolmates who prepare to invest in the postgraduate education must change the traditional ideas that high school record brings a higher chance to get employed. Instead, the students must locate themselves accurately and must have sense of risk in the education investment in order to be more rational and have more benefits and higher rewards ratio.