Study On The Optimization Of Financial Investment Policy In Chinese Higher Education

Since the 1960’s and 1970’s, global higher education has expanded rapidly on a large scale, which makes it a problem that puzzled global governments of how to ensure the stability of founding higher education. As higher education is a quasi-public goods, government’s financial investment constitute an important part of higher education funding. Thus, study on how to optimize the financial investment policy system of higher education is becoming more and more meaningful under the situation of explosive expansion of financial investment in higher education. Since the new century, especially after 2005, the original financial policies can barely meet the needs of the new changes that have occurred in the field of government’s investment in higher education, which calls for an urgent adjustment. At present, China’s financial investment in higher education has stepped into the "new normal" of huge absolute scale, and all the urgent measures that should be taken to optimize the financial investment policy is to improve the mode and the structure of financial input, rather than simply deal with the financial inadequate. Therefore, to achieve healthy and sustainable development of higher education, besides adjusting the scale, it is also necessary to optimize the mode and the structure of financial investment, as well as the management mode.The paper begins with some theories elaborating the necessity of government intervention in higher education, as well as the major models of higher education funding. On this basis, it gives a brief review on the evolution of China’s financial policy on higher education investment, and analyzes the current higher education investment from the aspects of scale, mode and structure to figure out the exiting problems. Secondly, it introduces the financial policies of developed countries and regions on higher education, and sums up some their valuable experiences. Finally, in hopes to provide some references for the sound development of higher education, this paper puts forward several proposals which are beneficial to the optimization of Chinese higher education financial investment policy.