Importance of higher education

高等教育在我们的生活中扮演着重要的角色。从本质上说，高等教育是一种生产产品的企业，即培养对社会的人才。因此，我们可以在高等教育的背景下，利用“经济类比”，在大学与企业、学生与客户、教师和劳动力市场等方面进行类比。

1. Importance, motivation and background of higher education

Higher education plays an important role in our lives. In essence, higher education is a business that produces products, that is, cultivates talents to our society. Therefore, we can use the “economic analogy” in the context of higher education, drawing parallels between universities and firms, students and customers, faculty and labor markets and so on. But education is often regarded as one of the grandest cause in the world. Higher education has its noble implication and is more decent and humane in the purpose it serves. A college or university usually takes social responsibility into account.

In higher education, the main motivation of managers is to pursue academic excellence and improve the quality of the education services. This task or mission is often regarded as a symbol of education in relative to other institutions. The more complex managerial motivation that values equity and academic importance implies that the relative position of the institution takes on special importance.

2. Nature of a university

Asymmetry of information is one of higher education’s natures. Given the asymmetries of information, it may be impossible to draw up a contrast that guarantees that the expected quality in all its dimensions will be provided. People investing in human capital through a purchase of higher education don’t know what they are buying –and won’t and can’t know what they have brought until it is far too late to do anything about it. It is more like an uncertain investment often made in large part by a parent.

One factor that is obscure by the assumption of perfect information is that a firm that depends on its own customers to supply an important input to production will care very much about who those customers are and how well-equipped they are with the input that matters. If they can, the firm will try to control who its customers are, leading to our discussion of enrollment. A college that accepts all applicants could not be selective and would not be able to increase student quality through demand expansion. Since donative resources available to a private college or university are effectively fixed in the short term, the level of enrollment determines how broadly those resources will be spread; what the subsidy per student will be.

3. Analysis of recent trends in college prices

The competition function in a hierarchical market, like higher education market, results in a rising trends in state subsidies and college prices. First of all, the price that students pay for public education has covered a pretty small part of costs yet their subsidies has covered so large a part so that even a small percentage reduction in public support has meant a large percentage increase in tuition. Secondly, for the private institutions that compete to sell their service, sticker prices have risen to allow more price discrimination. Lastly, for the wealthy private institution that compete to buy scarce student quality, the positional race has created pressure on each school to obtain more donative resources, both to attract students now and to save to be ready to attract students in the future. A considerable part of the university’s budget is used to compete for high-quality student resources and higher tuition is always needed to keep track of the inflated daily expense in university.

4. The emergence and influence of for-profit sector

Globalization and the revolution in technological communication are major forces of change in higher education. This environment, when coupled with the needs of adult learners and the rising cost of tuition at traditional colleges and universities, has stimulated the emergence of for-profit higher education. As traditional, especially public, higher education finds its way within the “education business”. Society expects public higher education to advance social justice through increased access for underrepresented groups, provide service to communities, enhance economic development through training and applied research, and advance knowledge for the social, economic, culture and scientific benefit of society. The means by which it fulfills this mission may be informed in part by the for-profit sector. This sector has demonstrated cost-efficient and consumer-oriented ways of developing and delivering training programs.

For-profit institutions will increasingly force non-profit colleges to examines their programs and become more competitive. Some college may need to change their roles, and have a different orientation toward their students as customers. Most especially, non-profit institutions will need to increase their efforts to communicate the value of their broader mission regarding the production and transmission of knowledge, the public benefits to the economy and society, and the importance of having an institution where freedom of ideas is fostered and maintained. 

5. Peer’s effect on higher education

In the educational production function, peer quality is an input to a college’s production and one that cannot be bought from anyone other than its own customer. Peer quality is an input that costs, input that may or may not have substitutes, and an input whose use will be adjusted to reflect its costs, available substitutes, and resources. Higher education uses a customer-input technology. While this relationship may be clearest in a college’s production of something like intercollegiate sports entertainment——where only its own students can play on its teams——it is of greater importance in the production process for high quality academic education where students educate both themselves and each other, and the quality of the education any student gets from college depends in good measure on the quality of that student’s peers. 

Peer effect also benefits peer tutoring, which is an interactive method of teaching and learning. The existence of one small pilot project at one time in an institution does not constitute peer tutoring on a large scale across the curriculum which is quality controlled and embedded within the organizational culture. However, peer tutoring is usually a relatively small component of a wide range of teaching and learning strategies deployed in higher education, so the extent to which it is realistic to expect associated gains to be measurable and widespread.

6. Online learning

Online learning provides a positive, caring environment for participants to learn about adult development in general and their own development in particular. More specifically, it was asserted that course participants shared personal material, supported each other in addressing individual needs, and encouraged the evolution of thinking about course issues in a personal way. Students will be ready to share their feelings, critically examined course issues, extended their support in helping peers, continually posted even when it was not a course expectation, and embraced many of the challenges of taking an online course.

The benefits of online learning extend beyond the time and place independence they provide for participants, but also include the reflective and social environment they can foster. Asynchronous, computer-mediated communication tools actually promote reflective and critical thinking, allowing for deep and meaningful learning to occur. In many ways, online learning provides the participants with an opportunity to experience change and their own ability to cope with it as part of their learning experience. It is through these type of experiences that educators can situate student learning about adult development and social change, providing the field and the learner with new models for potentiating the teaching and learning process.

7. Summary

This scholarly article suggests that standard economic intuition and analogies, built on an understanding of profit-making firms and the economic theory that supports it. The entrance of new providers that are responsive to adult needs for postsecondary education is consistent with the market needs. The emergence of for-profit higher education will cause both increased differentiation in higher education and at the same time bring about changes in traditional higher education. This article start with the economic realities of higher education to see how far toward useful theoretical precision they can be pushed. It is the most effective route to identifying where our familiar economic formalisms and assumptions may become seriously inappropriate. Higher education can also be analyzed under the framework of economics like this.

References
[1]Winston, Gordon. "Subsidies, Hierarchy and Peers: The Awkward Economics of Higher Education." Journal of Economic Perspectives 13, no. 1 (1999): 13-36.
[2]Henry Merrill: Online Learning: From Information Dissemination to Fostering Collaboration. JI. Of Interactive Learning Research(2001)12(1),105-143.
[3]K. J. Topping: The effectiveness of peer tutoring in further and higher education: A typology and review of the literature. Higher Education 32:321-345,1996.
[4]Ann I. Morey: Globalization and the emergence of for-profit higher education. Higher Education. July 2004, Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 131-150.






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