With the continuous expansion of the scale of higher education, the number of students has greatly increased, and the demand for education funds has also increased. In order to ensure the equality of educational opportunities and the quality of educational output, and promote the further development of higher education popularization, educational funds will inevitably increase. But at the same time, we should also see that educational resources are always scarce relative to educational needs, which will produce such a pair of contradictions. On the one hand, education funds are always in short supply; On the other hand, the quality of education cannot be reduced. To solve this problem, we must strengthen the financing and management of education funds, increase revenue and reduce expenditure, and improve its efficiency. And this is precisely the proper meaning of higher education finance. Therefore, higher education finance is of great significance and function to the development of higher education. (1) provides material guarantee for the development of higher education. From the point of view of economics, although education has obvious positive externalities, especially in promoting economic growth, it is still a huge consumable project, which cannot fully realize effective cost compensation and make profits through market mechanism. Therefore, even in western countries that advocate market mechanism, the education sector is usually regarded as a public sector or a quasi-public sector. American economist L.G.Renolds believes that education is a kind of "quasi-public product" and the market doesn't work here. "Society may decide to give subsidies or even give them away free of charge". The reason why the market fails in the field of education is that education has high external economic benefits, that is, because the huge social benefits brought by education are far higher than private benefits, under the adjustment of market mechanism, private enterprises usually ignore long-term social benefits, thus causing huge losses to society. In this way, education can only be regarded as the common needs and public interests pursued by the society or the country, which are met by the government representing the public interests through administrative, economic and legal means. Judging from the development trend of education in contemporary countries around the world, the government is playing an increasingly important role in it. No matter developed or developing countries, there is no exception. As far as China is concerned, the investment of governments at all levels in education through education administration plays a decisive role in the whole education development. Education finance is an important content and means of education management. Its fundamental task is to provide material guarantee for ethnic education nationwide according to the will of the country. Therefore, it is necessary to study the reasonable proportion of education funds in gross national product, national income and national financial revenue and expenditure, provide decision-making basis for relevant government departments at all levels, and strive for more adequate education funds for the development of education. Secondly, to give full play to the role of education finance in raising education funds, we should also raise the resources available for education funds in the hands of various regions, departments, enterprises and individuals through legislation or other articles of association and methods to form education funds to make up for the lack of government investment in education. (2) Rational allocation of higher education resources Rational allocation of resources refers to the optimal allocation and efficient use of social resources such as manpower, material resources and financial resources and the funds reflected in their values. The contradiction between the limited scarcity of resources and the limited social demand is irreconcilable. Therefore, it is the basic requirement of finance to allocate resources reasonably and effectively and give full play to its functions. Compared with educational demand, educational resources are always limited, which makes it more necessary to rationally allocate educational resources. In short, the rational allocation of educational resources is to allocate the limited educational resources to various departments and institutions of the education system reasonably, and to achieve the maximum output of educational products and services with the minimum educational input. The rational allocation of resources by education finance is mainly reflected in two aspects: first, the effective allocation of resources between schools at all levels; The second is how to rationally allocate resources between education development and education infrastructure. In order to promote the coordinated development of higher education and regional economic and social development, we must give full play to the macro-control role of higher education finance. When allocating educational resources, we should proceed from China's national conditions and the actual situation of national education finance, make overall consideration of education types, school-running levels, priorities and generality, take into account regional characteristics-rich areas and old, less, marginal and poor areas, and allocate educational funds in accordance with the principles of fairness, rationality and effectiveness. (3) Scientific and reasonable adjustment of education funds and education finance is conducive to the rational allocation of education resources, but the scientific allocation of education resources is not achieved overnight. In the process of educational development, because the factors restricting educational development are complex and diverse, there are many variables in these factors, which are gathered together and constantly reorganized, forming a constantly changing objective reality in the process of educational development. It is this objective and ever-changing reality that requires education finance to make reasonable decisions according to the actual situation, thus making the allocation of educational resources more targeted and efficient. Under China's planned economy system, because planning is the only mechanism to regulate the economic operation and even the whole social life, education also operates around the national compulsory education development plan. The unity of planning can't adapt to the difference of educational development, which leads to the long-term difficulty in effectively improving the overall efficiency of education. With the reform of China's economic system, the whole society has also undergone corresponding changes. As an important part of economic and social development, higher education is bound to be bound by the rules of market economy to some extent. However, the inherent characteristics of the education system make it difficult to adjust the relationship between supply and demand through the market mechanism. Therefore, based on the characteristics of higher education, how to organically combine the plan with the market, the "visible hand" and the "invisible hand" has become the core issue of whether we can give full play to the financial regulation function of higher education in China under the new situation. The criterion of evaluation is whether it can effectively promote the coordinated development of education. In a word, in order to make the allocation of education funds closer to reality, more reasonable and more coordinated, and balance the total supply and demand of education, we must give full play to the supply regulation role of education finance. (4) Effective supervision and education on the use of education funds is a large-scale systematic project, and it is necessary to strengthen macro-planning and investment in education, comprehensively reflect and properly solve contradictions and problems in the development of education. All these depend on the strong supervision and management of national governments at all levels and their education administrative departments on the development of education. Therefore, strengthening the management and supervision of education is the objective requirement of education development and education management itself. Only by maintaining the normal educational operation order and establishing a good educational development environment can the educational cause embark on the track of coordinated development of people as a whole. Education finance, as an economic behavior of the government, makes the economic behavior of all departments and institutions in the education system stand on the track allowed by the legal system and policies through the supervision of the economic behavior and the use of funds of educational institutions; By handling and sanctioning violations of financial discipline by education departments, institutions and individuals, the education system will form a correct orientation, which will have a great incentive or restraint effect, and urge education departments, institutions and individuals to work hard to improve their work, thus continuously improving the efficiency of the use of education funds. The above four functions of higher education finance are independent and interdependent. If any one of them can't be effectively brought into play, it will affect the functions of other aspects, thus adversely affecting the operation of the whole education system. Therefore, when making educational financial decisions, we should fully consider the national and local financial facts and make good use of educational financial means such as education budget, education final accounts and education audit to ensure the balanced and coordinated development of education.