At this year's two sessions, education reform became one of the hot topics during the session. There are endless calls for "unfair distribution of educational resources", "unfair investment in education", "inclined investment in remote areas" and "expanding the scale of educational investment". This also shows that although the absolute amount of China's financial education expenditure is increasing year by year in recent years, and the proportion of education expenditure in GDP is also rising, there are still problems such as insufficient total amount and unreasonable structure in China's financial education expenditure.
First, the necessity of government expenditure on education
1) Education is a quasi-public product in an incomplete market. Education is a quasi-public product with the characteristics of exclusiveness, certain competitiveness, crowding and positive externality of consumption. As a quasi-public product, the market cannot effectively supply it. If all education is put into the market, it will inevitably bring disastrous losses to education and directly affect the stable development of the country and society.
We can look at this problem through the imperfect human capital market: assuming that the capital market is perfect and education is a rewarding human capital investment, why don't the educated go to school by borrowing from the capital market? The reason is that the human capital market is an imperfect capital market.
This is particularly prominent in higher education: in this market, no individual or institution intends to guarantee the investment object, and because the return of this investment is greatly influenced by personal personality, health, opportunities and other factors, the return of human capital investment is uncertain. Therefore, institutions in folk credit are generally unwilling to take such a big risk to provide them with education loans, which makes it impossible for young people with no savings or low-income families to receive higher education. In view of this, the government should be the main responsible body to guide, standardize, develop education healthily and rapidly and undertake the investment in education funds.
2) Education has positive externalities. In microeconomic theory, there is a concept called "externality". Man Kun, an American economist, defines externalities as: "When a person engages in activities that affect the welfare of bystanders, and he neither pays for this influence nor gets a return, externalities arise. If the influence on onlookers is unfavorable, it is called' negative externality', and if the influence is favorable, it is called' positive externality'. When externalities exist, society pays more attention to market results than the welfare of buyers and sellers in the market, and it also includes the welfare of affected bystanders. " Education is not only a consumption, but also an investment.
As a quasi-public product, education also has certain positive externalities: first, education enriches people's knowledge, improves people's labor skills, enhances people's competitiveness in the process of making a living, and is conducive to the improvement of labor productivity and comprehensive national strength of the whole society, and to the economic growth of the country, thus benefiting the whole society; Secondly, with the improvement of education level, people's legal knowledge and moral cultivation have been generally improved, and people will abide by social morality more, thus reducing the crime rate, making society more stable and reducing the cost of social security. The economic environment is more optimized; Finally, as a ruling tool, education provides a good way for political education. With the help of education, those in power can help citizens to establish their outlook on life and values in line with their own class interests, making them easier to manage and more politically stable. (3) Education strives for fairness. Wealthy families obviously have a higher ability to pay for their children's education, and economically developed areas can take the lead in entering a "well-off society" in education because of their strong financial resources; However, poor children are likely to lose the opportunity to receive education because they can't afford the education expenses, and poor areas with underdeveloped economies are often affected by the shortage of financial funds, thus unable to pay the financial education expenses. Uneven educational opportunities caused by uneven income distribution are likely to lead to uneven income again, thus forming a vicious circle of "poor children are always poor", which makes people in disadvantaged groups and poor areas lose confidence in the overall fairness of society. "Education equity" has therefore become one of the hot topics during the two sessions this year. In view of this, from the perspective of social equity, poor children should have equal or even priority rights to enjoy the services of government financial education expenditure, and the government must also increase the support of financial education expenditure through the inclination of public policy and try its best to improve the structure of financial education expenditure in China.
Second, the current situation and main problems of China's financial education expenditure
1) The total financial expenditure on education is insufficient. Since the implementation of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education, China's understanding of the strategic position of education has gradually improved, the central and local governments have attached great importance to education, and financial expenditures on education at all levels have increased rapidly. However, from a relative perspective, there is still a clear gap between the total financial expenditure on education in China and the expected amount.
In recent years, with the rapid growth of China's GDP, the proportion of fiscal revenue to GDP has also increased year by year, while the proportion of fiscal education expenditure to fiscal expenditure has dropped from 20.69% in the peak year to 15.7 L% in 2006. Financial expenditure on education cannot keep up with or exceed economic growth. As a result of rapid economic growth, the government has concentrated a lot of social resources and fulfilled its functions more quickly, but it has not formed favorable investment and support for education. On the contrary, individuals and families, as recipients of education, bear heavier educational costs.
Although the state's total investment in education is increasing, compared with the strengthening of the national economic strength, the relative scale of education expenditure is still small, and the proportion of fiscal education expenditure in GNP is seriously low, and the growth rate is slow. Although 1993 The Outline of Education Reform and Development in China issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council clearly pointed out the goal of "gradually increasing the proportion of national fiscal education expenditure in GDP to 4% by the end of the 20th century", the specific implementation strategy of the 4% goal of "three growth" was written into the education law in 1995. Regrettably, relevant laws and regulations have not been implemented in practice, and the goal of 4% has not been achieved so far. From 199 1 to 2006, the proportion of financial education expenditure in GNP only increased by 0. 15%. Even in 2006, the proportion was only 2.98%, not exceeding 3%, which was far from the expected target of 4%. In fact, the proportion of% is only the average level of developing countries in the 1980s. Display 1999
As can be seen from Table L, the expenditure gap between the three levels of education is narrowing year by year, from the decreasing order of per capita expenditure of higher education, secondary education and primary education in 2000 to the decreasing order of per capita expenditure of secondary education, higher education and primary education. This is inseparable from the full implementation of nine-year free compulsory education and the increase of financial investment in secondary vocational education, especially in rural areas in recent years.
Although the government has increased its investment in basic education since 2002, the investment in higher education is also declining, and the administrative expenses in the fiscal expenditure for education have increased by 6.60 times during the period of 12.