省级统筹与高等职业教育的均衡发展

Provincial Coordination and Balanced Development for Ibrtiary Vocational Education in China

During the rapid expansion of vocational higher education in China， the development and resource gaps among and within provinces have been growing. Balanced regional development and provincial coordination have become the new focus of policy debate* yet academia keeps silent on this issue. Empirical analyses based on the 2009 national database indicate that institution affiliation associates with resource acquisition，while public colleges enjoy significantly higher budget appropriation and private colleges charge much higher tuition. Institution affiliation also relates to outputs： the freshmen yield rate and the number of collaborating firms are higher for public colleges than private ones. In addition， the share of prefecture city-affiliated institutions positively correlates with the average number of collaborating firms at the provincial level* while the share of private colleges drives average tuition level up in province. There is tension between provincial coordination and balanced development. This paper concludes that in order to achieve a balanced development for vocational higher education， provincial governments should adjust their governance structure and create a more diverse? flexible? and decentralized governance model.