On Function Positioning and Government Regulation Failure of Higher Education
论高等教育中政府调节的职能定位与调节失灵现象

The reform of regulation mechanism of contemporary higher education in the world is basically characterized by the following three features.Firstly,the government makes a direct intervention in higher education.Secondly,marketization and globalization has an increasing greater influence over higher education.Thirdly,there is a decrease in university autonomy.Government regulation is an important part in the regulation system of higher education,and government plays a leading role in the reform and development of higher education.The reason why it is a necessity for the government to strengthen the regulation function of higher education lies in four aspects.Firstly,higher education falls into the category of quasi public goods as a whole.Secondly,higher education has great externalities which is hard to be internalized through the market.Thirdly,the educational capital markets are not yet perfect.Fourthly,government intervention in higher education will promote equitable distribution in the society.On the whole,the government has three regulation functions in higher education. Firstly,the government implements the function of resource allocation.Second, the government implements the function of promoting social equality.Third,the government practices stability function.Government failures of higher education are basically manifested in four aspects.Firstly,there might be mistakes and failures in the political decision making.Secondly,there is over concentration in administrative management of higher education.Thirdly,there is waste,corruption and low efficiency in higher education administrative organs.Fourthly,there is not enough government intervention so far as higher education opportunity and inequality in production distribution is concerned. There might be serious consequences of government failure in the field of higher education.Reasonable allocation and utilization of higher educational resources is virtually impossible unless there is proper corrections of government failure.On the whole,to promote efficient operation of government,it is necessary to have a correct and clear definition of the government function in the management of higher education.The government should have a proper and reasonable way of the intervention.To correct the mistakes in decision-making of higher education,construction and improvement of political system should be recommended.To avoid over concentration in administrative management of higher education,division of power and the elimination of undue regulation is expected.And to enhance the efficiency of higher education management,it is essential to develop a reasonable incentive mechanism.And finally,to realize equality in higher education opportunity and production distribution,the government should set down and perfect laws and regulations,so as to secure opportunity of higher education for the disadvantaged,and enable them to share the achievements in higher education.