Efficiency of Educational Resources Investment: Does Financial Expenditure Matter?

Education and human capital drive economic and societal development, necessitating increased inputs, outputs, and efficiency to improve resource allocation. Using principal component analysis, spatial correlation, fixed-effect and data envelopment analysis models, we evaluate higher education resource inputs and outputs. We find that financial investment drives resource transformation. Furthermore, the input and output of China’s higher education are stronger in the east, the central and western regions show a catch-up effect; and scaling alone does not guarantee better education. There are shortcomings in scientific and technological innovation and social service outputs, believe fiscal expenditure efficiency can be improved by optimizing higher education resource allocation, and implementing differentiated education development strategies.