Research and Exploration
CAO Yulian, HA Wei
Pairing assistance is one of the national governance mechanisms with Chinese characteristics, and has played an important role in poverty alleviation, emergency rescue, disaster relief, and epidemic prevention and control. The Education Pairing Assistance (EPA) is one of the important contents of the pairing assistance. The EPA in higher education, which has been implemented since 2001, has become a long-term and stable educational support measure with Chinese characteristics. Based on The Compilation of Scientific and Technological Statistics of Chinese Higher Education and The Compilation of Social Science Statistics of Chinese Higher Education from 1994 to 2018, this paper uses a two-way fixed effect model to find that, first, the EPA in higher education has a significant impact on the faculty. The EPA in higher education significantly increased the number of faculty by 5.92%~23.58%, and increased the proportion of faculty with high-professional title by 1.99~4.69 percentage points. Second, the EPA in higher education has a positive, yet limited, impact on the scientific research capacity of the assisted universities. Third, the EPA in higher education boosted the ability of the assisted universities to serve the economy and society at large, as the horizontal funding for science and technology significantly increased by 37.43%~52.38%. Fourth, the EPA in higher education is a long-term project, with effects taking at least three years to be discerned. Fifth, compared with simply increasing the number of supporting universities, “team” support can heighten the effect of the EPA in higher education.