Stackelberg game of the local government and central government in higher education enrollment

Abstract

On the higher education enrollment distribution in China, the central and local governments’ interests sometimes are inconsistent. Central government expects talent training scale and structure can accord with external economy and the law of education, through the regulation of higher education resources and maintaining the balance of the higher education of the region to achieve a fair, just and sustainable development. The local government supports the development of local higher education and more considers the economic and social development of the region. A decentralized and a centralized decision-making model are built, and the Stackelberg game of central government and local government and the corresponding optimal behavior decision are analyzed. By introducing the gravity model, this paper depicts the enrollment rate of the central government in each region, which is affected by the distance, the total number of students and the local GDP. It is found that local government wants to place higher enrollment rate, which is conflict with the central government. Higher central government penalty can deter the local government's behavior that does not carry out enrollment policy and reduce the expected local admission rate. By comparing, the local expected optimal enrollment rate in the centralized decision-making model is higher than the one in thedecentralized decision-making model