成人高等教育与普通高等教育收入效应比较

Adult Higher Education and Individual Income in China

成人高等教育作为继续教育体系的组成部分,是构建学习型社会的重要一环。因此,如何进行成人高等教育改革,提升成人高等教育的质量越来越重要。基于中国综合社会调查(CGSS) 2015年的数据,本文研究了成人高等教育对个人收入和职业选择的影响。研究发现:相比于普通专科生,成人专科生的职业性收入显著低17%,总收入显著低19%;相比于普通本科生,成人本科生的职业性收入显著低20%,总收入显著低21%;成人专科学历的收入劣势是人力资本效应的结果;而成人本科生的较低收入是信号效应和人力资本效应共同作用的结果,但人力资本效应占主导地位。此外,成人本科生更少的进入技术类职业,而成人专科生在职业选择上与普通专科无显著差别;布朗分解结果显示,成人教育与普通教育的收入差距绝大部分来源于职业内部的收入差异。本研究对改进和优化成人高等教育改革提供了思路。

With the construction of a learning society,the atmosphere of"learning of everybody,lifelong learning"is growing.Adult higher education is an important approach to adult learning and an effective means to improve the comprehensive quality of the adult group.However,since adult education does not receive enough attention from government departments and lacks funds,the quality of adult higher education has been declining.At the same time,adult higher education has a low degree of recognition in Chinese labor market.In view of the importance of adult higher education and the declining of its quality,understanding the effect of adult higher education on personal income and human capital is necessary.Using the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey(CGSS)data,this paper examines the impact of adult higher education on personal income and occupation choices.Compared with formal college degree holders,the occupational income of adult college degree holders is significantly lower by 17%and the total income is significantly lower by 19%.Compared with formal bachelor degree holders,adult bachelor degree holders earn about 20%less in professional income and 21%less in total income.Adult bachelor degree holders are less likely to enter technical professions,and have no significant differences in terms of occupation choices when compared with formal college degree holders.Meantime,the results obtained by the Brown decomposition method show that the vast majority of the income gap between adult education and formal education is within the professions.At last,it finds that the adult degree penalty for college students is mainly due to human capital effect,and the adult degree penalty for undergraduate students is partly due to signaling effect,but more importantly due to human capital effect.Since the quality of adult higher education will impact the construction of China's learning society and economic development,the government should implement relevant policies to improve adult education.Moreover,adult colleges need to improve their overall teaching quality,strengthen the construction of the faculty team,and enhance the market competitiveness of adult education.