Can a Teacher Salary Increase Promote Students' Educational Performance?

Policymakers in China have attempted to improve the quality of rural education by investing in teacher salaries through initiatives like the Rural Teachers Support Plan(RTSP).This study estimates the efects of teacher salary increase on students'educational outcomes in rural China by utilizing the exogenous variations of rural teacher salaries induced by the RTSP.It employs an intensity-based difference-in-differences strategy and panel data from 2010 to 2018 with 3,351 rural children.The findings reveal that an increase in teacher salaries had a significant positive impact on students'examination results.Moreover the results of mechanism analysis indicate that salary increases could have both quality and quantity effects on students'outcomes by increasing the proportion of highly educated teachers and reducing the student-teacher ratio.Our findings contribute to the discussion on the importance of teacher salary incentives in education production functions and provide insights for other countries undertaking rural education reforms.

Fiscal Transfer, Education Investment and Long-Term Educational Performance

Reasonable allocation of educational powers and expenditure responsibilities between central and local government is crucial to the development of education.The reason lies in the fact that local governments have relatively insufficient incentives to invest in education by using local fiscal revenues,while the central government,which pursues the maximization of the interests of the whole society,could promote education and other public services with spatial spilloves.The fiscal transfer payment has made up for the shortage of local investment in education.This paper uses 2010 census(micro data)and macro fiscal data to verify the effects above.Based on the year of birth and place,this paper constructs the proportion of fiscal transfers for compulsory education in the total fiscal revenue(local fiscal revenue and fiscal transfers)to reflect its structural effect.It is found that every 10%increase in the proportion of fiscal transfers brings at least additional 0.2 year of schoolings for local residents,and the effect of special transfer payments accounts for a larger share,among the three types of transfer payment.In the mechanism test,we find that transfer payment can effectively increase local education expenditure and produce an obvious structural effect.Based on this,in order to further improve the long-term educational performance of individuals,we believe that it is necessary to improve the incentive effect of the transfer payment system on common power and the division of expenditure responsibilities in the field of education.

Experiential Learning with Internal Audit Service Projects： Students＇ Perceptions

Students are very familiar with their own universities and also are interested in improving their alma maters. The purpose of this research is to share insights about a project that can be used for both traditional Auditing courses and the Internal Auditing course. The project requires that students ＂audit＂ certain elements of the universities＇ non-confidential finances as well as perform operational and compliance techniques. The project creates synergy for experiential learning and improvement of university operations. Examples of educational issues that were improved with the operational audits are： （1） better information posted for office hours and class times; （2） better scripting for professors＇ and staff＇s voicemail messages; and （3） campus safety improvements. The students also seemed more enthusiastic about auditing and happy to contribute to the excellence of their university.

CPA Pass Rates in Texas： A 12-Year Analysis

This research examines the CPA exam pass rates for higher education institutions in Texas. An investigation related to the top schools and AACSB accreditation is conducted as well as analyses related to public vs. private schools, area of the state where the institution is located, and University Systems. The results reflect impressive pass rates by University of Texas at Austin and Texas A＆M University at College Station in terms of both number of students taking the exam and the percentage passing it. There was a significant CPA rate lead with private universities only when the two outstanding public universities were omitted from the analysis. The research also found significant differences in terms of areas of the state as well as university systems. The analysis and the findings are very important to students with CPA exam success as their academic primary goal with their university education, the educational institutions preparing the students, and society as a whole. The fmdings may help guide both the universities and the students to better success with the exam as well as perhaps help taxpayers and legislators know how well tax money is being spent in this area.