Checking the Pulse and Temperature of Higher Education

Many countries in the world are paying increasing attention to the health of the higher education system which is related to the level of national development. Therefore, we build models for the health and sustainability of the higher education system and evaluate the level of higher education in each country and give effective recommendations.

For Issue 1 and 2, we first collect ten important indexes that affect the evaluation of higher education systems in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, and China. They include, for example, the employment and unemployment rate of college students, and the proportion of the population with higher education. Then we conduct Analytic Hierarchy Process through the evaluation data of two experts and determine the hierarchical and weight relationship between the indexes. Finally, we calculate the final judgement result of each country through the Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation method. In 2019, the final judgement results of the United States, Canada, Switzerland and China are 0.7912, 0.7703, 0.7827, and 0.7545(see Figure 6).

For Issue 3 and 4, we take China, who has the lowest final judgement result obtained in Issue 1 and 2, as our research object. By analyzing the weights and scores of the indexes, we select the proportion of the population in higher education(PPHE) and the research quality index(RQI) as indexes that need improvement. We collect their historical data and conduct Time Series Analysis. Then we use the Damped Trend Model to make future predictions for them. We use the 2020 Swiss final judgement result as the threshold. When China’s final judgement result reaches 0.784237 which exceeds the threshold, we select the PPHE 42.56% and RQI 61.72 for the year as the result and regard them as the vision for China’s higher education system.

For Issue 5, we analyze the PPHE and RQI. Through the analysis of China’s national conditions, we decide to focus on adult higher education. We first predict the number of people that the new policy need to promote. Then we assess the strength of higher education of provinces in mainland China through the Analytic Hierarchy Process and get the number of people need to increase in each province. In the end, we analyze the 10-year policy arrangements for each province. We propose that universities divide the subjects into practical-based and research-based subjects. The classification of subjects not only makes application-oriented students more competitive after graduation, but also makes research-oriented students more capable of research.

For Issue 6 and 7, we use the model in Issue 2 to evaluate the theoretical results of the new policy and get the final judgement result of China’s higher education system in the next ten years. The new policy brings the final judgement result to 0.8030 in 2030, which is greater than the one without the new policy and the effect is very significant.Finally, we discuss the impact and difficulties during policy implementation from two aspects: ownership of management rights and impact of market economy.

Keywords: Hierarchical Analysis, Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation, Time Series Analysis

Cite: Yeqi He, Penghui Xue and Hongming Liu. "Checking the Pulse and Temperature of Higher Education." Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM). 2021.
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