Analysis of the Total Factor Productivity of China Higher Education Based on Malmquist Index

The Malmquist Index method was applied to the measurement of total factor productivity of China’s higher education during 1997 to 2005.The change in total factor productivity is decomposed into technology change,efficiency change,pure technology efficiency and scale efficiency.The result shows that the growth of China’s higher education TFP is mainly promoted by the technology change rather than the efficiency change because of the interaction between pure technology efficiency and scale efficiency.The article also points out that the future strategy of China higher education should focus on the improvement of technology change and pure technology efficiency,and control the higher education scale.