Can Polycentric Layout of Higher Education Promote Urban Innovation
The in-depth implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy depends on higher education,but as a typical resource-dependent organization,colleges and universities are often subject to government goals and market forces.The expansion of the scale of higher education brought about by this relative lack of independence directly promotes the polycentric layout of higher education in the provincial space,which will hinder the role of higher education in promoting the development of eco-nomic and social order.Taking 231 cities in 23 provinces from 2004 to 2019 as research samples,the fixed-effect model and instrumental variable method were used in the empirical study,and the results show:Firstly,the multi-centralization of provincial higher education due to the lack of autonomy of colleges and universities will have a negative impact on the innovation level of intra-provincial cities.Secondly,the crowding-out effect of infrastructure construction is a key mechanism.The process of provincial multi-cen-tralization,which is mutually external and internal to local government competition and game,will amplify the investment-driven attribute of the scale expansion of local universities through infrastructure construc-tion,and eventually crowd out urban innovation.Although the network externalities brought by knowledge spillover at the provincial level and the agglomeration externalities at the city level are beneficial to urban innovation,it is difficult to overcome the negative effects brought by the polycentric layout.Thirdly,the heterogeneity study found that the multi-center layout only promoted formal equity,but in fact,the innovation level of cities with lower economic development level and administrative level was more negative-ly affected,and the spillover effect of central cities on the innovation level of neighboring regions was also indirectly weakened.Therefore,accelerating the transformation of the economic growth logic of local governments,respecting the subjectivity of colleges and universities,and avoiding blind expansion are effec-tive ways to optimize the layout of provincial higher education,promote the level of urban innovation,and promote the high-quality development of urban economy.
higher education layoutmulti-centralizationurban innovationexpansion of higher edu-cation scale
国家科技期刊平台
NSTL
万方数据
维普
