Higher Education and Investment in Knowledge: A Perspective from Talent Policies in Mainland China

Abstract

China’s “opening” policy brought her lasting economic growth over the last four decades and pushed her to become a major contributor to technology and science innovations. This chapter introduces China’s effort in investing in knowledge through the channel of higher education institutions, through the perspective of China’s talent policies. We found that higher education institutions can serve as human capital banks that create, store, and utilize talents for innovations in the knowledge economy. The active participation of other stakeholders steers the direction of research and teaching activities within higher education, which may sometimes lead to an overemphasis on short-term products and a segregated academic labor market at the cost of long-term academic productivity and total efficiency of knowledge generation. We suggest that China make more effort to build an open and sustainable academic environment, which would eventually boost the innovation-led economy via the talents that have been cultivated, recruited, and retained by higher education institutions.