On the morning of April 13, the 7th lecture of Bai-Qinxian University Lecture by Overseas Prestigious Scholars was held at the Puhe Campus. Professor Douglas Harris from Tulane University of the United States was invited to deliver an academic report entitled The U.S. (and Chinese) Schooling Markets: Vouchers and Other Alternatives to Public Schools. Qiu Huanguang, Vice President of Liaoning University (LNU), attended the lecture and delivered a welcome address. The lecture was chaired by Dong Baomin, Deputy Director of the Division of Economics.
Professor Douglas Harris centered his presentation on the theme of school voucher policies and their impact on education markets. Starting from the basic logic of the relationship between government and market in the education system, he systematically reviewed market-oriented reform pathways represented by school vouchers. He noted that despite education’s prominent public attributes, market mechanisms still play a vital role in resource allocation, with different countries forging distinctive development paths in institutional design. He also conducted a comparative analysis of the education systems of China and the United States. On this basis, combining the rapid expansion of universal school voucher policies in the United States in recent years, Professor Harris evaluated the preliminary policy effects from the perspectives of student enrollment scale, tuition changes, and school entry and exit. Research shows that school voucher policies have begun to influence the operation of education markets and feature gradual adjustment under various practical constraints. During the session, Professor Harris interacted and exchanged views with teachers and students present, and held in-depth discussions on issues including the institutional design of school voucher policies, the operational mechanisms of education markets, and the assessment of their policy effects.
At the conclusion of the lecture, Professor Qiu Huanguang presented Professor Harris with the certificate of commemoration for the Bai-Qinxian University Lecture by Overseas Prestigious Scholars. Professor Huo Weidong, Deputy Director of the Division of Economics, and Professor You Yu, Deputy Dean of the Li Anmin Institute of Economic Research, presented a university cap and a commemorative photo to Professor Harris respectively. Associate Professor Chen Feng from the Li Anmin Institute of Economic Research, together with his supervisor Professor Harris, was invited to take a group photo as a memento.
Professor Douglas Harris is Chair of the Department of Economics and Schlieder Foundation Professor of Public Education at Tulane University. He also serves as Director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice and the State of the Nation Project, and is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has been named one of America’s top ten leading education economists by Education Week. Professor Harris is the author of three monographs and has published more than 100 articles in leading journals including Science, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Human Resources, with his research cited over 12,000 times. He has testified before the United States Senate and provided policy advice to the White House, the U.S. Department of Education, and nine state governors, exerting a substantial impact on U.S. education policy. His research has been widely cited by media outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
