An empirical research on the contribution rate of higher education in central China to its economic development

With the development of knowledge-based economy, education has entered into the core from the periphery of economic society, and hence higher education has gradually become the "incubator" of technology and the "booster" of economic development. Education and economy interact with and support each other, thus propel the all-around development and progress of society. This paper explores the contribution of higher education to the economic growth from the perspective of the theory of educational economy and employs Cobb-Douglas production model to calculate the contribution rate of higher education of the six central provinces to economic development and concludes that the higher education sector lacks of investment and its development can't meet the need of economic development.