Under the support of “Top Scholar Lecture in International Education Frontier Series”, we invited Professor Eric A. Hanushek, the leading figure in Economics of Education research, and also a senior fellow in Hoover Institute, Stanford University, to visit Faculty of Education (FE) at Beijing Normal University from 25th March to 29th March, 2013.
Eric A. Hanushek received his PhD in economics as early as 1968 in MIT. Now he is Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at Hoover Institute, Stanford University. He is a well-known labor economist, education economist and a sociologist. He was ever elected as the president of Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and elected as Fellow in Society of Labor Economists and American Educational Research Association in 2006 and 2008 respectively.
Professor Hanushek's visit brought great attentions from leaders of FE and other schools. In the evening of 25th , Zhongying Shi, the Dean of FE, Jiayong Li, the Vice Dean of FE, Yuhong Du, the Director of Institute of economics of education, and Desheng Lai, the Dean of BNU Business School, all came to have a meeting with him, and communicated with each other in the aspect of discipline construction, research collaboration, academic exchanges.
In the morning of 27th and 28th, Professor Hanushek gave two lectures titled “Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality” and “Economic Analysis of International Differences on Student Achievements”, on the lecture hall of New BNU Library. Two lectures attracted researchers , teachers, students, interested in educational and economic studies, from many universities and institutions. Professor Ping Du and Yongmei Hu were the lecture host respectively.
In the first lecture, Professor Hanushek discussed the associations between teacher quality and student achievements or their future incomes. His research showed that teacher quality played a key role in student's cognitive development and brought students higher rewards. He suggested that salary system reform and effective incentive for teachers, would be useful in improving teacher quality. In the second lecture, Professor Hanushek unfolded the factors impacting student's cognitive skills, and pointed out that the improvement of cognitive skills would impact the overall economic development of a nation. He showed that teacher quality , accountability, autonomy, between-school competitions, and incentive for teachers are all the big factors to enhance student cognitive skills. The raise of future labor force's cognitive skills would produce great economic values, and facilitate economic growth. It has long-term impacts on nation wealth.