Aspiration for Upper-Secondary-Education Enrollment in Non-Urban Areas of China : Comparative Analysis on the Factors of Local Economic Development

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the relationship between local economic development, especially the pattern of local economic development, and education development from the viewpoint of enrollment consciousness of the third-grade secondary school students. This paper is based on comparative analysis of the questionnaire survey conducted in two regions. This paper employs an analysis model, that is, ""Self Education Aspiration"" (SEA) is the final dependent variable and lies on the factors of local economics, family and self. Local economics is the fundamental factor to SEA with family and self as the transferring media. Analytical result shows that the main contributing factor to the education aspiration for the secondary school students is not the family income level, but two variables of ""Parents\u27Education Aspiration"" and ""Self Cognition to diploma value"". Furthermore, the two variables in the same region are decided by the status of work opportunity (especially for the young people), which is dependent on the local economic development level and particularly the local economic development pattern