為探討中國大陸高等教育地方化的效果，本研究以分權理論觀點，透過文獻與數據的分析以期發現造成中國大陸高等教育地方化成功的原因。在自變項方面，本研究涵括了高等教育市場化、大眾化的實踐、教育財政管理、國際教育市場競爭等4個變數。依變項則為高等教育地方化在歷史發展過程中呈現的教育效果，作為本論文的研究架構。
本研究結果顯示中國大陸高等教育地方化的發展有以下幾個特點：（一）組織結構產生新的權力協調模式；（二）政府分權與大學自主的偏向，取決於內部傳統的行政關係與外部市場化的合力作用；（三）中國大陸社會體制的變革，促成了政府分權政策、高等教育市場化與大眾化的方向發展；（四）政府高等教育財務拮据的危機，催生了效率提升的高教體制；（五）校長選拔方式逐漸脫離政治任命的窠臼；（六）高等教育的品質在地方化之後確實有所提升。這些研究結果代表過去大陸高度集權的高等教育，在國家權力、學術、社會、市場交互作用下，發生以政府分權的方式，進行管理高等教育的體制，是促成高等教育地方化的重要因素。
本研究亦發現，基於政府分權無法完全落實，高等教育地方化現階段仍有相當多的問題產生，包括：事權與財權的不對稱；政府與學校權力的博奕；學校黨委書記與校長權力的邊界問題；教育根本價值的淪喪與功利主義的擡頭等。這些問題是大陸政府官方、高等教育學界、以及一般大眾社會關切且值得後續深入研究的問題。
This study uses the theory of decentralization of power to analyze the effects of higher education localization in China. Literature review and data analysis is used to determine why higher education localization has been successful in China. The four independent variables in this study are marketization of higher education, education massification, financial management in education, and competitiveness in the international education market. The dependent variable is educational achievements of higher education localization as it developed in history.
The results of this study indicate that (1) the power structure of higher education developed a new way for power collaboration. (2) The decentralization of the government’s power and universities’ development towards autonomies are influenced by a combination of the school’s internal, traditional administrative relationships and the external marketization of education. (3) The reformation of China’s social system enabled the decentralization of the government’s power and the marketization and massification of higher education. (4) The government’s financial deficiency for higher education expedited the growth of higher education. (5) The traditional method of appointing public officials as university presidents became more relaxed. (6) The quality of higher education has improved due to localization. These aforementioned results explain how the higher education system of the previously highly centralized government of China—under the interaction of national authorities, academia, society, and market—decentralized its power to manage the higher education system, which was an important factor that led to the localization of higher education.
This study also discovers that the government is unable to completely decentralize its power, thus the current localization of higher education still has many problems. For example, the decision-making authority is not in balance with the financial authority; there is a continuous power struggle between government and school; the power boundaries of the party committee secretaries and the presidents of the universities are unclear; the value of education is debasing and approaches to utilitarianism are appearing. These are some of the serious problems that are now faced by the Chinese government, the higher education academia, and the public in general.
