Research on the Avoidance of Moral Hazard in Higher Education Evaluation of China Under Multi-agent Mode

Abstract

The education evaluation agencies will undertake education evaluation task and will form principal-agent relationships with the governments with the separation reform of supervision, running and evaluation in China. Because of bounded rationality and information asymmetry, it was already a big problem to avoid the moral hazard of an education evaluation agency in a principal-agent relationship involving only one principal and one agent. In reality, the principal-agent relationship is often more complicated. Of particular concern is that the situation of “one principal–multiple agents” in the evaluation of higher education has emerged. The coexistence of “multiple” education evaluation agencies, such as the official agencies, the semi-official agencies, the agencies affiliated with the university, and the third-party agencies, has taken shape. By using critical discourse analysis, this study attempts to argue that avoiding the moral hazard of higher education evaluation under the “multi-agent” mode becomes a research issue that must be squarely addressed. The paper concluded that in “multi-agent” mode, although the possibility of implied moral hazard in higher education evaluation increases, if the “relative performance” evaluation mechanism can be understood and effective measures can be taken, not only will it not lead to the consequences of moral hazard being more difficult to avoid, but it will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the avoidance of moral hazard. The conclusion has important reference significance on how to effectively use the “multi-agent” mode to avoid the moral hazard of higher education evaluation.