Graduate education and enterprise innovation

Graduate education aims to cultivate high-level innovative talent and plays an important role in national innovation system. This study employs the difference-in-differences method to examine the impact of graduate education in Chinese universities on enterprise innovation. China implemented a graduate enrolment expansion policy in 2009, which is regarded as an exogenous policy shock in this study. This study finds that graduate enrolment expansion significantly promotes the innovation activities of high-tech enterprises. Such effect is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises in developed regions. Furthermore, graduate enrolment expansion improves the education level of employees, and increases the number of research & development personnel of enterprises. This in turn upgrades human capital and promotes enterprise innovation. Our findings highlight the importance of a more labour-market-oriented higher education system, and provide implications for driving enterprise innovation through upgrading human capital.