Journal of Higher Education Research

To explore the relationship between China's higher education and the level of regional economic development, the coupling coordination degree of panel data from China's Sichuan province across 2011-2018 is analyzed based on self-constructed evaluation index system and with a integration of various methods including entropy value method, coupling coordination degree model and grey forecasting model. The results show that the coupling coordination degree between higher education and economic development in five Sichuan districts is not high, among which Chengdu Plain Economic Zone is much higher than the other four: southern Sichuan Economic Zone, northeast Sichuan Economic Zone, Panxi Economic Zone and northwest Sichuan Ecological Demonstration Zone. The study also predicts that in the five years, the coupling coordination degree of the five districts in Sichuan will be still not high, and none of them will broke through the incoordinate stage and entered the coordination stage. Moreover, the difference between the prefecture-level cities in Chengdu Plain Economic Zone is the largest.