**6. Conclusions**

This paper explores the impact of higher education on the development of a green economy. By proposing a new approach to indirectly estimate green GDP, two hypotheses have been confirmed through empirical analysis.

First, higher education plays a significant role in building a green economy.

Second, green GDP is more responsive to changes in higher education than the traditional GDP. This paper highlights the importance of higher education in the sustainability of development. The quantity of labor has a weakening impact on green GDP, while the quality of labor represented by education has exerted a more pronouncing influence on green economies. This implies that economic development starts to rely less on the number of labors in the workforce and become more dependent on higher education, which not only provides elements for production, but also effectively improves industrial structures and increases production efficiency.

There were two limitations of our studies. First, we have indirectly estimated green GDP by creating a new indicator, though the absolute value of this indicator cannot stand for the real green output. In spite of our meaningful exploration in the calculation of green GDP, further analysis and discussion about relevant indicators are still needed in order to establish the reliability and validity, considering the complexity in calculating environmental pollution and the unavailability of data about resource consumption when estimating green GDP. Second, we have proposed one possible interpretation of the influencing mechanism of higher education on green GDP based on current knowledge and speculation, and the effectiveness of this interpretation still needs to be evidenced by empirical studies in the future.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization and the research design, X.D., W.G., and R.C.; data curation, X.D. and R.C.; formal analysis, W.G. and R.C.; funding acquisition, X.D. and W.M.; investigation, W.G. and R.C.; resources, X.D. and W.M.; visualization, W.G. and R.C.; writing—original draft, W.G., X.D., and R.C.; writing—review and editing, X.D. and W.G.

**Funding:** This research was funded by a key research project (2016) of the Institute of Educational Economics, Peking University, "Education and Economic Growth under the Background of New Economic Normalization", sponsored by Ministry of Education, P.R.C., grant number: 16JJD880004.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors thank the support from the Institute of Educational Economics, Peking University.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
