| Based on the panel data of 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu Province from 2013 to 2023, this paper empirically examines the internal relationship between higher education investment and high-quality economic development. The results indicate that: (1) The scale, structure, and quality of higher education investment all have significant positive effects on high-quality economic development. Among these, the quality of higher education investment has the greatest impact, followed by investment structure, while the promotion effect of investment scale is the smallest. (2) Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impacts of higher education investment scale, structure, and quality on high-quality economic development are more significant in sample groups with higher levels of economic development, better transportation infrastructure, and those located in Southern Jiangsu. (3) Threshold effect tests show that the scale and structure of higher education investment have a single threshold effect on high-quality economic development, and the quality of higher education investment has a double threshold effect on high-quality economic development. |