Abstract: In recent years, higher education and economic development in Anhui Province have shown a rapid rise momentum. This paper systematically analyses the relationship between higher education and economic development in Anhui Province by means of grey relational theory, and tries to find out the factors affecting the economic development of higher education. The final results show that the economic development of Anhui Province has the greatest correlation with the proportion of general public budget of public funds per student in general public budget of education funds per student, which indicates that optimizing the expenditure structure of higher education expenditure in Anhui province has an important impact on economic development.