Another Dual Structure in China’s Education System? Looking Into the Access and Equity Issues in Higher Education for Tibetans

• In Event: Looking Deeper Into China’s Unequal Access to Higher Education

Abstract

This paper examines the access and equity issues in higher education for Tibetans, by taking Minzu University of China as a case study. The ethnographic data collected between March 2011 and April 2012 highlights the disparity in university enrollment based on ethnic memberships and home provinces.
On the one hand, a disproportionately high percentage of Tibetan students have been assigned to several of the “minzu” universities/institutes, where the primary goal is to cultivate national consciousness of the students who will mostly go back to work in ethnic minority regions as the so called “minority cadres”. The percentage of Tibetan students who are studying in mainstream comprehensive universities, especially that in China’s top universities is very low.
On the other hand, regional ethnic preferential policies have contributed to the internal differentiations in university enrollment within the Tibetan group. Generally, the Tibetan students can be enrolled in two tracks during primary and secondary education: mainstream Chinese and bilingual education. Tibetan students from Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan and Sichuan Province who have been enrolled in the bilingual track can only choose to study in minzu universities/institutes or other selected institutes and provincial universities, with Tibetan language and literature as a common major. Tibetan students from Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) who have been enrolled in the bilingual track are free to choose to study in any universities/institutes based on their university entrance scores. In addition, the Inland Tibetan school program that places Tibetans in boarding schools of major Chinese cities is oriented exclusively to TAR students. Graduates of these schools are more advantaged in admission to national level comprehensive universities.
The paper argues that the imbalanced ethnic relations and politicized educational practices have contributed to the external and internal disparity in university access. In short, politicized educational practices has partly increased the percentage of Tibetan university students, but has largely lowered the percentage of Tibetan students who are studying in major comprehensive universities, further reinforcing a dual structure and intensifying the majority-minority dichotomy.

Author

• Miaoyan Yang, The University of Hong Kong