Who Is It Easier for to Go to College? An Empirical Study on the Relationship Between Students’ Socioeconomic Status and Their Access to Higher Education in China

• In Event: College Access Policy on the Disadvantaged in China: Perspectives of Different Groups

Abstract

LIU Qiang,
Associate Professor, Beijing Normal University

1. Objectives
Higher education in China has experienced an unprecedented expansion since 1999 (Wang, 2006). Despite the heated public debate on equity in access to higher education, little anecdotal evidence has been presented to show the impact of SES on students in access to higher education, particularly for those with low socioeconomic status background, mainly due to the unavailability of appropriate data (Ding, 2004). Based on a national graduate survey and using parent’s occupation, education, and family annual income as indicators of students’ family SES, this study aims at exploring student’s retrospective information on family socioeconomic backgrounds and its impact on higher education opportunities.

2. Theoretical Framework
The Social Stratification Theory gets frequent used in explaining the issues concerned the relationship between social class and education. In this study, the three-component theory of stratification is selected as the theoretical framework. In addition, the theory of higher education equity is also involved.

3. Data Source
The data used in this study primarily comes from a national graduate survey – “Longitudinal Survey of College Student’s Development”, which circulated in 31 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) of Mainland China. The respondents were the freshmen of Year 2011 from 175 colleges and 46,879 valid questionnaires were finally collected with a success rate of 83.4%. The questionnaire covered items like gender, school, discipline, major, parent’s education, parent’s occupation, family annul income, college admission, and etc.

The China’s Occupation Classification System issued by the National Bureau of Statistics of China is employed in this research for parent’s occupation. Moreover, the indicator of stratification mobility rate is utilized to explore the differences of students from various family backgrounds in entering colleges.

4. Methods
The univariate and multivariate descriptive statistical methods are adopted in this study to analyze family socioeconomic background distribution of college students and respective stratification mobility rate of higher education opportunity. Moreover, the multinomial logistic regression and linear regression models are employed in the analysis to explore student’s SES background’s impact on their access to colleges.

5. Preliminary Results
It is found that there are substantial disparities among different SES students in higher education opportunity, access to different higher education institutions, and access to different disciplines and majors. There exists a positive and significant correlation between students’ access to higher education and their family annual income. Fathers’ occupation hierarchy status and education level have a significant influence on their children’s access to higher education, while the mothers’ does not.

6. Significance of the Study
The study has the potential to make a significant contribution to the development of methodological approaches in Chinese educational research, where quantitative studies are still rare. It thus provides an empirical quantitative study for other Chinese educational researchers, when there are limited examples. This research focused on the student’s SES impact on their access to colleges and the barriers for children with low SES background to access to higher education, which contributes to understand the inequity still exists in Chinese current higher education system.

Author

• Qiang Liu, Beijing Normal University