Social Stratification and Access to World-Class Universities: Study Abroad at One Top Chinese University

• In Event: 28.044 - Analyzing Equality and Social Justice in Higher Education in China

Abstract

Over the past decade, the scale of volume and mobility of international students has dramatically changed the landscape of international higher education. Chinese overseas students have become the largest group among those who pursue their study aboard. In Chinese elite universities, many students study abroad and choose to go to the so called world-class universities. In China’s labor market, diplomas from world-class universities are highly regarded symbolic capitals and warrant a variety of advantages to the holders. Drawing on Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI) theory and Bourdieu’s cultural capital, this paper argues for a theoretical case of the convertibility of different forms of capital in shaping elite opportunities in increasingly globalized higher education systems. Using the 2017 survey data involving 1,407 graduates from a variety of fields of study from Peking University, it reveals that parental educational levels and students’ socioeconomic status have a significant impact on their choices for studying in elite universities abroad. In particular, the meritocratic factor measured by GPA performance does not affect the study aboard choices of those from the non-STEM fields of study. By contrast, families’ economic capital and parental levels of education alongside the GPA results play an important role in determining the choices of study abroad among the students from STEM fields.

Existing scholarship tends to focus on Chinese students’ choices of country destinations, or choices of universities and fields of study. More recent research extends to explore the rationale for Chinese students to study abroad. However, there is a lack of a systematic analysis of how the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the students combine to affect their degree of choices. Neither do we know the patterns of study abroad among elite university graduates in China. Those studies also primarily adopt a qualitative approach, which in turn limits their scale and scope of analysis. This research fills out such gaps by using a first-hand survey study to map out the patterns of how social origin and demographic factors shape Chinese students’ choices of study aboard. Its findings provide some new evidence for EMI theory in the Chinese context by arguing for a new type of qualitatively different education overseas. Its analysis also offers a new theoretical dimension in examining how economic, financial and political capital by entrepreneurial and managerial elites in China are converted into cultural and scholastic capital, which further strengthens their advantages and competitiveness through elite university degrees home and aboard.

Authors

• Wenqin Shen, Peking University

• Ye Liu, King’s College London

• Yunshan Liu, Peking University

• Ying Huang, Peking University