Higher Education Access in China: The Role of Family, Gender, and Independent Freshman Admissions

• In Event: 1483 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 07. Higher Education and Employment: Global Perspectives

Abstract

In 2016, the Chinese government celebrated its legacy in achieving 40% of college enrollment (Ministry of Education, 2016). Increasingly, concurrent with such unprecedented expansion, colleges and universities are increasingly being “differentiated qualitatively”- holding the same level of academic credentials from universities with different rankings carries distinct symbolic meanings as these will be interpreted differently in the labor market (Arum, Gamoran, & Shavit, 2007). Specifically, one of the strategies developed to broaden access to higher education (HE) was the introduction of the Independent Freshman Admissions (IFA) in 2002 to find students who normally would have been left out of by the exam-only entrance model. While the acknowledged objective of the IFA system is to offer more opportunities for college admissions, no comprehensive empirical investigation of the effects of this policy has been conducted since it was introduced in 2002. By utilizing survey data from Beijing College Student Panel Survey (BCSPS), the results from this study demonstrate that men still enjoy considerable advantages in attending well-recognized institutions in better-resourced cities. Also, graduating from an elite state-funded public school is found to be closely linked with attending a higher-ranked university. In terms of IFA recruitment, this study suggests that contrary to the official policy discourses claim to stature a system with equal opportunity for all social origins, it is those who are male, Han, attending elite high schools, and from wealthier one-child families with college educated parents are more likely to seek a university placement via the IFA.

Author

• Bo Zhao