Academic Exceptionalism Leads to Class and Gender Inequalities in Self-Assessment of Competence at Chinese Elite Universities

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7. Belonging in Selective and Elite Institutions

Abstract

The scholarship on elite education has focused on the processes through which elite education consecrates students as “the best and the brightest” and justifies elites’ privilege. This paper problematizes an understudied educational structure found in elite higher education in China: the valorization of exceptionalism (i.e., exceptional competence / intelligence) and the elevated status bestowed on top students. Drawing on 133 in-depth interviews, conducted in Beijing in 2021 and 2022, with junior and senior students at the two most prestigious elite universities in China—Peking University (PKU) and Tsinghua University (THU), this study shows that, combined with peer-to-peer status competition during university, construction of exceptionalism influences students’ self-assessment of competence. Such an educational structure produces class inequality, as privileged students enjoy an advantage in crafting a narrative of excellence. It also produces gender inequality by activating the male-brilliance stereotype (Bian, Leslie, and Cimpian 2017; Leslie et al. 2015)—the idea that men possess innate intelligence while women are more hard working than innately talented in high-level work, leading women (especially the less privileged) to have lower self-assessment of competence.

This research contributes to the scholarship of comparative higher education, elite education, and comparative research on inequality by clarifying how merit is valorized in different educational systems. Women have been gaining an advantage over men in educational attainment and academic performance in middle-income and high-income countries (DiPrete and Buchmann 2013), but I show that elite higher education can disadvantage women when it promotes exceptionalism. Leveraging a very privileged slice of the college student population in China, this dissertation contributes to updating our understanding about higher education, class, and gender in China.

Author

• Jingyun Dai, Harvard University