Ritualist and Retreatist: Cultural Capital and Rural Students’ Orientations to the Labor Market in Chinese Elite Universities

• In Event: Rural Students, Education and Social Mobility in China

Proposal

The great expansion of Chinese higher education has created more chances in elite universities for students from rural communities. Recent studies suggest that rural students in universities are disadvantaged in securing high quality jobs in the graduate labour market. Much of the research around the graduate labour market in China has been confined to a large-scale survey data based on a human capital assumption. There has been very little empirical work exploring the way in which rural students are beginning to understand and manage their employability in an increasingly competitive labour market. By linking Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital to Tomlinson’s ideal-type model of students’ orientations to work, career and employability, this research aims to explore rural students’ orientation to the labor market and the way they understand and manage their employability.

The data we use comes from a large mixed-method study at four typical large, first-tier public Project 985 universities. The survey part, which includes a sample of around 2,000 participants selected using Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) sampling from urban and rural areas, was carried out at the end of their freshman, sophomore, and senior years. After each round of the survey, we conducted follow-up in-depth interviews with a subsample selected by purposive sampling. This study focuses on the qualitative part of the data, specifically 68 rural students’ transition from higher education into labour market.

The data analysis suggests that: (1) rural students tend to be more passive in their approach to career progression and employability management. They are more likely to be ritualist and retreatist, rather than careerist. For example, they are less likely to develop a strong orientation around future work and career, and are more passive in achieving labour market goals and managing employability. (2) rural students’ attitudes and orientation towards future work and careers can be attributed to the reason that they are unfamiliar with the employability management culture of the middle-class nature in elite universities. They either lack the cultural and social resources to negotiate the demands of the job market.

This study contributes to the body of literature in understanding rural students’ disadvantages in graduate labour market by examining the way they perceive and position themselves in relation to future work. It helps to develop the understanding of the experiences and outcomes of rural students once they arrive at university. This study has some important policy implications as well. For example, the data suggests there is a need for more teaching and learning policies around graduate employability to prevent rural students from fatherly marginalized from the graduate labor market.

Authors

• Ailei Xie, Guangzhou University

• YUNYUN QIN