Access to and Equity of Colleges for Tibetans in the Era of China’s Higher Education Expansion

• In Event: Dissertation workshop session
  In Special Session: China and Higher Education

Proposal

In recent years, China’s higher education has been moved from elitism to massification, therefore the emphasis has been increasingly laid on access and equity in higher education. Despite China’s efforts to implement dual forms of educational strategies of integration and alienation, Tibetan college students struggle to enter to colleges. Once they do get in, they face challenges on campus. Such educational strategies and challenges require students to navigate both minority and mainstream cultures, otherwise, as Clothey stated, “minorities continue to be strangers in China’s society, and many of those who do adapt, become strangers at home” (2004, p. 166). Aligned with these concepts, my research project has two parallel aims: to examine current patterns and trends of higher education access and equity issues for ethnic Tibetans in the era of China’s massification of its institutions. Similarly, I also aim to investigate and develop a meaningful protocol of college access and equity for Tibetan students.
The study will employ a mixed method approach to understand the research questions. Mixed method combines both quantative and qualitative research. Logistic regression models will be used to investigate the research question: how do family SES, high school type, home location, and ethnicity influence students’ opportunities in being admitted to universities? The qualitative research will seek an understanding of: what are the perspectives of Tibetan students and teachers on issues of access and equity and the values of a meaningful higher education.
Theoretically, my study will be guided by the literature reviews around cultural capital, social capital, college access, and values of higher education. In the economics of education literature, it is common to understand that people choose higher education only if it increases their lifetime earnings expectations (Manski, 1990). Pursuit of higher education is almost always based on the perceived linkages to future earnings. In other words, people choose to attend higher education only if the economic returns outweigh the costs (Brand, Xie, 2010). This narrow analysis ignores students’ family backgrounds, home environments, and previous educational experiences that are influencing mechanisms of college attainment. For individuals with socially privileged backgrounds, college is a culturally expected outcome (Brand, Xie, 2010). For them, college does not intentionally link to economic gains compared with those that are from less advantaged groups for whom an economic justification may well obtain (Brand, Xie, 2010).
Although many recent works have improved our understanding in college attendance for underrepresented students or minority students in the U.S by applying the concepts of cultural and social capital (McDonough et al., 1997; Perna, 2000; Ceja, 2000), so limited studies have been done in the educational context such as China. These scholars argue that students from these backgrounds, such as low SES, and ethnic minority status possess less cultural capital, and do not have much access to the information or social networks that may serve as the channels to college opportunities. Agreeing with these arguments, an empirical study proposed to ask how much social capital do students need to improve their opportunity for and knowledge of attending college, if there are particular sources of social capital that are more important than others in helping students with college attendance (Gonzalez, Stoner & Jovel, 2003). Their findings suggest that parents and siblings as agents of social capital, both have played positive and important roles in their opportunities for college attendance (Gonzalez, Stoner & Jovel, 2003). The same is true for teachers’ roles in college attendance in this empirical study.
My research project is still in the process of writing the research proposal so I do not yet have empirical findings of the study.

Author

• Shamo Thar, University of Massachusetts Amherst