The quest for higher education by the Chinese middle class: retrenching social mobility?
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The quest for higher education by the Chinese middle class: retrenching social mobility? Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang
Published online: 31 March 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This article examines how and why the Chinese second-generation middle class, who are unable to obtain admission in China’s premier universities, turn their back on other public universities and instead attend private universities in their country. It finds that their parents capitalize on their privileged guanxi (connections) to send their children to private universities and then study abroad to secure a generational reproduction of their class status and mobility. The Chinese new middle class families look upon joint-partnership private universities as the stepping stone for overseas study. In addition, this article examines how extant Western class theories, including Weberian, Neo-Weberian, and Bourdieuian theories, cannot provide an adequate account of class formation and the generational stratification in present-day China. To explain this reproduction of class in contemporary China, this paper explores how and why the Maoist social institutions of danwei (work unit) and hukou (household registration) still matter in post-reform China in determining middle class’s life chance. Seen in this light, the progenies of cadres and skilled professionals are the main beneficiaries of economic reform. Keywords The Chinese new middle class Hukou Danwei Guanxi Transnational higher education Generational stratification
Education has become a form of consumption. And like any other consumption item, educational consumption often is based on one’s economic capability and intelligence. Excellent educational resources… are scarce and should be priced at a higher level. It is natural that not everyone can afford excellent educational resources. It is like shopping for clothing. A well-off man can go to a brand-name store to buy a 10,000-yuan suit, while a poor person can buy a 100-yuan suit from a vendor (Wang 2006).
E. Y. Tsang (&) Department of General Education, Hang Seng Management College, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected]
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High Educ (2013) 66:653–668
This paper addresses a perplexing question in China’s higher education. The national university entrance examination (gaokao) is a highly competitive examination. According to Commonwealth of Australia (2009), there were 10.5 million candidates in 2008, of which only 57 % (5.99 million) were eligible for admission to China’s universities, and only the top 10 % of the candidates were admitted to tier-one universities. However, the Chinese government has increased its funding to higher education since the turn of the century, resulting in a rapid growth in the number of colleges and universities and churning out more than six million graduates in 2011. Between 1985 and 2000, the total number of China’s regular institutions of higher education stayed between 1,000 and 1,100. It rose to 1,225 in 2001 and by the end of 2011, there were 2,409,
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