Bigger Pie, Bigger Slice? The Impact of Higher Education Expansion on Educational Opportunity in China

Abstract

China's higher education system has expanded rapidly since 1999. Exploiting variation in the density of university expansion across provinces and high school cohorts and applying a difference-in-differences model, we estimate the impact of higher education expansion on educational access and attainment with a particular focus on students' family and demographic backgrounds. Results indicate that the expansion of university spots increased both access and graduation rates at 4-year universities, but this improvement was driven by those of higher social status, including males, those with highly educated fathers, hanethnic and urban students. Females, rural students and those with low-educated fathers also benefited once they were able to graduate from high school. Also, the policy had only a limited effect on the likelihood of graduating from high school. As in other countries, education expansion in China has not led to equal distribution of educational opportunities, and the least socioeconomically advantaged students are missing out.

The elite exclusion: stratified access and production during the Chinese higher education expansion

“…Previous research has already shown the sharp increase in the total college enrollment from 1999 using aggregate data from the China National Bureau of Statistics (Yeung, 2013 ; Li et al., 2014 ; Ou & Hou, 2019 ). We present the first evidence on the differential changes in enrollment, inputs, and student access outcomes by institutional stratification.…”

“…First, we find evidence of the enlarging unequal access to elite higher education for students from different family backgrounds during the enrollment expansion, which supports the effectively or expanding maintained inequality theory (Lucas, 2001 ; Alon, 2009 ). These results speak to a large body of literature on higher education enrollment expansion and access in many countries, for instance, the United States (Taubman et al., 1972 ; Walters, 1984 ; Juhn et al., 2005 ; Barr & Turner, 2013 ; Soliz, 2018 ), France (Deer, 2005 ), the United Kingdom (Walker & Zhu, 2008 ; Boliver, 2011 ; Devereux & Fan, 2011 ), Italy (Bratti et al., 2008 ; Oppedisano, 2011 )), Germany (Reimer & Pollak, 2010 ), Turkey (Özoǧlu et al., 2016 ), Brazil (McCowan, 2007 ; Boliver, 2011 ; Dias et al., 2011 ), Ireland (McCoy & Smyth, 2011 ), and China (Luo et al., 2018 ; Ou & Hou, 2019 ). In particular, this paper shows new evidence of the expanding socioeconomic gaps in college access in the presence of higher education selectivity stratification.…”

Higher Education Expansion and Labor Market Outcomes for Young College Graduates

“…We follow the decision rule that if the current province is the same as the hukou registered province and that individual did not leave the hukou registration province over the last five years, we assign the hukou registration province as the province where the individual graduated from high school. As we discuss in a later section, such a rule is reasonable given that the increases in university spots apply mainly to students registered in the same province where the universities are located (Hou and Ou, 2015). However, we discuss this further in the robustness check section.…”

“…In addition to the goal of investing in education for future development, the expansion of student spots in Chinese universities was also intended to increase domestic consumption and to relieve employment pressure on the labor market by absorbing high school graduates into college at a time when the nation was confronting the recession that resulted from the Asian financial crisis (Wan, 2006;Wu and Zhao, 2010;Wu & Zhang, 2010). , 1970-2012(Hou and Ou, 2015 Under the traditional central planning regime, higher education in China was heavily subsidized and mostly free. However, in 1997, just 2 years before the expansion policy was implemented, China enacted a universal tuition policy that gradually shifted responsibility for financing higher education from the government to families (Carnoy, 2011;Wang, Fleisher, Li and Li, 2007;Yeung, 2013).…”

“…On the other hand, while there is some evidence that higher education expansion in China has narrowed the gender gap in college access (Wu and Zhang, 2010), it is not yet clear whether the higher education expansion has brought about increased earnings for women (Hou and Ou, 2015). Even as formal schooling improves individuals' economic well-being, other contextual factors may keep women from obtaining the optimal benefits of increased education.…”