Cultural capital and higher education inequalities in contemporary China

Abstract

The relationship between cultural capital endowment and higher education inequalities can be better understood by approaching it in a non‐Western socio‐cultural order. This article brings together empirical studies on this theme in the social context of China. The examination‐oriented higher education system and the supplementary independent freshman/women recruitment complicate the role of cultural capital, entailing positive, null, or adverse effects. Although cultural capital offers little help for elite university attendance, it is linked to the preference of liberal arts majors via the performance in the standardized test. Cultural capital matters for the stratification of the higher education process concerning one's attitudes toward love and social capacities. Existing studies also present evidence for the heterogeneous returns of cultural capital and description of failed cases of middle‐class students and successful cases of disadvantaged students. Future directions of research are discussed.