扩张的中国高等教育:教育质量与社会分层

Expanding Chinese Higher Education:Quality and Social Stratification

本文利用2011年首都高校生发展状况调查的数据,分析北京高校学生的分层现状,并讨论了1999年高等教育扩张对大学生入学和就业分层的影响,发现这一轮扩张强化了社会阶层的复制而非再生产。一方面,在其他条件不变的情况下,来自社会优势阶层家庭的学生有更大概率进入具有更好教育质量的精英院校,这说明中国高等教育在这一时期具有排他性的特征;家庭的社会阶层背景对子女教育分层的影响在中学阶段更加明显;家庭背景对专业选择没有显著影响。另一方面,在控制家庭社会经济背景的影响后,教育质量与学生选择市场化部门就业的概率和工作起薪显著正相关。如果高等教育扩张降低了教育质量,就可能削弱高等教育对社会阶层流动的促进作用。

In this paper, we analyze student stratification in higher education using a random survey of senior students from 46 universities in Beijing in 2011. We examine the impact of higher education expansion since 1999 on college access and social mobility in the labor market. We find the expansion has enhanced the social strata replication rather than reproduction. We first estimate the impact on college access using Binary Logit Model and Multinomial Logit Model. Chinese higher education is rather exclusive than inclusive during the expansion which means students from higher social class families have larger possibilities to access to elite universities, other things being equal. The effect of family social stratification background on students＇ educational stratification is larger during secondary school period. We don＇t find evidence that family background influences choice of major. We then examine how college quality can affect students＇ labor market choice and performance using Multinomial Logit Model, Ordinal Logit Model and Tobit Model. Controlling family background, higher education quality is positively correlated with the higher probability that students choose a market- oriented job and with higher starting salaries. However, if the expansion diminishes higher education quality as suggested by many qualitative studies, it weakens the role of higher education as a way of upward social mobility. We learn from this study that it is not an optimal policy for the government to develop China higher education solely by expanding its scale without increasing its quality. More attention should be paid to guarantee the quality during any education policy changes, and to ensure educational equality in K-12 education as well.