Discussion on the Implications of Expansion in Postgraduate Education

This paper explores the development of postgraduate education in China,including the overall situation of postgraduate education,the trend in enrollment expansion in professional degrees as well as in various academic fields;it also triggers the impact and discussion about the postgraduate enrollment expansion,such as over-education and credential inflation,as well as the concerns about the quality of education and talent cultivation and so forth.Although the expansion brings various problems,the challenges may also become new opportunities for higher education reform,this paper also provides some suggestions on the expansion of postgraduate education.

Research on Quality Assurance System of Talent Cultivation in Higher Vocational Colleges from the Background of Enrollment Expansion

The enrollment expansion of higher vocational education is not only a strategic measure to alleviate the structural contradiction of employment,but also an important support for economic transformation and upgrading.How to deal with the expansion of enrollment and ensure the quality of training is an important task of higher vocational colleges at this stage.Based on the development requirements of the new era,it is of great practical significance to build a perfect quality assurance system of talent training.

Intergenerational Income Mobility in China and Underlying Mechanism

Based on ten rounds of CHNS data from 1989 to 2015,this paper employed dual measurement indicators of the intergenerational elasticity(IGE)of earnings and the income rank association(IRA)coefficient to measure intergenerational income mobility in China.Our findings suggest that China’s intergenerational income mobility was relatively stable from 1991-2004 and started to increase after 2004.Our study based on income grouping found that the intergenerational income immobility decreased after 2004 for all income groups;however,the high-income and low-income groups were far more immobile than other income groups;the middle-income group served as a key driver of the relatively high intergenerational income mobility in China.Furthermore,we investigated China’s intergenerational income transmission mechanism with a human capital analysis framework.We found that fathers’non-education factors played a dominant role in intergenerational income transmission;under the effects of the social institutional environment,the non-education transmission mechanism started to diminish after 2004,significantly contributing to intergenerational income mobility.

Climbing the Export Quality Ladder:Role of Human Capital

This study assesses the effect of human capital expansion on China's export product quality.It employs the difference-in-differences(DID)framework based on a quasi-natural experiment investigating the 1999 higher education enrollment expansion as the exogenous policy shock.The empirical results confirm that human capital expansion appreciably improved the quality of China's export products.Human capital expansion promoted the transformation and upgrading of old products and the development of new products in term of intensive margin;it strengthened the endowment advantages of incumbent high-quality export enterprises while preventing low-quality enterprises from entering the market through price competition on the extensive margin.This prevented quality decline.Further,the study reveals that the improvement effect driven by human capital came from both innovation-induced and managerial efficiency improvement channels and was more prominent for large or foreign-funded enterprises in the eastern region.Our findings highlight the role of human capital in China's remarkable export performance from an endogenous growth perspective.

From"Extensive"to"Connotative"Development:Modernization of Chinese-Style Education

●The transformation of China's education reform from extensive to connotative development involved a shift from characteristically exogenous and late development to endogenous and spontaneous development.●The mechanism behind the shift from rationalism to universalism has resulted in tension between extension and intension in the process of modernization.●Reflexive modernity has always existed in historical experience and situations,strengthening the appeal of intension to the right of defining.●In terms of the scale effect,the expansion of higher education enrollment made historically significant contributions to the modernization of education in China;however,it also had several disadvantages.●China's educational modemization invariably requires solving the problem of large-class teaching and promoting small-class teaching in the process of shifting from extensive to connotative development.

Higher Education Expansion in China,1999-2003:Impact on Graduate Employability

We examine the impact of China s higher education expansion on labor market outcomes for young college graduates using China s 20051 Percent Population Sample Survey.Exploiting variations in the expansion of university places across provinces and high school cohorts between 1999 and 2003,we apply a difference-in-differences model and take into account the demand-side effect by using the Bartik index.We find that the expansion of higher education in China decreased unemployment rates among males and college graduates in the short term.However,the policy decreased women s labor force participation and individual earnings in high-skilled white-collar jobs.We further discuss potential channels affecting the outcomes that were observed.Our results illustrate the broad economic benefits of higher education.The findings shed new light on the contribution of young skilled labor in the economic growth of China and call for policies that can alleviate the short-term negative impact of higher education on individual students and maximize human capital.Our study also provides an interesting example of the consequences of the unequal expansion of higher education opportunities on the labor market of an emerging economy.

Expansion and Intergenerational Mobility of Education

Using data from the 2013 Chinese Household Income Project(CHIP2013),we analyze intergenerational educationa1 mobility and the distribution of benefits among different groups in the course of educational expansion.Overall,educational expansion has raised educational mobility,reduced the possibility of downward intergenerational educational mobility,and increased the possibility of upward intergenerational mobility.However,the degree to which different types of households have benefited from the expansion of education is closely related to the urban-rural gap and the level of parenta1 education.The expansion of basic education has been more advantageous to the children of less-educated parents,whereas the expansion of higher education has mainly benefited the children of households with higher levels of parental education and to urban children.If,therefore,China is to promote the balanced development of educational modernization and build a nation that is an educational power,it needs to make active adjustments at the policy leve1.

Higher Education Expansion, Selections Based on Non-Cognitive Abilities and Gender Differences: The Case of China

We assess how implicit selections based on non-cognitive abilities may have changed in the context of the great higher education expansion in China,applying the classic supply-demand framework and utilizing the Big Five personality model.Using the Chinese General Social Survey(CGSS)data from 2012,difference-in-difference(DID),difference-in-difference-in-difference(DDD)and descriptive analyses establish the following three major findings.First,from the generation entering college before the expansion-post-70s-to the generation entering college after the expansion-post-80s and post-90s-implicit selections in higher education based on personality have weakened with the increased supply of higher education opportunities.Second,selections have significantly weakened in terms of the openness dimension of personality,yet there is some evidence that selections have strengthened in terms of conscientiousness.This reflects that open-mindedness has become a relatively higher supply trait and conscientiousness has become a relatively lower supply trait among members of the post-90s generation.Third,selections have weakened only on the openness dimension for males,but on multiple dimensions beginning with agreeableness for females,reflecting a greatly increased supply of higher education opportunities for females with this dominant trait.The finding on strengthened selections based on conscientiousness has important implications for what and how to educate today’s college students.

Seeking Excellence in the Move to a Mass System:Institutional Responses of Key Chinese Comprehensive Universities

Since the late 1990s the Chinese government has implemented two key policies for the development of higher education.The first was launching Project 985,with the purpose of seeking excellence through creating internationally competitive universities.The second was a radical move to a mass system of higher education.In this context,China’s top universities have faced dual missions,each with their challenges:playing key roles in the revolutionary expansion process on the one hand and closing the gap between them and top universities around the world through the implementation of Project 985,on the other.It is thus important to know about how these institutions have transformed themselves for excellence through the implementation of these policies.With the three cases of Peking,Nanjing and Xiamen Universities,this paper aims to examine each institutional response and the broad changes that have come about in these top Chinese comprehensive universities.It looks especially at the divergent trajectories these institutions have followed in balancing their elite and mass education functions,their global,national and local missions,the pursuit of excellence alongside of a commitment to equity,efforts at curricular comprehensivization while preserving unique historical strengths,and finally globalization and localization.From two higher education frameworks,one based on epistemological considerations and the other on political philosophy,that are equally important in light of China’s traditions,the paper concludes that Chinese universities will continuously but selectively respond to the national expansion policy with various institutional models of seeking excellence that enable them to contribute to Chinese society and the global community in the future.

Re-examining the mission of the university in mass higher education

More attention should be paid to four issues during the massification of Chinese higher education:(1)how to understand the prime cause of the expansion of higher education;(2)how to reinforce liberal education;(3)how to balance the relationship between equality and excellence;and(4)how to harmonize the relationship between the university,the government and the market.All these are based on the orientation about the ultimate goal of universities.Modern universities must make students and the public understand that their ultimate mission is places where stratagems for profits and opportunities of employment are provided;rather,modern universities should inspire students’rationalistic potencies,cultivate their ability to look upon the development of individuals,society and history from a long-term and all-around perspective.