Study Of Symbolic Capital In Social Evaluation In Higher Education

This paper uses Bourdieu's symbolic capital theory perspective to study and reflect on China's current social evaluation of higher education. Through the presentation of the development of university social evaluation both at home and abroad, the discussion of the necessity of university social evaluation, important impact of symbolic capital on the development of universities, the positioning of university social evaluation, and the university stratification criteria in social evaluation, to reveal the symbolic capital's important role and status in the university social evaluation, and to provide a new perspective for solving many problems and deficiencies in current university rankings. The dissertation is divided into seven chapters, as follows:The first chapter is the Introduction, this chapter gives the brief introduction about the research background, research significance, research method, main content and research innovations; defines the concept of university symbolic capital, social evaluation, university stratification.Chapter II is Related Theory Review, mainly reviewing the theory of symbolic capital, social stratification, social evaluation and related research.Chapter III is Development Overview of University Social Evaluation. This chapter discusses the necessity of social evaluation from the information asymmetry, social supervision mechanism and social psychological three aspects, compares and analyses university social evaluation at home and abroad.Chapter IV is Symbolic Capital of University. This chapter focuses primarily on the production of university's symbolic capital and its constituent elements, and discusses important impact of symbolic capital on the development of universities.Chapter V is Symbol Capital and Social Evaluation. This chapter discusses the positioning of university social evaluation in university evaluation system, the necessity of university stratification, and the university stratification criteria in social evaluation, reveals the symbolic capital's status and important role in the University Social Evaluation.Chapter VI is Empirical Research on Influence of University Social Evaluation. Through the empirical research, this paper attempts to understand the university rankings whether form a certain influence, whether to increase students'cognition about university and provide a reference for selecting college, whether to change some students'view on some universities, thus affecting the student resource and reputation of some universities, bring losses or gains of certain universities'symbols capital. Chapter VII is Thinking and Suggestion of University social evaluation. This chapter reflects on problems and deficiencies of China's university social evaluation from the epistemological and methodological level, and make suggestions that pay much attention to symbolic capital and adopt a correct attitude towards university social evaluation, to overcome and reduce negative effects which lies in current University social evaluation.The last chapter presents research limitation and research expectation of the dissertation.This dissertation argues that the symbolic capital should be an important university stratification criterion in the university social evaluation. The symbolic capital is basis of distinction between university social evaluation and evaluation of academic and disciplinary, they evaluate university from respective perspective, together constitute an integrated university evaluation system. The university evaluation from government and academic research institutions focus on fact Judgment, social evaluation should emphasize on value judgments. Because the social evaluation should have a social identity, should take the values of the whole society as evaluation criteria. The public evaluate universities tend to be based on the symbolic capital of universities, such as reputation, status, history, etc., and therefore the focus of university social evaluation should be placed on the symbolic capital.In short, it is the key for the reasonable positioning of university social evaluation to emphasis on symbolic capital, so that the evaluation has a stronger social representativeness, more in line with the needs of society, and the ranking results should have a higher social credibility. It will help guide universities pay attention to the intensional development, to build their own brand and features.