College Expansion and School-to-Work Transition in China

Employing individual-level data from surveys of national probability samples, thisdissertation investigates educational transition and labor market in the context of China'seconomic reform and the expansion of tertiary education since the late 1990s. It consists ofthree self-contained but related papers.;First, I examine the transition from academic senior high school to tertiary education.Using data from a multi-stage national probability sample collected in 2008, I show thatattending key-point senior high school has a significant positive effect on one's likelihood ofentry into tertiary education, even after taking account of the selection into these schools.;Second, using a stratified random sample of college students in Beijing, I show that forstudents who were admitted to colleges in 2006, who completed four years of collegeeducation, and entered the labor market by 2011, those who graduated from Project 211universities earn significantly more than their counterparts who graduated from non-211universities. After taking into account the selection into Project 211 universities basedprimarily on academic performance in the College Entrance Exam, the wage premium ofattending Project 211 universities remains significant.;Last, employing multiple waves of national representative survey data, I investigateearnings returns to tertiary education relative to upper secondary education in urban Chinafrom 1988 to 2008. I show a clear trend of an increasing college premium, but this trend hasbeen reversed since the mid-2000s, when a larger cohort of college graduates who benefitedfrom the dramatic expansion of higher education since 1999 entered the labor market.