Higher Education Attainment And Class Inequality

The inequality of higher education has always been the main focus in China, whichindicates the mobility of society from the association between social origins andeducation attainment, since the expansion of higher education in the last ten years of20thcentury. The total amount of educational opportunities was increasing due to theexpanded scale of opportunity. However, from the qualitative perspective of highereducation, the inequality in different qualitative levels of higher education shows greatdiscrepancy, which effectively maintains the inequality between classes. This articleuses a combined dataset from four5years survey with the multi-logit model method totest the difference of education attainment for different social class among differenttypes of higher education in China.The inequality of education cannot be clarified by one overall assessment. Thequalitative differences among the different types of higher education define thecompetition trends and strategies of social classes. This is seen especially for adulthigher education, as the inequality is declining because more people from higher classeshave removed themselves from the competition at this level. More people from lowerclasses compete for adult higher education because this is the rational choice for themaccording to their limited resources. The lower classes are now enjoying a better chanceto get adult higher education than they did before the expansion.In terms of general university study, the competition is still fierce and theintergenerational inheritance is still intensive and obvious. People from higher socialorigins still enjoy a better chance of receiving a higher education. Even though theeducation chances have expanded, the general university education is still of high value,and people regard it as their best educational option. The privileged class has theadvantage from both their socioeconomic and cultural resources to win this competition,so they do receive more opportunities here. In this sense, the inequality of generalhigher education in universities is maintained and even intensified. The people fromlower family also increased their advantage in education opportunity after theexpansion.