| Inequality in higher education has been a formidable challenge for many developing countries, including China. Since the expansion of China's higher education in 1999, the gross enrollment ratio increased greatly from less than 10% in 1998 to more than 25% in 2011. At the same time, however, concern over education inequality has been on the rise. While this is not unique to China, a quota system which favors local students in the admission to China's colleges. This makes China's case somewhat special in terms of regional equality in higher education.;Not many empirical studies on higher education inequality have focused on regional disparity and this thesis is an effort in this direction. Using 2012 survey data from China General Social Survey, I use probit models to estimate the probability of senior high school graduates from different regions being enrolled in colleges, holding their socioeconomic background and year of graduation constant.;Results show that there is significant difference among regions in the probability for colleges, but the difference in the probability of four-year colleges is only significant in urban context. The major difference exists between students from urban areas in the eastern provinces and students from all other sub-regions. This thesis does not stop here, but takes a step further to answer what regional factors explain this disparity. The answer provided here is the local availability of higher education, which is not surprising. However, this is not legitimate, since all colleges, regardless of their locations, are supposed to be open to all students nationwide. |
