Social Stratification in China’s Higher Education Expansion: Findings from a College Student Panel Survey in Beijing

Higher education in China has experienced an unprecedented expansion since 1998. Despite the heated public debate on equity in access to higher education, particularly related to the province-based quota system, only anecdotal evidence has been presented to show the decline of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in enrollment in several elite universities. The examination of the role of expansion and differentiation in higher education and its implications for stratification remain to be seen, mainly due to the unavailability of appropriate data. In 2009, we launched the first wave of the “Longitudinal Survey of College Students,” aiming to collect the panel data on 5000 students from 15 universities in Beijing, tracking their differential experience in career choices, adaptation strategies and subsequent labor market outcomes. This paper analyzes students’ retrospective information on high school experience and admission processes, analyzes show how family background, high school, and preferential policies have channeled students into different types of tertiary institutions. As found elsewhere, the transition from elite to mass high education has also been accompanied by differentiation between elite research universities and less selective colleges of second tiers, with latter increasingly occupied by children of working