Family Background, Academic Performance, and Access to Opportunities for Graduate Education

Abstract

As the number of graduates from institutions of higher education has soared year after year, alongside growth in the demand for high-end talent posed by economic development, a growing number of graduates from undergraduate programs are choosing to continue on to receive graduate education, so as to improve their competitive advantage in the labor market. This paper conducted empirical analysis on data from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey. Studies have found that, among undergraduate students who graduated from institutions of higher education in Beijing in 2010 and 2012, approximately one third chose to continue on to receive graduate education, and both the family background and academic performance of those students who pursued graduate education were significantly better than the students who sought employment directly after graduation. Further analysis indicated that, with respect to access to domestic opportunities for graduate education, the variable of family background essentially exercises an effect by influencing the type of institution at which students pursued undergraduate education, as well as their academic performance. In comparing the two options of studying abroad and pursuing in-country graduate education, the type of institution at which students pursued undergraduate education and their academic performance had no significant impact in this respect, and it was chiefly the family’s socioeconomic status that had an effect. The findings in this study have important policy implications for graduate student admissions and training in China at present.

Keywords:

• Academic achievements
• Family background
• in-country pursuit of graduate education
• study abroad

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Feng Shizheng, Wang Weidong, and Li Ding, among others, for their contributions in the collection of data. Special thanks also go out to Professor Wu Xiaogang and two anonymous manuscript experts at the Chinese Journal of Sociology, who provided valuable suggestions for revisions, as well as the editor, who made great efforts with respect to communication, coordination and proofreading! Part of the content of this paper was reported at the 2015 annual meeting of the Chinese Sociological Association. The author takes sole responsibility for the paper.

Notes

1 See the website of the Ministry of Education, “Putong gaodeng xuexiao xuesheng shu biandong qingkuang (1999)” (Details of changes in the number of students at general institutions of higher education [1999]), http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_563/200505/7788.html, accessed on February 23, 2015.

2 See the website of the Ministry of Education, “Putong gaodeng xuexiao xuesheng shu biandong qingkuang (2013)” (Details of changes in the number of students at general institutions of higher education [2013]), http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s8493/201412/182071.html, accessed on February 23, 2015.

3 See the website of China Education Online, “Linian kaoyan baokao renshu yu luqu renshu tongji” (Cumulative statistics on the number of people registering for the graduate entrance examination and the number of people admitted), http://kaoyan.eol.cn/kaoyan_news_3989/20090111/t20090111_354041.shtml, accessed on February 23, 2015.

4 See the website of the Ministry of Education, “2012 fen bumen fen jihua yanjiusheng shu (zongji)” (Number of graduate students by department and by program [total] in 2012), http://www.moe.edu.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s7567/201309/156773.html, accessed on February 23, 2015.

5 Table 1 provides the distribution of tuition costs (including the percentage of students who have to pay tuition, the mean tuition, et cetera) for graduate education by country and region, as derived from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey. We can see that, whether with respect to the percentage of students who have to pay tuition or the mean tuition, the cost of graduate education in Mainland China is far lower than in other countries and regions around the world. To a certain extent, this demonstrates that the cost of studying overseas is greater relative to in-country graduate education. Of course, more rigorous data and analytical support are still required, and it is hoped that future studies can provide further refinement.

6 For details on this survey, see Report on the Development of Chinese College Students (Zhongguo daxuesheng chengzhang baogao), written by Li Lulu and published by China Renmin University Press in 2012, 2014 and 2015.

7 Although the Beijing College Students Panel Survey covered universities at all levels, including elite universities ( Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University of China, “985” institutions, “211” institutions, and general institutions of higher education, because it was limited to 15 institutions, the institutions in each category could not well be described as representative, with the result that distinguishing the influence of elite universities and “985” universities on access to opportunities for graduate education was limited, and excessive segmentation by category of institution would make it very difficult to distinguish between the effect of the given category of university and the effect of the university itself. Therefore, this paper only identified the tier of university attended by the interviewees as “211” or non-“211” institutions.

8 KHB is an abbreviation using the initials of the three scholars who proposed this method, Karlson, Holm and Breen. For a detailed discussion of the KHB method, please see the relevant literature (Karlson and Holm, 2011; Karlson et al, 2012; Yanbi 2015 ).

Additional information

Funding

The data used in this paper originates from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey supported and implemented by the National Survey Research Center (NSRC) at Renmin University of China. The surveys held for this project in 2009 and 2010 were supported by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Research Project Competition Fund [RPC07/08, HS02], the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [644510] (Program administrator: Wu Xiaogang), and the Scientific Research Fund of Renmin University of China [2009030080, 2010030415] (Program administrator: Feng Shizheng). The research project was also supported in part by the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [644510].