Access to higher education: Targeted recruitment reform under economic development plans in the People's Republic of China |
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| Authors: | Vilma Seeberg |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies, Kent State University, 44120 Kent, Ohio, USA |
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| Abstract: | In the early 1980s, the Chinese government introduced limited economic markets accompanied by educational reforms to counteract an internal  brain drain. This article explores the effectiveness of four years of recruitment and enrolment reform in technical-professional higher education in meeting the objective.In view of the extreme scarcity of higher education places, the modest enrolment biases evident in the findings are unexpected. Through the recruitment reforms the planned proportion of students from the targeted marginal groups were enrolled. On the other hand, enrolment patterns showed aggravated social class reproduction at the upper and lower end of the stratification. Gender stratification in overall proportions was modest but strongly mediated by social class and subject choice. Though upper and middle class students were poised to gain greater socio-economic mobility than the lower class, nearly half of the latter would be upwardly mobile through technical-professional higher education (TPHE).The findings show that, though economic pull factors were in evidence, the recruitment reforms were effective in preparing a suitable pool of students to carry out macro-economic plans. The reforms advanced the historic function of technical-professional education-extending access to populations hitherto largely excluded. |
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