Positional competition among Chinese University Graduates
- Po YANG, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China
- Zhitang LIANG, Yenching Academy, Peking University, China
- Benjamin Mulvey, Faculty of Education and Human Development at the Education University of Hong Kong
- Ewan Wright, Faculty of Education and Human Development at the Education University of Hong Kong
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Global higher education expansion has produced many unintended consequences. In the context of limited supply of elite job positions in labor market, tertiary expansion can lead to cohort crowing and exacerbate inequality in graduate employment.
This panel introduces two papers on Chinese college graduates’ experiences. The first paper, titled “Effort or pedigree? A Study on Unequal Employment among Chinese Elite University Graduates”, focuses on the elite reproduction in elite universities, using multiple explanatory cases with thick description based on interview data. Its analytical framework is generated from theories of boundaries and positional conflict theory. It identifies three strategies for elite college students’ career advancement, namely “positioning, ranking, and leaping forward”, through which individuals from privileged backgrounds benefit most from resources and opportunity stacking in elite education circle. Internship becomes the bridge between elite education circle and elite employment circle.
The second paper, titled “Global and local possible selves: Differentiated strategies for positional competition among Chinese university students”, develops a neo-Weberian reading of involution to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of ‘possible selves’. It investigates how final-year university students from three social class factions—rural, urban non-elite and urban elite—envisage, plan and strategies for their future careers. This study demonstrates how social class is deeply connected to the scale of the competition—national or global—that students perceive themselves to be implicated in.
Presenters will be Po YANG, Zhitang LIANG and Benjamin Mulvey, while Ewan Wright will be a discussant.
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Dr. Po YANG is a tenured associate professor at Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China. She is the chair of Department of Economics of Education and Administration. Her research interests focus on college student development and employment, and higher education and vocational education finance.
Mr. Zhitang LIANG, 2020 Yenching Scholar, is a master’s student at Yenching Academy of Peking University. His research interests focus on the elite reproduction, specifically elite job distribution among university graduates in China.
Dr. Benjamin Mulvey is an RGC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education and Human Development at the Education University of Hong Kong. His research is focused on the sociology of international higher education, and has been published in journals such as Sociology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Population, Space and Place, and British Journal of Sociology of Education.
Dr. Ewan Wright is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education and Human Development at the Education University of Hong Kong. He is also a Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change. He is the programme leader of an online master’s degree called the Executive Master of Arts in International Educational Leadership and Change, which targets working professionals at international schools in East Asia. His current research explores strategies for social class reproduction through avenues such as international schooling, elite higher education, and extra-curricular activities. His work has been published in well-regarded international journals such as British Journal of Sociology of Education, Discourse, Globalisation, Societies and Education, Higher Education, and Studies in Higher Education.
