The Chinese government has implemented a series of special admission policies in recent years to promote higher education equity. One of the key approaches is the 'Rural Students Quota Plan', which requires elite universities to enrol a certain number of rural students from disadvantaged social and economic backgrounds each year. This study…

Background: The current study investigates school contextual effects on students' academic self-concept and achievement, that is, peer socioeconomic effect and big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), in four Nordic education systems (i.e., Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and selected Chinese education systems (Hong Kong and…

Some authors argue that access to elite universities can bring about a 'habitus transformation' for working-class students, however in this paper, based on a three-year life history study, it is suggested that the transformative effects of the elite university experience come about in relation to and constrained by the working-class habitus.…

High-stakes testing (HST) is critical in the educational system of East-Asian countries like China, and the ongoing standards-based reform in many Western countries like the USA. HST has been criticized for corrupting an educational system through means like disengaging students from authentic learning. It seems that students' affective learning…

Studies in relation to working-class students at elite universities document on the one hand the role of 'mundane reflexivity' in dealing with class domination while on the other indicate a new form of domination and disadvantages working on these working-class 'exceptions' -- they may achieve academically at university but experience various…

China's Free Teacher Education Policy (FTEP) was initiated in 2007 in response to concerns about university tuition increases and teacher shortages in rural provinces. In this paper, the authors draw on interview data from eight FTEP graduates/teaching candidates and eight teacher educators from five FTEP universities to examine the extent to…

As we work and study in our increasingly globalized society, there is a growing trend of Chinese piano students choosing to pursue their higher education in the United States. Elite music institutions in America are also seeking and recruiting a large number of Chinese pianists. This trend raises questions regarding the similarities and…

As the Chinese mainland has transitioned from elite to mass higher education, the race to attend university has escalated to become a race to attend selective universities. This study focuses on rural female university students and explores how they make sense of their higher education admission experiences. We rationalize that the inquiry into…

This article employs Bourdieu's conceptual tools to unpack family influences on students' subject and university choices in China. This empirical study employed mixed research approaches, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, to examine students' choices of subjects and universities in a sample of secondary school students from the age…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the return intention of mainland Chinese students studying at prestigious universities in the Unites States. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were 90 students from three top-tiered universities on the East Coast of the United States. The results of this study…

Drawing on a qualitative case study and deploying Bourdieu's thinking tools, this article attempts to understand rural students' subjectivities and practices in a Chinese elite university, relating the types and volumes of capital they possessed to the process of position-takings. It contextualises their experiences against the backdrop of the…

This paper presents a multiple ("n"?=?23), longitudinal case study of the construction of personal employability by Chinese students at a UK university. It draws on the work of Brown and Hesketh to frame notions of employability in order to understand how these students engage with the international and Chinese labour markets from their…

Internationally, higher education has expanded greatly since the closing decades of the twentieth century. China was no exception. This study is intended to examine the status quo of issues relating to equity and access to higher education in the context of educational expansion and differentiation in China. Two research questions are addressed in…

Discusses the attempt, during China's Cultural Revolution (1968-1976), to sever links between school performance, often dependent on social class, and admission to higher education and resulting upward mobility. Most students then felt it useless to study because success or failure at school work had no bearing on their future. (MH)