Author(s)

Jie Hua

Corresponding Author

Jie Hua

Abstract

This paper focuses on the policy of expanding undergraduate enrollment in China's educational reform and its influence on social mobility. On the theoretical basis of Blau-Duncan model, structural equation model is constructed to evaluate the effect of education in the social mobility after enrollment expansion. The result shows that in one aspect, enrollment expansion did not change the role of education in reproduction of social class, while in the other aspect, it kept the possibility of social mobility through providing more education opportunities for relatively lower class. That is to say, the expansion of undergraduate enrollment contributed to maintaining the positive role of education in social mobility, rather than simply providing a completely open channel of social mobility. This also reveals that besides policy regulation, market regulation mechanism cannot be ignored. To promote educational equity, more economic reforms are also needed to be implemented and it cannot solely rely on expansion of education scale.

Keywords

Enrollment expansion; Social mobility; Structural equation model