China’s Higher Education Expansion and Its Impact on Equality in Educational Opportunity

Abstract

By making use of a nationally representative dataset collected by China Family Panel Studies, this article discusses how the higher education expansion policy influences the equality of higher education access opportunity. Moreover, this study applied the multilevel cross-classified model in order to control for inequality in chances of enrollment caused by the fixed admission quota for each province. The results indicate that the expansion has interrupted the continuously enlarged gap of access opportunities between regions; the expansion policy did not increase rural and ethnic inequalities and narrowed the rural inequality within provinces; it also shows that gender gap has been significantly reduced.