Abstract
This article investigates the influence of family class background on college students’ education achievement by using the Beijing College Students Panel Survey. Statistical analyses show that elite class offspring are more likely to form student cadres and have higher English proficiency but lower grades. One reason for lower grades is that they do not devote enough time and energy to school. Another reason, however, is that the effect of cultural capital is weakened in a subjective, standardized system of examination and evaluation. Moreover, cultural capital has a greater effect when combined with other resources, meaning that elite-class children benefit more from cultural capital, which is consistent with the cultural reproduction theory.
Highlights
This article investigates the influence of family class background on college students’ education achievement by using the Beijing College Students Panel Survey
Opponents, who adhere to the “MMI hypothesis” (Maximum Maintained Inequality) and the “EMI hypothesis” (Effectively Maintained Inequality), emphasize that education inequality is embedded in socio-structural inequality
These researchers argue that education inequality has little to do with education expansion, and as long as socio-structural inequality is perpetuated, education expansion alone cannot reduce inequality in educational opportunity (Raftery and Hout 1993; Lucas 2001; Breen and Jonsson 2005; Pfeffer 2008; Breen et al 2009)
Summary
This article investigates the influence of family class background on college students’ education achievement by using the Beijing College Students Panel Survey. As previously stated, cultural capital helps students acquire higher education achievement because (1) teachers are agents of the elite class who test and evaluate students according to elite culture standards, and (2) schools do not explicitly teach elite culture as it is mainly acquired through socialization in the family (Bourdieu and Passeron 2002a; Lareau 2015). The cultural mobility theory shares the basic assumption that teachers evaluate students using elite culture standards, and cultural capital has a positive effect on education achievement.
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