Higher education expansion and the adoption of robots in China

ABSTRACTThis article tests effectively maintained inequality theory against the case of China. Employing Chinese College Student Survey data from 2012, the study elaborates on the rationale and causes behind the expansion of higher education over the last two decades and the impact this has had on the system. Rather than empowering disadvantaged students, the findings show that the expansion of Chinese higher education fails to reduce the inequity in China, in particular in providing low socio-economic status students access to elite Chinese universities and obtaining good positions in the job market.

Concerns about expansion in higher education (HE) have increasingly become a focus of educational policymakers in sub-Saharan countries. However, critical analysis and discussion of the expansion of higher education in Mozambique and changes in its composition have received little attention. We used historical track data provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Higher and Professional and Technical Education of Mozambique (MCTESTP) from 2008 to 2015 to examine the growth from 58,643 to 116,037 students in the social sciences, humanities and social services (SSHSS). The natural sciences, engineering, agriculture and healthcare (NSEAH) registered growth from 15,051 to 41,092 students. The total number of students registered annually in SSHSS and NSEAH in 49 public and private institutions averaged 84,083 and 28,114 students, respectively, totalling approximately 174,680 students. The data allowed assessing the expansion and trends of HE rooted in practices of isomorphism reflected in diversification and fragmentation of the country’s HE system. Our analyses identified coercive and mimetic practices in general patterns of the expansion of HE, revealed by drastic expansion from 2 to 49 institutions, which since 1995 have been fragmented and restructured in response to labour market, political forces, economic and educational market forces. The information presented will support educational policy makers to reformulate suitable models of expansion of higher education for a mass public in Mozambique, framed in the sub-Saharan and international contexts.

Over the past few years, the debate on the future of higher education in Brazil has been by and large split into two camps. One side stresses the urgent need to broaden the system, to allow a growing number of Brazilians to gain qualifications and enter an increasingly competitive and international labour market as skilled workers. This is the view behind the significant expansion of private higher education in Brazil over the past decade. The other side does not disregard the problems of public higher education, or the demands of thousands of young people deprived of a university education, but holds that the expansion of higher education should be based on the conclusions of the 1998 World Conference on Higher Education in Paris. Rather than setting public against private education, this approach envisages the growth of the system as a whole, on the premise that education is a strategic asset for national development, a universal right and one of the duties of any State.

The development of higher education in Malaysia has undergone rapid expansion since the 1990s as a result of the combination of several internal as well as external factors. Apart from the public institutions of higher learning, this rapid expansion also involved the private institutions of higher learning. Despite this rapid expansion, equal access to the public institutions of higher learning remains an acute problem, especially to the non-Malays. The issue of standards and quality is also a major concern amidst the massification of higher education. The internationalization of higher education within this rapid expansion of private higher education has led to intense institutional competition at the expense of the smaller institutions. It is inevitable that the rapid expansion of higher education has accentuated the problem of graduate unemployment. This problem is compounded by the disparity in job opportunities along ethnic lines that does not augur well for the nation-building process in a plural society like Malaysia. The different levels of English proficiency between the graduates of public institutions of higher learning (mainly Malays) and the graduates of private institutions of higher learning (mainly Chinese) have led to this disparity. The parallel public and private sector expansion of higher education has resulted in a dual system of higher education along linguistic and ethnic lines. Again, this does not augur well for the nation-building process in Malaysia.

<title>RESUMO:</title><p>Este estudo retrata e discute a distribuição e ampliação da Educação Superior no Brasil. A análise de dados estatísticos, artigos, legislação e matérias jornalísticas revela o cenário atual: percentual reduzido da população de 18 a 24 anos que frequenta esse nível de educação e crescimento da oferta de vagas, sobretudo no sistema superior privado. A nossa reflexão se pauta nas políticas públicas direcionadas para a expansão e democratização da Educação Superior, procurando destacar os principais avanços. Temos como pressuposto que o maior desafio para a elevação geral do nível de escolaridade da população é o comprometimento do Estado, do Sistema Nacional de Educação e da sociedade civil com a melhoria da qualidade da Educação Básica pública.</p>

This article explores how gender is threaded through the expansion and privatization of higher education in Jordan. Due to the justified current concern with the educational deficit of Muslim girls, it is easy to overlook the educational advances made by girls in some Islamic countries. In Jordan, girls have profited more than boys from the expansion of higher education. Economic or political reasons cannot explain this change, so explanations for the advancement of girls in the universities have to be sought elsewhere. I argue here that, for Jordan, this female advancement is linked to the commercialization of education set in motion by the early mission schools, the re‐Islamization of society, and the prestige system of ‘culturedness’. For this article, I have drawn upon qualitative anthropological data gathered through interviews with students, staff and parents in Jordan and from an analysis of higher education statistics.

The study investigates the effects of higher education (HE) expansion policy initiated in China in 1999 on individuals’ engagement with risky financial assets. Utilizing a regression discontinuity (RD) design, the analysis reveals a consistent and statistically significant positive relationship between the HE expansion and the likelihood of investing in risky financial assets. The results indicate that the HE expansion policy increases the propensity to invest in such assets by 2.6% points, representing a 37.1% increase relative to the control group’s mean. The study also conducts robustness tests, including bandwidth sensitivity and placebo tests, to reinforce the reliability of these findings. Mechanism analysis identifies increased income, enhanced cognitive ability, and improved access to financial information as key pathways through which higher education fosters greater participation in risky asset markets. This research contributes to the literature by providing new insights into how educational policies can influence financial behaviours in emerging economies.

Higher education expansion and emission trading scheme: A case study in China.

How can one country narrow the regional disparity during the tremendous expansion of higher education? This issue remains unexamined and critical analysis is needed to unveil the spatial dynamics behind expansion of higher education. The spatial analysis shows that there is significant strategic interaction among neighboring provinces in China during the expansion of higher education. It implies that the expansion of higher education intensifies spatial interaction among provinces which facilitates narrowing gap of higher education among provinces in China. The convergence analysis shows that the speed of σ-convergence is 1.3% and the average speed of β-convergence is 2.1%, which give robust evidences to support the increasing spatial equalization of China’s higher education. Meanwhile, local spatial dynamics analysis shows that the catch-up strategy and cluster growth strategies of China are effective to achieve the balanced expansion goal.

Higher education expansion and national savings level: Evidence from macro data

Background: Since the mid-1990s, South Korea has undergone two remarkable social changes: a large-scale expansion in higher education and a transition to lowest-low fertility. These changes offer an appropriate quasi-experimental setting for the causal inferences of the impacts of college education on transitions into marriage and parenthood. Objective: I examine the effects of the large-scale college expansion on first marriage and first childbirth, using data from South Korea. Methods: I define two cohorts of women depending on their exposure to the expansion (pre-expansion versus post-expansion), and from this I identify a marginal group affected by the college expansion. Using a difference-in-difference approach, I examine how marriage and childbirth changes in this group (the New College Class) differed in comparison with the changes in other groups (the High School Class and the Traditional College Class). Results: I found a considerable impact of college expansion on the falling rates of first marriage and first childbirth among the New College Class women. The growing divide in family formation between college graduates and non-college graduates explains a large part of the total college expansion effects, while the effect of increased education among New College Class women was minimal. Conclusions: The college expansion in South Korea did have an impact, but the impact was mostly indirect from interactions with other social structural changes. Contribution: I provide causal evidence on the impact of the large-scale expansion in higher education on family formation, in particular fertility, utilizing a novel analytical approach and a rare empirical case in South Korea.

Based on the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas) from 1997 to 2011, this study examines the role of education in expenditure inequality in Indonesia under educational expansion since the 1997 financial crisis. This is achieved using the three decomposition methods: the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition; the decomposition of the Gini coefficient; and the hierarchical decomposition of the Theil index. The expansion of education, particularly basic education in rural areas, appears to have not only lowered educational disparity between the urban and rural sectors but also educational inequality within the rural sector. Due in large part to the declining educational disparity between the urban and rural sectors, the urban–rural expenditure disparity has narrowed since the mid-2000s. On the other hand, the expansion of higher education in urban areas appears to have played an important role in the recent rise in overall expenditure inequality by raising not only disparity between educational groups but also inequality within the tertiary education group. Basic education policies would still serve as an effective means to mitigate expenditure inequality, as they could reduce not only educational gap between the urban and rural sectors but also educational inequality within the rural sector by raising general educational levels. Since the expansion of higher education in urban areas seems to be one of the main factors of the recent rise in overall expenditure inequality, higher education policies would also be crucial.

Expansion of higher education, as predicted by scholars of higher education and sociology, has become a globally homogeneous educational development. Some comparative educators even argue that this trend is even more significant in the East Asian region because of its close connection with the United States and Europe. This study focuses on the relationship between higher education expansion and college access. Several debates have taken place between proponents for education expansion and those for equality of educational opportunities. Some argue that education expansion can help reduce educational inequality, whereas others argue that the gap would become even wider due to the stratification among school rankings. This study collected valid longitudinal data from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan and the Postsecondary Commission in the State of California. This study reviews the development and trends of college access in Taiwan and the State of California and responds to the following research question: Can higher education expansion reduce educational inequality? This study also explores the structure of the higher education systems of these two cases and discusses the differentiation of higher education and their relationship with the topic. This analysis generates two main findings. First, in these two cases, higher education expansion can provide more college access opportunities for all social groups, but consideration for the ranking of universities reveals that the stratification of higher education in these two countries could promote inequalities. Second, some features of community colleges in California can reduce the negative effects of higher education differentiation on educational inequality. In the final section of this study, future research and policy implications will be offered.

Recent decades have seen a dramatic expansion in higher education. Americans are accessing higher education at growing rates, at the undergraduate level and beyond. While this process is widely celebrated, this Article argues that the proliferation of higher education has, also, a dark side. Through a myriad of empirical evidence, we show that American higher education is plagued by an 'arms race'. Individuals acquire more education than is needed for performing their job or for personal growth, in order to gain an edge in a competitive job market. As people gain more education, employers become more selective, further fueling the educational arms-race. The Article argues that this arms-race is both socially wasteful and unjust. It is wasteful because enormous resources are invested by individuals and the public on higher education, without increasing work productivity or contributing to economic growth. It is unjust because it benefits those who can afford to study, while others are either forced to incur huge debt to fund education, or are left with low- paying menial jobs. The article then discusses several legal solutions aimed at mitigating the educational arms-race. The suggestions are designed to target only cases in which the expansion in higher education is indeed inefficient and unjust, rather than to restrict higher education generally. The first suggestion involves “banning the higher education box”, namely considering higher education requirements discriminatory when they are unjustified by a business necessity and cause racial disparity. Second, we offer imposing a “Signaling Fee” on employers upon hiring overeducated workers; and third we propose encouraging practices of lifelong learning and on-the-job-training. Adopting these (and perhaps other) measures is crucial for reversing the educational arms race and safeguarding higher education as the socially beneficial institution it should be.

Technology innovation is the key driving force in achieving economic transformation and development. Financial development and the expansion of higher education can promote technological progress primarily by easing financing constraints and improving the level of human capital. This study examines the impact of financial development and higher education expansion on green technology innovation. It conducts an empirical analysis by constructing a linear panel model and a nonlinear threshold model. The present study sample is based on the urban panel data of China from 2003-2019. (1) Financial development can significantly promote the expansion of higher education. (2) The expansion of higher education can improve energy and environment-based technological progress. (3) Financial development can both directly and indirectly promote green technology evolution by expanding higher education. The joint financial development and higher education expansion can significantly empower green technology innovation. (4) In the process of promoting green technology innovation, financial development has a non-linear influence on it, with higher education as the threshold. The effect of financial development on green technology innovation varies according to the degree of higher education. Based on these findings, we put forward policy proposals for green technology innovation to promote economic transformation and development in China.