Marketised “Educational Desire” and the Impetus for Self-improvement: The Shifting and Reproduced Meanings of Higher Education in Contemporary China

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn recent years, higher education in China has experienced drastic transformations along with the expansion of university enrolments and the ongoing privatisation of the job market. Students today increasingly engage with extra-curricular activities due to the uncertain value of university diplomas and in preparation for their future socioeconomic challenges. I explore this phenomenon through an ethnographic study of a group of student entrepreneurs on a prestigious university campus. These students heralded an image of market-oriented self-improvement that has become widespread throughout Chinese university campuses via state policies. My analysis considers the theoretical perspectives on the self-responsible “enterprising self” that characterises neoliberal societies and the culturally embedded “educational desire” that regards the moral prestige of education in China as being independent of market calculations. I argue that while the ethic of self-improvement indicates the changing meanings of higher education, it is through their student identities and lifestyles, separated from the job market, that students experiment with self-improvement and can sustain their positive image of the market economy. Higher education is hence reproduced as a distinct moral life-stage that precedes one’s entrance into “society”.