Higher Education Expansion Policy Research Articles

Troops are Business Schools: Military Service and Entrepreneurial Behaviors in China

Although research has examined the benefits of military service and the impact of military executives on business operations, the relationship between military service and entrepreneurial behavior remains poorly understood. Using the instrumental variable approach and a nationally representative male sample from the China Labor-forces Dynamic Survey, we discovered that military service significantly increased the probability of entrepreneurship in China, even after a series of robustness checks. Mechanism tests indicated that this positive effect could be explained by human and political capital accumulation, military-related social capital formation, and risk appetite traits. Our supplemental analyses demonstrated that exogenous shocks from the special military-in-business policy strengthened the positive entrepreneurial effect, whereas the higher education expansion policy and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization weakened this effect. Additionally, military entrepreneurs had better business performance and more resilient, persistent, and confident traits. We found no evidence that Chinese veterans were forced to become entrepreneurs. This study enriches research on the styles and traits of military entrepreneurs and managers and provides important insights for assessing and improving veteran welfare policies in China and other developing countries.

The impact of family class differences on the higher education accessibility of offspring: Evidence from China

This study constructs a logit model to examine the impact of family class differences on the higher education accessibility of offspring, and examines the moderating effect of the higher education expansion policy on the relationship between family class differences and higher education accessibility of offspring. The data was collected from 5181 valid samples who responded to 2018 Chinese General Social Survey Questionnaire. The results show that both overall higher education accessibility and high-quality higher education accessibility of the offspring of upper-class families and middle-class families are significantly higher than the offspring of bottom class families. This suggested that the offspring of upper-class families is more likely to receive high-quality higher education than other classes. It was also revealed that higher education expansion policy significantly increases the overall higher education and high-quality higher education accessibility of offspring from different class families, as a result of which overall and high-quality higher education are significantly less accessible to the offspring of the bottom-class families. This implies that the higher education expansion policy has further widened the gap between the offspring of the bottom-class families and the offspring of the upper-class families and the middle-class families. As a result, this study proposes to improve the higher education financial support policy for the offspring of bottom-class families and to develop special programs for the offspring of bottom-class families.

The Impact of Higher Education Expansion on Subjective Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Chinese Social Survey

The rage of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the downward trend seen in the economy, has further aggravated the downturn of the job market and diminished people’s sense of wellbeing in recent years. To mitigate the detrimental effects of the pandemic on college students’ employment, the Chinese government has further expanded the enrollment of postgraduate and undergraduate students. This study leverages data from the 2019 and 2021 waves of the Chinese Social Survey and constructs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the effect of the higher education expansion (HEE) policy, initiated in 1999, on individuals’ subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that HEE policy could significantly improve individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) during the pandemic, and that social class mobility emerges as a vital mechanism through which HEE policy impacts individuals’ SWB. Furthermore, there is a local-ladder effect due to reference dependence, with socio-metric status having a greater impact on SWB than socioeconomic status. This study reveals that the level of an individual’s happiness depends largely on whom they are compared with. This implies that the key focus of the HEE policy is to stimulate individuals’ potential and motivation for upward social mobility, ultimately enhancing their overall sense of well-being.

City Administrative Level and Tertiary Educational Opportunities: Evidence From China’s Higher Education Expansion Policy

In 1999, the Chinese government implemented a higher education enrollment expansion policy to improve education equality. Now, its positive impact on educational equality is contested. This study attempts to identify the link between city administrative level and tertiary attainment in the context of the policy. Our empirical findings indicate that after implementation of the policy, inequality increased. Students from political and economic centers had more opportunities for tertiary education attainment. This policy has a greater impact on disparities in access to undergraduate education for individuals living in different administrative hierarchies than it does on specialist education.

Does Human Capital Expansion Improve Urban Innovation? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from China's Higher Education Expansion Policy

Does Human Capital Expansion Improve Urban Innovation? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from China's Higher Education Expansion Policy

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

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.

Sentiment Analysis of Public Opinions on the Higher Education Expansion Policy in China

Drawing on sentiment analysis, this study explores public opinions on the higher education expansion policy that was specifically implemented by China’s government to navigate graduate employment difficulties against the impact of COVID-19. The results indicated that the overall degree of acceptance of the expansion plan was highly positive, but some people expressed negative opinions and concerns about over-education and deferral of employment pressure. The results also suggested that the government is expected to deal with the balance between higher education expansion and graduate employment difficulties by prioritizing domestic graduate employment rather than opening up permanent resident applications for foreigners, allocating a regionally balanced expansion quota, covering social science disciplines, and creating more employment opportunities. The findings provide important suggestions for policymakers to improve policy practice and offer a referable sample for other countries in their management of graduate employment issues influenced by COVID-19.

Who Benefits More from the College Expansion Policy? Evidence from China

This study extends the current literature on the relationship between educational expansion and social inequality by examining how the higher education expansion policy in China changed patterns of inequality across the country and within specific geographic regions. Results based on the Comparative Interrupted Time Series analyses indicate that although all individuals benefit from expansion in both overall and academic college enrollment, individuals from advantaged family backgrounds experience greater benefits. This is the case especially for middle and western regions of China. In the eastern region, inequality in overall college enrollment persists after expansion but that in academic college enrollment increases. These findings have implications for understanding the effects of expansion policies and whether they can reduce social inequality.

Education and Decision-Making: An Experimental Study on the Framing Effect in China.

China’s higher education expansion policy has been in effect for almost two decades. Under this policy, a growing number of youths have gained access to higher education, which aims to train students to be more rational. This study examines human rationality at a Chinese college through an experiment based on the risky-choice framing effect. The basic results show no classical framing effect with regard to individual decisions for the entire sample in a benchmark setting. However, when the participants’ roles were manipulated and subsamples were investigated, a significant framing effect was found that appeared to be role-related and that varied by sex. These results help to elucidate evaluations of the effects of China’s higher education policy and may assist in guiding further policy reforms.

Brazilian Legal Education: Curricular Reform that Goes Further without Going Beyond

The celebration of 180 years of legal education in Brazil, held in August 2007, was marked by strong criticism of the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (Brazilian Bar Association) and the higher education expansion policy which was undertaken in the late 1990s, establishing more than a thousand law schools in the country. The escolas de enganação (schools of illusion), created mainly during the last decade, would have increased the numbers in the professional college, which currently has around 600,000 lawyers, to approximately two and a half million, if it were not for the professional filter of the Bar Exam. In other words, the proliferation of mass legal courses in Brazil would have enabled the emergence of educational merchants, specializing in the sale of an illusion of social elevation and professional success, which, thanks to the control of entry into the professional corporation, did not happen.

An Analysis of Educational Inequality in Taiwan After the Higher Education Expansion

Two major educational expansions in Taiwan have resulted in a remarkable improvement of human capital accumulation for the last three decades, which is consistent with the long-run goal of education in improving individual well-being and international competitiveness. This study focuses on the expansion of higher education starting from the late 1980s. As the number of higher-educated workers entering the labor market each year has increased rapidly, this higher education expansion policy has encountered some critiques from the public. Evidence shows that the incidence of over-educated workers in the labor market has been continuously increasing after the expansion, which is considered to be a short-run problem from the policy. We also find that the overall educational inequality drops sharply, which is mainly contributed by the within age group component after decomposing educational inequality using the decomposable Theil index. Along with a larger increase in average schooling for women, a larger reduction in educational inequality for women than for men implies women have benefited more than men from the policy and the educational inequality between men and women is narrowing.

Education's Effect on Economic Growth in Taiwan

Previous articleNext article No AccessFocus on Two Faces of ChinaEducation's Effect on Economic Growth in TaiwanChien Liu, and J. Michael ArmerChien Liu Search for more articles by this author , and J. Michael Armer Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 37, Number 3Aug., 1993 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/447192 Views: 21Total views on this site Citations: 20Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1993 The Comparative and International Education SocietyPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Lan-Hsun Wang, Shu-Yi Liao, Mao-Lung Huang The growth effects of knowledge-based technological change on Taiwan’s industry: A comparison of R&D and education level, Economic Analysis and Policy 73 (Mar 2022): 525–545.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eap.2021.12.009Oluwabunmi O. Adejumo, Simplice A. Asongu, Akintoye V. Adejumo Education enrolment rate vs employment rate: Implications for sustainable human capital development in Nigeria, International Journal of Educational Development 83 (May 2021): 102385.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2021.102385Daren A. Conrad, Asif Cassim Human Capital as a Catalyst for Economic Diversification in Trinidad and Tobago, (Jan 2019): 59–82.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02994-4_4Junchao Zhang The impact of 9-year compulsory education: quasi-experimental evidence from Taiwan, Applied Economics 85 (May 2018): 1–13.https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2018.1468553Muhammad Ali, Abiodun Egbetokun, Manzoor Memon Human Capital, Social Capabilities and Economic Growth, Economies 6, no.11 (Jan 2018): 2.https://doi.org/10.3390/economies6010002Xinxin Ma Impact of China’s Higher Education Expansion Policy on Youth Employment, (Dec 2018): 211–239.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1987-7_8Yu-Hsuan Lin, Min-Hua Jen, Kuo-Liong Chien Association between life-course socioeconomic position and inflammatory biomarkers in older age: a nationally representative cohort study in Taiwan, BMC Geriatrics 17, no.11 (Sep 2017).https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-017-0598-xPanagiotis Pegkas, Constantinos Tsamadias Does formal education at all levels cause economic growth? Evidence from Greece, Review of Economic and Business Studies 8, no.11 (Jun 2015): 9–32.https://doi.org/10.1515/rebs-2016-0013Fuat Sekmen, Mehmet Toptas Education, Technical Progress, and Economic Growth in the Information Age, International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development 6, no.11 (Jan 2015): 73–84.https://doi.org/10.4018/ijsesd.2015010106Lorraine Pe Symaco Education in the knowledge-based society: the case of the Philippines, Asia Pacific Journal of Education 33, no.22 (Jun 2013): 183–196.https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.782800Constantinos Tsamadias, Panagiotis Prontzas The effect of education on economic growth in Greece over the 1960–2000 period, Education Economics 20, no.55 (Dec 2012): 522–537.https://doi.org/10.1080/09645292.2011.557906Xiaoyan Wang, Jian Liu China’s higher education expansion and the task of economic revitalization, Higher Education 62, no.22 (Oct 2010): 213–229.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9383-xDong Yajuan The Spillover Effect of Education on Productivity: Evidence from China, (Jan 2010): 420–424.https://doi.org/10.1109/IC4E.2010.64Mahdi Fadaee Khorasgani Higher education development and economic growth in Iran, Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues 1, no.33 (Aug 2008): 162–174.https://doi.org/10.1108/17537980810909788Tin-Chun Lin The role of higher education in economic development: an empirical study of Taiwan case, Journal of Asian Economics 15, no.22 (Apr 2004): 355–371.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asieco.2004.02.006T.-C. Lin Education, technical progress, and economic growth: the case of Taiwan, Economics of Education Review 22, no.22 (Apr 2003): 213–220.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-7757(02)00030-4Molly N. N. Lee, Suk Ying Wong University Education for National Development, (Jan 2003): 1207–1220.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3368-7_83Graham Vulliamy Teacher development in primary schools: some other lessons from Taiwan, Teacher Development 2, no.11 (Mar 1998): 5–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/13664539800200039Zafiris Tzannatos, Geraint Johnes Training and skills development in the east asian newly industrialised countries: a comparison and lessons for developing countries 1, Journal of Vocational Education & Training 49, no.33 (Sep 1997): 431–453.https://doi.org/10.1080/13636829700200025Regina E. Werum, Lauren Rauscher How Status Competition Complicates Institutional Explanations Of Higher Educational Expansion: A Caribbean Case Study, (): 239–280.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3679(06)07011-3