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Higher Education Policy Changes and Stratification in China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

This paper will examine changes in seven aspects of higher education policy in the People's Republic of China during the 1970s and, based on the experience of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist states, will explore the implications of these changes for the structuring of social inequality in contemporary Chinese society.

Type
Research Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1983

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References

1. Inkeles, Alex and Bauer, Raymond, The Soviet Citizen (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 131–32Google Scholar; Parkin, Frank, “Class stratification in socialist societies,” British Journal of Sociology, No. 20 (12 1969), p. 359CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

2. Jones, T. Anthony, “Modernization and education in the U.S.S.R.,” Social Forces, No. 57 (12 1978), pp.528–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Whyte, Martin K., “Inequality and stratification in China,” The China Quarterly (CQ), No. 64 (12 1975), pp. 706709CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. References to particular colleges and universities are categorized according to the classification provided in Orleans, Leo A., Professional Manpower and Education in Communist China (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1961), pp. 176203Google Scholar.

5. Limited mobility within a particular enterprise is not, however, uncommon. An unskilled labourer, for example, might move to a semi-skilled or skilled position following a period of training.

6. Shirk, Susan, “Educational reform and political backlash: recent changes in Chinese educational policy,” Comparative Education Review, No. 23 (06 1979), pp. 190–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see Pepper, Suzanne, “Education and revolution: the Chinese model revised,” Asian Survey, No. 18 (09 1978), p. 883CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. “Educated youth” (“zhishi qingnian”) are usually graduates of middle schools (equivalent to junior and senior high schools) who have gone to the countryside.

8. Kent, Ann, “Red and expert: the revolution in education at Shanghai Teachers' University, 1975–76,” CQ, No. 86 (06 1981), p. 307Google Scholar.

9. For discussions of current recruitment policies and practices, see Shirk, , “Educational reform and political backlash,” pp. 198203Google Scholar; and Pepper, Suzanne, “Chinese education after Mao: two steps forward, two steps back and begin again?CQ, No. 81 (03 1980), pp. 1423Google Scholar.

10. Bowles, Samuel, “Unequal education and the reproduction of the social division of labor,” in Karabel, Jerome and Halsey, A.H. (eds.), Power and Ideology in Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 146Google Scholar.