Why Educational Investment Pays Off——High-Level Universities'Educational Earnings and Class Distinctions in the Context of Higher Education Expansion
At present,China's higher education has stepped into a new stage from the pursuit of"larger quantity"to that of"higher quality."High-level universities remain the benchmark for the quality of higher education and the key approach to social class transitions.Their educational benefits and the class differentiation arising therefrom are very important to the understanding of the relationship between educational stratification and social mobility under the policy for expanded university admissions.This study,based on the rules for college entrance examinations in China and the regression discontinuity-based causal inference model,estimates educational earnings from high-level universities in China.The research results show that high-level university education in China significantly increased the starting salary of individuals by 68.81％through the combined effects of human capital,signaling and peers,and that students from the disadvantaged class benefited more significantly than those from the advantaged class.In the new stage of popularized higher education,the high-quality development of higher education is an important way to promote the building of a powerful country in education.We need to expand high-level university admissions,and strengthen their economies of scale;dynamically adjust the admissions of ordinary undergraduate universities according to specific demands,and strengthen the supervision of their quality;and offer more high-quality higher education opportunities to disadvantaged groups,and establish a demand-oriented,quality-centered,and contribution-based mechanism for classification-based evaluation and dynamic resource adjustment in higher education institutions so as to continuously promote the connotative development of higher education.
high-level universityeducational earningsthe popularization of higher educationregression discontinuity
万方数据
