[The paper is dense and I hope the authors will forgive the very crude summary below. It’s missing a lot of nuance and if this subject is of interest you should review the work in full here College Expansion and the Rise of Intergenerational Persistence.]
In 1999 (the dotted red vertical line below) China decided to ramp up the provision of college education and as you can see (as with most things in China) what the planners wanted, the planners got.
The paper highlighted today from Shijun Gu and Lichen Zhang from the Central University of Finance and Economics, China and the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR looks at an unintended consequence of this; a rise in social inequality. Something planners surely didn’t/don’t want.
Hang on, how do more kids in college lead to greater social inequality? Surely this process broadens out a middle-class? Especially if the system is, as China’s is, merit-based? Well, perhaps in theory.
What actually happened/happens…
When there aren’t many college places they go to really smart kids. When you make more places available you don’t make smarter kids, you give smart parents an incentive to jockey their kids into these new spaces. Less raw smarts are required for the new places and intense preparatory work makes a lot of difference to exam readiness.
Yes, everybody takes the same exam on the same day but not everybody is prepared equally for that exam. Parents with more resources have been using their already established superior positions to ready their kids in ways a cabbie’s son or daughter can’t.
So, really smart kids lose out if they’re from a resource poor background and the superior earnings power that a college degree provides is a competitive advantage that benefits the next generation of the already well resourced.
Rather than flattening society you reduce social mobility whilst cementing and increasing social inequality.
In their conclusion the researchers note: “We find that.. college expansion raises average human capital and lifetime income,..” so that’s a net benefit. China Inc. is surely therefore better off with a broader cohort of the better educated. However, the concomitant social problems this process is fostering will now have to be addressed.
Another job for those ever-busy planners.
Happy Sunday.