University Enrollments And National Level Of Education, Educational Inequality

The massive higher education expansion started in1999creates a record of highereducation in China. The higher education expansion plays far-reaching impact on human capital,educational inequality, and indirectly on the pattern of income distribution. This article uses the2001,2005and2009data of China's urban labor market survey data, based ondifference-in-difference identification strategy, to estimate the impact of expansion policy onnational human capital accumulation, and to explore its role of educational inequality. Expansionpolicy significantly improved higher education opportunities and years of education forschool-age high school students, but showed no significant effect on other level of education forschool-age children. From2001to2005, higher education opportunities for school-age highschool students (23-26-year-old cohort in2005) was improved by25%-26%, and robustness testfound higher education opportunity for school-age high school students (24-25-year-old cohort in2005) was increased by20%-23%. From2001to2005, the average years of schooling ofschool-age queue (23-26-year-old cohort in2005) was increased by1.03-1.09years, and robustresult is0.95-1.05years. From2001to2009, higher education opportunities for school-age highschool students (23-26-year-old cohort in2009and the24-25year-old cohort) increased by25%-33%. As of2009, expansion policy increased average years of schooling of school-age queue(23-26-year-old cohort in2009) by0.93-1.18years, the robustness result was0.99-1.29years.This article discusses the influences of urban and rural household registration status, and father'syears of education and gender on accessability to higher education opportunities from theexpansion policy. From2001to2005, household registration status showed no significant impacton accessability to higher education opportunities. While from2001to2009, householdregistration status was significant, for23-26-year-old cohort non-farm household population was17%higher than the same cohort with agricultural household registration status, access to highereducation opportunities, while for24-25-year-old non-farm household population, their advantageis12%-13%higher. From2001to2005and from2001to2009, one's father years of educationshowed very strong impact, one additional year of the father shall increase higher educationopportunities of the child by one percent, which means intergenerational transmission ofeducational inequality, but since the value is quite small, educational inequality should not beenlarged through intergenerational transmission. Men gained4%-6%more higher educationopportunities than women.