Research On The Weakening Of Social Mobility Function Of Higher Education

Many studies show that education especially higher education has the function of urging individuals to achieve upward social mobility. After the reform and opening-up, it was the elite stage of higher education from the college entrance examination system restored to the early2000. During that time, a large number of social lower class youth received higher education, and mostly obtained decent occupation and income with the work of national arrangement or self-hunting. Thereby, they had changed their social classes from the lower to the upper, which indicated the social mobility function of higher education was very strong at that time. Since the early21century, Chinese higher education has stepped into mass-education stage from elite-education one, with the large-scale enrollment for several successive years. Since then, the situation of college students'employment has become more and more severe, which manifests the decline of employment rate and start salary year by year. At the same time, the phenomena have appeared, like "ant tribe","the wage convergence between graduates and peasant workers","abandoning the college entrance examination" and the trend of thought has appeared, like "the new view of useless of education". That indicates that the current higher education, a channel of underlying youth achieving upward social mobility, is becoming narrower. And it is increasingly difficult to charge the fate by education. All of these indicate the current social mobility function of higher education has been weakened, which prevents the reasonable social mobility, harms the social justice and harmony and intensifies class solidification.This dissertation gets advanced research information about higher education and social mobility and vivid firsthand data by using the literature analysis and structured interview. What's more, this dissertation uses the research method of comparative analysis from the beginning to end to make a comparison between the social mobility function of elite stage of higher education and the mass one. Firstly, this dissertation discusses the mechanism of higher education in social mobility by using the theories in the economics of education, like Human Capital theory, Screening Hypothesis theory and Labor Market Segmentation theory. And this dissertation points out the mechanism of higher education in social mobility is that individuals obtain higher economic and occupational status by receiving higher education, which means changing their social classes from the lower to the upper. Then, this dissertation analyses the main impact factors of the mechanism, from the perspective of the evenness of opportunity in higher education, the standard of the quality of higher education, the supply-demand relationship and the employment fairness of graduates. Secondly, compared with the elite stage of higher education in data, this dissertation reveals the social mobility function of mass stage of higher education has been weakened, which manifests the decline of graduates'economic status, occupation status and political status on the vertical and horizontal aspects. Finally, combined with the practical data and theoretical analysis, this dissertation points out there are four main reasons for the weakening of social mobility function of higher education, namely the unequal opportunity in higher education, the decline in the quality of higher education and the over-supply and the unfair employment of graduates.The main policy implications are of this dissertation:we need to ensure equal opportunity in higher education, improve the quality of higher education, keep the balance between supply and demand of graduates and create a fair employment environment, so that we can enhance the social mobility function of higher education.