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Exploiting an exogenous shock from a centrally devised, nationwide higher education expansion in China in the late 1990s and followed by a surge in the college-educated labour in job markets in the early 2000s, we use a difference-in-differences strategy and carbon satellite datasets to empirically estimate the impact and mechanisms of increases in human capital investment on carbon emission intensity. We find that the regions with the most human-capital-dependent can experience a larger decline of carbon emission intensity compared with that of regions with the least after the policy entry into force. The college-educated labour with higher social responsibility flooded into the job markets contributes to the low-carbon transformation of economy, by improving the production efficiency and innovation, and in turn promoting the upgrading of industrial structure and decreasing the use of fossil energy. This climate mitigation effect is more profound for the regions that are economically developed but also lack the education resources of university and college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to the substantial body of studies on the relationships between family socioeconomic status (SES), gender inequality, and higher education selection. It does so by 1) examining the association between SES and gender inequality in higher education, and 2) comparing changes in socioeconomic and gender inequality before and after the 1999 higher education expansion using eight waves of China General Social Survey (CGSS) data (2008–2018), which comprised a total sample of 57,067. The results of this study revealed that gender inequality in higher education selection in China is driven by SES, and that higher education expansion in China has not reduced socioeconomic and gender inequality in terms of higher education selection. The established inequality persists for low SES students, especially low SES females. This study not only underscores the importance of SES and gender but also expands the conceptual validity of SES (effects of SES on gender inequality) in higher education selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the data of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2006, this study takes the university enrolment expansion policy implemented by the Chinese government in 1999 as a quasi-natural experiment, and uses the difference-in-difference (DID) method to identify the effect of human capital expansion on the ratio of domestic value added in exports to gross exports (DVAR) of firms. Results show that human capital expansion significantly improves the firms' DVAR through the 'intermediate product substitution' channel (promoting firms to use more domestic intermediate inputs to replace imported intermediate inputs in production) and the 'markup' channel (promoting the increase of firms' markup). At the same time, significant heterogeneity exists in the effects of human capital expansion on the DVAR of different types of firms. These results provide new empirical evidence from the perspective of firm DVAR for further understanding of the microeconomic effects of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifelong education has proven to be a significant challenge in the policy arena. The combination of formal education and labor-centered institutions has pressed the development of different mechanisms to understand the role of human capital accumulation in socioeconomic mobility and organizational performance. While the narratives of lifelong education have primed labor and educational studies across developed economies, in the case of developing economies, those logics appear contested by development economics conditions. In this paper, I use the context of the expansion of the graduate educational market and its policy reforms to analyze how a developing economy copes with a change in the availability of a highly educated workforce. Using panel and pseudo-panel data, I examine the evolution of educational returns for the graduate workforce in Chile between 1990 and 2018, considering the differences between industries and public and private sectors. The results point out that there are no public-private differences and high heterogeneity across economic sectors. The policy- and individual-level consequences are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tertiary education in the Chinese mainland has undergone unprecedented expansion since 1999, whereas the most recent expansion in Hong Kong was announced in 2000. Confucian philosophy, prevalent among ethnic Chinese, suggests that education is a fair qualification for selecting elites for highpaid jobs. However, economic structures and popular cultures differ considerably. This article examines the economic returns of a rapid expansion of higher education in two areas, Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, with different economic systems but the same cultural heritage, i.e., the Confucian philosophy and its work culture. The results support the view that the declining quality of university graduates is the prime reason for shrinking earnings premium in both systems. The governments should revisit the policies of higher education development and shift the emphasis from quantity to quality, and quality assurance in particular. There is a global trend to establish a quality assurance framework to oversee higher education, and a similar development is observed in the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assesses the effect of human capital expansion on China's export product quality. It employs the difference‐in‐differences (DID) framework based on a quasi‐natural experiment investigating the 1999 higher education enrollment expansion as the exogenous policy shock. The empirical results confirm that human capital expansion appreciably improved the quality of China's export products. Human capital expansion promoted the transformation and upgrading of old products and the development of new products in term of intensive margin; it strengthened the endowment advantages of incumbent high‐quality export enterprises while preventing low‐quality enterprises from entering the market through price competition on the extensive margin. This prevented quality decline. Further, the study reveals that the improvement effect driven by human capital came from both innovation‐induced and managerial efficiency improvement channels and was more prominent for large or foreign‐funded enterprises in the eastern region. Our findings highlight the role of human capital in China's remarkable export performance from an endogenous growth perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education not only enhances people's well-being, but also plays an important role in the in-depth implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy. In this paper, we use Chinese urban data for 1995–2020, utilizing the higher education expansion policy implemented in China in 1999 as an external shock. Using Double/Debiased Machine Learning (DML), we examine the impact of the aforementioned policy on urban innovation and its mechanisms. The results show that: (1) The higher education expansion policy significantly promotes urban innovation; (2) the policy promotes human capital expansion and strengthens government financial support, thereby significantly fostering urban innovation; (3) the impact of the policy varies across cities with different geographic locations, population densities and levels of marketization. Therefore, the findings of this paper provide empirical evidence that higher education expansion policy stimulates urban innovation. It also offers useful insights for China's transition from "Made in China" to "Created in China" during its high-quality development phase.

In this paper, we take the "university enrollment expansion" policy implemented by the Chinese government in 1999 as a quasi-natural experiment and use the difference-in-differences method to identify the effect of human capital expansion on firm innovation. Findings suggest that human capital expansion significantly improves firm innovation performance. More innovation is realized by promoting firms' invention patent applications than their design and utility model patent applications. Further analysis highlights the varying impact of human capital expansion on the innovation performance of firms of different types, thus indicating significant heterogeneity. This study enriches the innovation literature on the drivers of firm innovation by identifying the role of human capital while providing new empirical evidence from the perspective of firm innovation to further understand the microeconomic effects of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China's national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to 2019 and multiple waves of census data to explore the temporal and spatial effects of tertiary education expansion on college graduates' job sorting. Regression results from the fixed effects model and the two-stage least-squares model indicate that, on the temporal dimension, the higher education expansion has weakened ties between college credentials and quality jobs over the past 20 years. Recent graduates are more likely to work in informal, non-urban, and non-public sectors, and the college earnings premium has also declined. There is a persistent gap in employment outcomes between bachelor's and associate degree holders. On the spatial dimension, the growing enrolment size leads to skill sorting towards low skilled regions. The study argues that the dynamic effects of college credentials may be explained by labour market flexibility and cohort crowding after higher education expansion. This paper calls for a critical reflection on the merit of further massification of higher education in developing economies, regarding its potential impacts on intergenerational inequality and regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's higher education expansion policy implemented in 1999 has substantially increased higher education opportunities. This paper investigates whether rural students do benefit more from the expansion policy and achieve educational equity between urban and rural areas. Based on the four waves of nationwide micro survey data, collected in 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015, we find that the expansion policy increases the rural-urban gap in higher education participation in the short- and medium-term, but reduces the educational inequality in the long-term. However, when we examine the impact of the expansion policy on access to elite higher education, the results show that the expansion policy is not conducive to reducing the rural-urban gap in elite higher education participation. Therefore, to achieve educational equity between rural and urban areas, compensation policies should be designed to benefit rural students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We look at the expansion of a higher education system through the lens of concentration in the distribution of enrollments among institutions. Using data from the Brazilian Higher Education Censuses from 2002 to 2016, we found that the diversification of segments that compose the system was associated with an increase in concentration and market oligopolization. The higher education expansion in Brazil has a history of high growth and high concentration among large institutions. Enrollment more than doubled in 14 years, but growth among the top 1% of institutions was higher than the total growth among the bottom 90% of institutions. Much of the market concentration was due to a combination of subsidized privatization and deregulated virtualization. Private distance education was the main driver of concentration. By the end of the 2002-2016 period, the private sector contributed to 77% of all concentration, with private distance education alone contributing to 40%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Although national trends in rural-urban gaps in college enrolment have been well studied, little research has examined variation in gaps across provinces. Using representative data of five provinces from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study adopts a cross-provincial assessment approach to explore the relationship between higher education expansion and rural-urban inequality in college enrolment. Results demonstrate that the higher education expansion does not close the rural-urban gap in college enrolment in all five provinces. Rural-urban gaps vary in size substantially across provinces. Additionally, inter-provincial inequalities in higher education opportunities, particularly disparities between eastern coastal provinces, like Shanghai and Guangdong versus central provinces, like Henan, have widened. This study contributes to international scholarship by presenting evidence supporting the theory of Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) in a context where access to higher education is highly differentiated by structural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rage of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the downward trend seen in the economy, has further aggravated the downturn of the job market and diminished people's sense of wellbeing in recent years. To mitigate the detrimental effects of the pandemic on college students' employment, the Chinese government has further expanded the enrollment of postgraduate and undergraduate students. This study leverages data from the 2019 and 2021 waves of the Chinese Social Survey and constructs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the effect of the higher education expansion (HEE) policy, initiated in 1999, on individuals' subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that HEE policy could significantly improve individuals' subjective well-being (SWB) during the pandemic, and that social class mobility emerges as a vital mechanism through which HEE policy impacts individuals' SWB. Furthermore, there is a local-ladder effect due to reference dependence, with socio-metric status having a greater impact on SWB than socioeconomic status. This study reveals that the level of an individual's happiness depends largely on whom they are compared with. This implies that the key focus of the HEE policy is to stimulate individuals' potential and motivation for upward social mobility, ultimately enhancing their overall sense of well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal access to higher education and radical increase in demand for higher education in 2000s necessitated the expansion of higher education institutions. The rise in the number of such institutions was unprecedented. In fact, all districts of Iran had a higher education institution by 2008. Even very small districts received a private or public higher education institution to reduce transportation costs and expand access to higher education. This enhanced access has a more disproportionate effect on women compared to men. In this paper we combine data on higher education institutions between 1999 and 2016 with educational outcomes of individuals aged between 18 to 35 years old in the population census 2016 to estimate the impact of access to higher education on educational attainment and educational gender gap. Using district and age fixed effects, we do not find a significant effect on overall education of individuals. However, women received a significantly larger benefit from the expansion of higher education institutions.

The wage gap between 4-year college (BA) and high school (HS) graduates narrows down among young workers from 2002 to 2009 in urban China, despite steadily increasing BA–HS wage gaps for older workers during the same time. This period corresponds to the labor market entry of a radically increasing number of college-educated labor stimulated by China's higher education expansion program initiated in 1999. This study examines how cohort-specific relative supply of college-educated labor affects the cohort-specific college wage premiums and the overall BA–HS wage gaps in the labor market. Incorporating an aggregate labor supply model with imperfect substitution across labor with the same education level but in different age groups, changes in age-group-specific BA–HS wage gaps over time are decomposed into changes in aggregate and age-group-specific relative labor supply and demand factors. Findings suggest that the substantially expanded opportunities to attend college contribute to the falling BA–HS income inequality among young post-expansion cohorts: a 1-percent increase in the relative supply of BA-educated workers within one's own cohorts depresses cohort-specific BA–HS wage gap by 0.2%. Policies that substantially boost educational attainment for certain cohorts could reduce education-related wage gaps for these cohorts and have spillover effects to the wage structure in the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital theory has been one of the most influential theories in national policymaking since the 1980s. The major assertion is that individuals can attain better employment outcomes through investing in degrees and credentials. Following the economic reforms of the late 1970s, Chinese families have reverted to the tradition of investing in the education of their children, hoping that the human capital accumulated through higher education will translate into economic capital, enhancing their children's upward social mobility. However, the rapid expansion of Chinese higher education since 1999 has caused an educational inflation, adversely affecting graduate employment. This article critically examines China's response to global capitalism through bureaucratic adjustment of higher education expansion in managing the market transition and social reproduction of labour challenges within a relatively short historic period of 'compressed development'. Without effective articulation between higher education expansion and the changing labour needs during the market transition, the rush to higher education expansion has created different forms of social and economic contradictions. More specifically, this article argues that social embeddedness including parental influence, institutional policies, and social capital are important factors to be considered in explaining the relationship between education and work in the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student mobility is one of the most important indicators to reflect institutional internationalization in a sustainable higher education system. Student mobility issues have been addressed in previous studies, and the phenomenon was discussed in association with related factors persistently. Since higher education sustainable development has received much scholarly attention, monitoring student mobility flows to adjust international strategies is necessary. This study explored practical approaches to detect student mobility flows in the process of higher education expansion. Targeting Taiwan's higher education system as an example, we addressed the topic of system expansion and the core issues of student mobility. Target series data were collected from 1950 to 2021, including the economic growth ratio, GDP per capita, higher education enrollment, gross enrollment ratio (GER), and the number of inbound and outbound students. The data were transformed with index formats, for example, the economic growth ratio, enrollment increasing ratio (IR), and net flow ratio. The cross-correlation function (CCF) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) were used to determine the correlations of the series data and their future trends. The findings suggested that the system expansion, with GER and IR, might reflect fluctuated student mobility in economic growth. This study confirmed that the time series approaches work well in detecting the phenomena of higher education expansion and their effects on student mobility flow in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether the expansion of higher education can influence attitudes regarding gender norms. I evaluate the impact of China's higher education expansion since 1999. The results show that the reform has significantly increased higher educational attainment for both women and men. However, women's progressive views on gender roles are negatively affected following the expansion. The erosion of women's egalitarian ideology can be attributed to the findings that women's opportunities in the labor market are worsening relative to those of men. The results are significantly driven by married women and people who live in areas with a high male-to-female sex ratio. Practical conditions in the labor market and at home may adversely affect women's ability to fulfill egalitarian gender roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the increasing interest in academic integrity, this paper investigates how students from three major Romanian universities conceive academic integrity. We build up an argument of dependency of such definitions on existing academic culture, and on how fast universities, faculties, or fields of study grow with respect to number of enrolled students. The findings reveal that definitions of academic integrity offered by BA students were largely confused, with some of the students being completely unable to focus on the topic. The variation in definitions depends on the size and recent history of the department and university. The universities that experienced recent growths were found have students less likely to focus on academic integrity. The department size plays a buffering role through the inertia of organizational culture and increase in department size leads to better knowledge of academic integrity. Notably, no or very little impact was found across the fields of study in the patterns of defining academic integrity. Policy makers and academic leaders should therefore be aware that in fast-growing universities, academic integrity needs careful instillment among students, and promoting it in terms of knowledge might be rewarding for the health of the organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China initiated a large-scale higher education expansion program in 1999. During the first three years of the expansion, postsecondary enrollment nationwide doubled. Leveraging the quasi-experimental nature of the program, I link administrative records on province-year level college admission quotas with individuals' education and labor market information in 2013 from the Chinese Household Income Project, and employ a two-way fixed-effect model to estimate the expansion's impacts on individuals' education and labor market outcomes, and then use the expansion-induced variation in college access as an instrument for college education to estimate causal returns to college. Results show that the expansion substantially boosts individuals' education outcomes, including completed years of schooling, and the probabilities of attending college and obtaining any postsecondary degrees. The expansion also improves individuals' labor market outcomes, including probability of working, job stability, and hourly wage. My 2-stage least squares estimators imply that returns to education remain substantial in 2013. Returns to attending college and obtaining any postsecondary degrees are estimated to be 54–76 and 59–90 percent respectively. My analysis reinforces that enhanced access to college could raise individuals' educational attainment and boost nations' average level of human capital, and eventually benefit their labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have documented a positive association between college education and happiness. However, the endogeneity of college education attainment is rarely examined, and a more robust link between college education and happiness needs to be built. Based on the Chinese General Social Survey data of 2017, the present study used the quasi-experiment of China’s higher education expansion started in 1999 to construct a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to examine the causal association between college education and happiness. It is observed that college education indeed improved Chinese happiness, but this positive association was stronger in males than in females. Further, college education was observed to improve happiness by improving individual political status, perceived personal status, health and family social status, but not by increasing personal income. Accordingly, the government should continue to promote the development of higher education, and the fairness of higher education development deserves more attention to reduce population disparities in happiness.

In 1999, the Chinese government implemented a higher education enrollment expansion policy to improve education equality. Now, its positive impact on educational equality is contested. This study attempts to identify the link between city administrative level and tertiary attainment in the context of the policy. Our empirical findings indicate that after implementation of the policy, inequality increased. Students from political and economic centers had more opportunities for tertiary education attainment. This policy has a greater impact on disparities in access to undergraduate education for individuals living in different administrative hierarchies than it does on specialist education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999 and a sixfold expansion in the decade to 2008. Using a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births, we show that the 1999 expansion increased education by roughly 1 year around the cut-off point. Importantly, each additional year of university education induced by the expansion increases monthly earnings by 24%, whereas the corresponding OLS estimate is only 8%. Our findings are insensitive to alternative window widths, functional forms or the exclusion of the self-employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of China's higher education expansion on labor market outcomes for young college graduates using China's 2005 1 Percent Population Sample Survey. Exploiting variations in the expansion of university places across provinces and high school cohorts between 1999 and 2003, we apply a difference‐in‐differences model and take into account the demand‐side effect by using the Bartik index. We find that the expansion of higher education in China decreased unemployment rates among males and college graduates in the short term. However, the policy decreased women's labor force participation and individual earnings in high‐skilled white‐collar jobs. We further discuss potential channels affecting the outcomes that were observed. Our results illustrate the broad economic benefits of higher education. The findings shed new light on the contribution of young skilled labor in the economic growth of China and call for policies that can alleviate the short‐term negative impact of higher education on individual students and maximize human capital. Our study also provides an interesting example of the consequences of the unequal expansion of higher education opportunities on the labor market of an emerging economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on assortative mating has examined marriage between people with different levels of education, yet heterogeneity in educational assortative mating outcomes of college graduates has been mostly ignored. Using data from the 2010 Chinese Family Panel Study and log-multiplicative models, this study examines the changing structure and association of husbands' and wives' educational attainment between 1980 and 2010, a period in which Chinese higher education experienced rapid expansion and stratification. Results show that the graduates of first-tier institutions are less likely than graduates of lower-ranked colleges to marry someone without a college degree. Moreover, from 1980 to 2010, female first-tier-college graduates were increasingly more likely to marry people who graduated from similarly prestigious colleges, although there is insufficient evidence to draw the same conclusion about their male counterparts. This study thus demonstrates the extent of heterogeneity in educational assortative mating patterns among college graduates and the tendency for elite college graduates to marry within the educational elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Plural - Revista de Ciências Sociais is the property of Revista Plural and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

the aim of the article is to analyze the expansion of higher school in the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education. It is a documentary research with quantitative and qualitative approach based on historical-dialectical materialism. The results indicate that the Network got expressive evolution of the number of campuses with marked expansion in courses and enrollment in the of higher education. The enrollment growth was 348,6%: inside the states got the raise of 820,1%, while in capitals the growth was 100,4%. It is concluded that the Network has significant contribution to the expansion of public higher education in Brazil mainly in offering of technology higher courses and graduation, as well as in the interiorization process of undergraduate degree.

Using the China Family Panel Studies, we identify the subjects studied by vocational college and university graduates, with the latter group further divided into ordinary and key universities. While the returns are around 8–10% to attending colleges and ordinary universities, there are higher returns of 12–16% per annum to attending the more prestigious key universities. The recent massive expansion of the higher education sector resulted in reduced returns to all HE types, except for graduates who studied subjects other than LEM (law, economics, and management) or STEM (sciences, technology, engineering and math/medicine) at key universities. We further account for selection on observables into subjects and tiers using the doubly robust Inverse Probability Weighted Regression Adjustment method (IPWRA) approach. While these results are tentative, they suggest that pooled OLS and random-effect models substantially underestimate the effect of attending universities that are more prestigious for graduates of both genders in LEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the effect of labor supply on wage distortion are often limited to draw reliable conclusions because of endogeneity. Regarding higher education expansion as an exogenous shock on labor supply, this paper constructs a novel measurement of higher education expansion and employs difference-in-differences method to evaluate the causal effect on wage distortion. The results show that higher education expansion significantly reduces wage distortion. The mechanism test shows that "scale effect" and "spatial effect" are two important mechanisms that affect wage distortion. The "scale effect" is that colleges absorb potential surplus labor and reduce the wage distortion caused by labor market competition. The "spatial effect" shows that the influence of labor mobility on wage distortion will change from restraining to promoting along with the increase of city size. The heterogeneity test suggests the higher education expansion has a more significant restraining effect on the wage distortion of state-owned enterprises than other type of enterprises. At the urban level, wage distortion has been reduced most in middle-sized cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the development of social inequality in the Polish higher education system during its expansion after 1990 using data from the Polish General Social Survey. Focusing on the special case of a former socialist society, where higher education expansion has been very rapid and achieved mainly through marketization, this paper highlights the micro-level mechanisms that underlie the inequality dynamic. It shows how actor preferences embedded in the specific historical context shape educational behavior, producing moments of equalization and de-equalization. Class inequality regarding access to tertiary education decreased in the early 1990s and then increased again, as participation in the working classes stagnated at a low level in the later phases of the expansion. In contrast, no equalization has been observed between children of different educational origins. The analysis shows a persistent intergenerational reproduction of educational disadvantage in spite of the expansion. Lastly, consistent with the Effectively Maintained Inequality thesis, this paper provides evidence for underprivileged strata being diverted into second-tier, lower-prestige educational opportunities in the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey has experienced an expansion in its higher education sector over the last 15 years, fuelled by the cancellation of tuition fees, the establishment of at least one public university in each city, an increase in the number of foundation universities, and the abolition of the headscarf ban. Within this period, women have overtaken men in terms of higher education attainment. In this paper, we study whether this development has gone alongside improved gender equality in the labour force. We analyse household labour force survey data for the years 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2017 to track the changes in core SDG5-indicators for gender equality: labour force participation, gender segregation in employment, and the gender pay gap. Overall, we find that women with higher education still enter the labour force at a significantly higher rate than women without higher education. While both the occupational gender segregation and the gender wage gap persist among graduates, these gaps remain relatively small when compared to other countries. Our analysis shows that higher education has contributed significantly to the development of a somewhat more equal labour market outcomes for the most recent cohort, despite the nuanced and entrenched gender inequalities that are difficult to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with global trends, China experienced a rapid expansion in its higher education system in the second half of the twentieth century, and has seen especially large growth since the early 2000s. The expansion of higher education means an increase in the total quantity of educational opportunities. Although it is expected that education expansion can lead to a more equalized distribution of educational opportunities, based on the extant research in China, there is currently no consensus regarding the impact of higher education expansion on equality in educational opportunity. Moreover, only a few researchers have examined the difference in its impact between elite and non-elite higher education. By analyzing the data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2015, this study aims to investigate the relationship between higher education expansion and inequalities in educational opportunities in the context of China and to analyze the difference in the influence of this expansion between elite and non-elite higher education. The findings of this study show that, except for gender disparity, inequalities affected by household registration, family economic status, and parental education level were not ameliorated after expansion. In addition, the decrease in gender inequality in access to higher education was greater in elite than non-elite higher education. Possible reasons and policy implications are given based on the data analysis in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers patterns of participation according to gender in post-mass higher education from the perspective of higher education expansion in Taiwan. Becker's D coefficient (D) is used to detect the patterns of gender parity in a 'critical mass' field in higher education. The study compared participation in STEM and the humanities in terms of gender parity. ARIMA was used to build the best-fit model to project the future trends of D in both programs. The findings suggest that more females are entering higher education and that there are little gender differences in those entering STEM programs. The gender gaps shown by D in the humanities and in STEM are narrowing rapidly in both the elite and mass stage, but the gap in the universal stage shows little change. The findings provide patterns of gender parity in different programs to interpret the effect of higher education expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess how implicit selections based on non-cognitive abilities may have changed in the context of the great higher education expansion in China, applying the classic supply-demand framework and utilizing the Big Five personality model. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data from 2012, difference-in-difference (DID), difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) and descriptive analyses establish the following three major findings. First, from the generation entering college before the expansion—post-70s—to the generation entering college after the expansion—post-80s and post-90s—implicit selections in higher education based on personality have weakened with the increased supply of higher education opportunities. Second, selections have significantly weakened in terms of the openness dimension of personality, yet there is some evidence that selections have strengthened in terms of conscientiousness. This reflects that open-mindedness has become a relatively higher supply trait and conscientiousness has become a relatively lower supply trait among members of the post-90s generation. Third, selections have weakened only on the openness dimension for males, but on multiple dimensions beginning with agreeableness for females, reflecting a greatly increased supply of higher education opportunities for females with this dominant trait. The finding on strengthened selections based on conscientiousness has important implications for what and how to educate today's college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy and academic circles in India put forth the argument that the country's demographic dividend puts it in an optimal position to win the race between education and technology across nations by expanding higher education opportunities. This article examines the recruitment practices of 13 leading corporations in highgrowth sectors in India. Based on detailed qualitative interviews, it explains why these corporations are unlikely to increase the demand for graduates in ways imagined by policy-makers or proponents of skills-biased technological change. Companies in India are locked into an intense 'war for talent', but only for graduates in India's top-tier universities. We argue that there is a close correspondence between India's highly elitist university system and corporate talent management strategies, creating a narrow pool of highly mobile Indian corporate elite, but resulting in limited prospects for the wider Indian workforce. In this talent market, the success of the top corporate elite rests on keeping the elitist character of higher education, rather than widening labour market opportunities. This paper also seeks to explain why top corporations in India engage in this 'war for talent' when they are not always certain their investments pay off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents contemporary student support systems which are widely accepted among the members of the European area of higher education. Their primary purpose is to improve the quality of education based on the principles of non-discrimination and equal rights for all. The expansion of higher education, in the context of changing educational policies in the region, is the basis for understanding the various mechanisms and measures under which these systems tend to act in the direction of: broadening access to higher education, optimizing student retention, and improving graduates’ employability. Different models of organizing the social infrastructure of higher education institutions are illustrated in the text by examples of good practice in raising the efficiency and quality of higher education in Europe. There is a summary of the beginning of modernization of the support system at university centers in Serbia, which started in the middle of the first decade of the new millennium. The basic directions of development are presented in the text, as well as an overview of the strengths and weaknesses in the organization and functioning of support services, based on the findings of the research conducted in about forty higher education institutions of the three largest state universities. The text presented details of the process of establishing a network of support services for students of the University of Novi Sad, guided through the implementation of Tempus (Careers; Congrad; Equied) and Erasmus (Trans2Work) projects, which were mainly coordinated by the teams of experts from the Faculty of Philosophy. Thanks to the dedication of enthusiasts, the idea of developing a support system for students of all levels of studies, especially the students from underrepresented groups, has been rounded off for a decade. A key step in this regard was the establishment of the UNS Center for Information and Public Relations, which established the Info Center, Office for Students with Disabilities and the Career Development and Student Counseling Service, which work in coordination with the Student Support Center of the Faculty of Philosophy. It is a service of psychological and pedagogical support to students of the University of Novi Sad, which, in cooperation with other centers, organizations and associations, tends to establish various programs aimed at preserving the mental health of students, as well as the skills necessary for successful studying and overcoming difficulties and obstacles in learning. Having coordinated cooperation of the Student Support Center with the UNS Info Center and other community services and offices, the student support is currently being achieved through various programs aimed at: informing and empowering new students in the transition process (open days, information booklets and leaflets, peer mentors); empowering students to preserve and promote both mental and physical health (lectures and public meetings, workshops on motivation and learning styles, emotional regulation training; individual psychological counseling); empowering students from underrepresented groups (mentoring work with people with disabilities; workshops for disadvantaged secondary school students and vulnerable groups); career guidance of final year students who are trained in (self) representation, a choice of professional practice and inclusion in the world of work; empowering students to get engaged in extracurricular activities through volunteering at colleges and in the community, as well as supporting the advancement of programs of student associations and organizations. It is justified to expect in the coming period to have an increase in the number of activities and programs that meet the authentic needs of students, whereby it is especially important to continue the systematic linking of services and organizations, along with improving the conditions for engaging associates and volunteers willing to contribute to the quality of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]