Our paper on trends in the social origins of students at elite Chinese universities

Our paper on the long-term social origins of students at Peking University and Suzhou University has appeared in China Social Science (中国社会科学). The paper’s title is “无声的革命：北京大学与苏州大学学生社会来源研究 1952-2002 (Silent Revolution: Research on the Social Origins of Peking University and Suzhou University Students, 1952-2002).” The lead authors were James Lee/李中清 (HKUST) and LIANG Chen/梁晨 (Nanjing University) and there were six additional co-authors, including myself.

My own role was fairly small, and limited largely on advising on the statistical analysis, and participating in discussions of the implications of the results. But it is an important paper, and I would rather make a minor contribution to an important paper than make a major contribution to an unimportant one. I already do a lot of the latter.

Here is the announcement of the issue that includes the paper at the China Social Science website: http://www.csstoday.net/Item/10020.aspx

Here is a place at the China Social Science website where you can view a complete abstract and download the article:
http://www.sspress.net/zgshkxbjdab/Article.aspx?id=856

The paper presents many novel empirical findings on trends in the social origins of the students at these two universities. In my mind, the most important is the demonstration that during the period covered by the analysis, the percentage of students from farming and working class origins was much higher than at national and regional elite universities in the US.

Perhaps the only elite schools in the US in which students from modest socioeconomic origins are so well represented are the University of California campuses, including UCLA. I was just at a meeting yesterday where some basic tabulations were presented on the socioeconomic characteristics of entering freshmen at UCLA and I was pleased to see that we continue to admit and enroll large numbers of students who are first-generation college students, or from families of relatively low socioeconomic status. Based on what I have seen in tabulations from the annual Freshman Survey carried out by the Higher Education Research Institute here at UCLA, in the United States the most selective privates admit a large share of their students from high income families. Only a small portion come from modest origins.

If you can lay your hands on a copy of 中国社会科学, the full reference is

梁晨 (LIANG Chen), 张浩 (ZHANG Hao), 李兰 (LI Lan), 阮丹青 (RUAN Danching), 康文林 (Cameron Campbell), 杨善华 (YANG Shanhua), 李中清 (James Lee). 2012. “无声的革命：北京大学与苏州大学学生社会来源研究 (1952-2002) (Silent Revolution: Research on the Social Origins of Students at Peking University and Suzhou University, 1952-2002).” 中国社会科学 (Chinese Social Science). 2012(1):98-118.
For those of you who can read Chinese, here is the abstract:

１９４９年以来，中国高等教育领域出现了一场革命。高等精英教育生源开始多样化，以往为社会上层子女所垄断的状况被打破，工农等社会较低阶层子女逐渐在其中占据相当比重，并成功地将这一比重保持到２０世纪末。基础教育的推广、统一高考招生制度的建立以及重点中学的设置等制度安排共同推动了无声革命的出现。这场革命虽然不及社会政治革命那样引人瞩目，却同样意义深远。本研究利用１９５２ — ２００２年间北京大学和苏州大学学生学籍卡片的翔实材料，力图将这一革命及其成就呈现出来，为中国高等教育改革与发展提供借鉴.

Because much of the online discussion of our article has focused on what appears to be an increase in the share of students whose father and/or mother are cadres, James Lee and Liang Chen have provided some additional details on this trend to help clarify some key underlying features. Below, I have added this material to this blog entry, on 3/26/2012. We are preparing additional materials to help ‘unpack’ the findings in the article and clarify some of the key trends.

Additional points re the increase in the proportion of students whose father and mother was a cadre (from James Lee and LIANG Chen)

Recently there has been considerable interest in our research finding that the proportion of cadre children at PKU increased during the last quarter of the twentieth century from 11 percent in 1976 to 38 percent in 1999.

This finding which was published in《无声的革命：北京大学与苏州大学学生社会来源研究(1952-2002)》中国社会科学杂志 2012 年 1 期 is based on an analysis of the social origins of some 150,000 undergraduate students who entered Peking University and Suzhou University in the last half of the twentieth century.

The article also shows several other important discoveries.

1. Based on the analysis of Suzhou University undergraduates, while the overall proportion of cadre children similarly increased, the proportion of cadre children who are from explicitly political cadre families in fact declines from 85 percent in 1965 to fewer than 45 percent in 1999

2. The proportion of Suzhou University cadre children who are from commercial enterprise cadre families, however, increases from 3.4 percent in 1976 to over 43 percent in 2001.

3. At the same time, the proportion of children of factory workers also increases from 13 percent in 1992 to 22.4 percent in 1999 at Peking University and from 11.4 percent in 1989 to 24.4 percent in 2001 at Suzhou
University.

In fact, overall the proportion of children from blue collar families remains roughly stable at Peking University during the last quarter of the twentieth century and increases during this period at Suzhou University.

Overall by international standards, Chinese elite university admissions as demonstrated by these two universities were and continue to be remarkably open to children from non-elite families.

《无声的革命》一文核心观点

最近，我们的一项研究发现，北大学生中干部子女的比例从1976年接近11%增加到了1999年的近38%，这引发了社会各界地广泛关注和持续讨论。实际上，这是我们对上世纪后半叶北京大学和苏州大学招收的共约15万名本科生社会来源研究的发现之一，该研究名为《无声的革命：北京大学与苏州大学学生社会来源研究(1952-2002)》，发表在《中国社会科学》杂志 2012 年第1期上。其实，我们的研究至少还有其他三个重要发现值得注意：

1. 同北大类似，苏大学生中的干部子女在改革开放以后也有持续的增长，但在干部群体内部，党政干部的比例已经从1965年的85%下降到了2001年的40%。

2. 与此相反，苏大干部子女中的企业干部子女比例却从最低谷1976年的3.4%增加到了2001年的43%，超越党政干部成为干部子女的最大来源。

3. 同时，两校的工人子女比例也都有明显增长。其中，北大的工人子女比例从1987年的13%增加到了1998年的22.4%；苏大的工人子女比例从1989年的11.4%增加到了2001年的24.4%。

实际上在上世纪最后的25年里，北大工农子女总体的比例一直比较稳定，达到了学生总数的近30%；而苏大工农子女的比例在这个时期保持增长，在本世纪初达到了40%多，甚至有超过干部和专业技术人员子女之和的趋势。也就是说，工农学生在北大占据了重要的位置，而在苏大则已经成为了多数群体。

依据国际标准，以上两校的数据表明：中国的精英大学对来自非精英家庭的子女是相当开放的，这种开放应该可以被延续下去。