The Impacts of Student Background and Extracurricular Activities on the Output of General Education; A Manuscript for the International Journal of Chinese Education

Abstract

This is an empirical study in the field of general education evaluation. Using data collected from three elite Chinese universities where general education is emphasized and promoted at institutional level, this study investigates the impacts of student background and extracurricular activities on student performance measured from the perspective of general education objectives, i.e., critical thinking, creativity, value judgment, decision-making, and communication skill. Female students perform significantly better in value judgment and decision-making, and students with higher socioeconomic status perform significantly better in decision-making and communication skill. Students with art talent perform significantly better in all the five skills. And high quality extracurricular activities are found to have positive effect on these skills, too.