Enrollment Quota Control, Elite Selection and Access to Education in Rural China

Abstract

In China, the access to education is determined by not only student's demand for schooling, but also the allocation of educational resources and the schools' selection of candidate students. Based on the data obtained from the rural life level and rural social assistance household surveys in four provinces in 2005, the demand-identified bivariate probit model is adopted to identify whether rural youths have the demand for schooling, distinguish between the students' demand for schooling and the selection of schools, and open out the influence and function of family and social backgrounds on rural youths to acquire the education above junior high school. The empirical research shows that both the deficiency of demand for schooling and the enrollment quota control are important obstacles to restrain the access to education, and the demand for schooling and the elite selection of school all obviously incline to the families and peoples with predominant social backgrounds. The policy implication of this research is that it is imperative under the situation to adopt measures such as improving the demand for schooling of the disadvantaged families and further loosening the enrollment quota control, but the former is more important.