Mass higher education may lead to increasing inequality

One of the assumptions of higher education expansion across time and place has been that providing broader access will offer greater opportunity to all. Looking at U.S. higher education, one would have to conclude (see Geiger, 2015, review) that massification in higher education in the late 19th and early to mid-20th century provided access but not necessarily equality of educational and work opportunity. Indeed, the disturbing evidence is that privileged access to elite higher education has been a very carefully protected opportunity based on family, associational networks, and ability to pay.

A recent study of expanding higher education opportunity in China has now documented the same inequality of impact. The responsibility doesn't necessarily fall to institutions; in the case of China (and this blogger would propose in the U.S. as well), the inequality emerges from the role families play. It appears that more highly educated and privileged Chinese parents play a more prominent role in their graduates' post-college employment. "The expansion of higher education may not promote fairness but may instead intensify educational inequality" is the unfortunate implication for China and likely other countries as well.