The Massification of Chinese Higher Education: Consequences for China's Youth

The Indiana University Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business presents Susan D. Blum.

This talk analyzes the causes, consequences, and meanings of the sudden increase in the numbers of Chinese students receiving higher education. From a low of approximately 3% just two decades ago to almost 25% in 2006, higher education is no longer an elite and rare good, but is increasingly "massified." Such independent pursuit of limited opportunities has consequences for the nature of youth and the very meaning of childhood. Though the number of youth has been stabilizing because of China's birth policies, the competition for entry into the expanding programs of higher education remains fierce. Debates about education often reveal debates about human and social ideals. As Mao and others showed, the very nature of education has the effect of changing society. Chinese intellectuals knew this a century ago, as New Youth drove reform; the current situation is both similar and different in instructive ways. We find enduring centralization and increasing privatization; social and individual goals; and focus on international competition.

Speaker: Susan D. Blum is Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, where she has also served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies. At Notre Dame she is also a Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Among her writings are Portraits of “Primitives”: Ordering Human Kinds in the Chinese Nation (2001), Lies that Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths (2007), and most recently My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture (2009). She is currently engaged in two projects: one is a book titled Learning versus Schooling: A Professor’s Reeducation and the other is a comparative study of higher education.

Event Link