Understanding the social and academic experiences of China's rural students: how class works in campus life

Abstract

The breakneck-paced expansion of Chinese higher education that began around the turn of the century is historically unprecedented. The number of rural students entering colleges and universities, including top ones, is increasing. Although there has been substantial body of literature on the trajectories to university of rural students, no empirical, systematic study has yet been done to examine the social and academic experience of rural students in colleges and universities. We seek to address this limitation by investigating representative samples of rural and urban college students entering four elite universities in China. Our goals was to understand what their social and academic experience, in term of in terms of academic performance, faculty/staff interactions, peer group interactions and extracurricular activities, are in universities, and how their family backgrounds shape their social and academic experiences in universities. The findings of this study are expected to provide a more informed perspective on understanding how social class influences the ways in which students navigates the social and academic currents in universities.