China’s College Expansion and the Timing of the College-to-Work Transition: A Natural Experiment

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220906791

ANNALS, AAPSS, 688, March 2020 93

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220906791

China’s College

Expansion and

the Timing of

the College-

to-Work

Transition:

ANatural

Experiment

By

LINGXIN HAO

and

DONG ZHANG

906791ANN The Annals of the American AcademyTiming of the College-To-Work Transition in China

research-article2020

This article examines the effect of China’s 1999 accel-

eration of higher education expansion on when college

graduates find their first skilled job. We use a natural

experiment to test our hypotheses and exploit the

unique education and work history data of a nationally

representative survey, as well as estimate a causal infer-

ence model. We find that the 1999 education expansion

caused a delay in the landing of a skilled job among

graduates from technical colleges, while graduates

from four-year colleges were not affected in job acqui-

sition. We also find that family origins and individual

social positions are significant determinants of who

entered college both before and after the education

expansion. These findings shed new light on the work-

ings of early adulthood and on social inequality in

China.

Keywords: China; college graduate; higher educa-

tional expansion; skilled employment

The turn of the new millennium witnessed

an accelerated higher education expansion

in China. In 1998, the number of new college

admissions was 1.08 million; that number

reached 6.08 million in 2008, about a six-fold

growth (China Ministry of Education 1999–

2015). Scholars consider a key motivation for

this higher education expansion to be the high

unemployment rates among high school gradu-

ates who were competing for jobs with those

who had been laid off from state-owned enter-

prises in the late 1990s (Knight, Deng, and Li

Correspondence: hao@jhu.edu

Lingxin Hao is a professor of sociology at Johns

Hopkins University. Her specialties include social ine-

quality, sociology of education, migration, family and

public policy, and quantitative methodology. Her

research has appeared in the American Journal of

Sociology, Demography, Social Forces, Sociology of

Education, and Child Development, among others.

Dong Zhang is a lecturer in sociology at Chongqing

Technology and Business University in China.

94 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

2017). China’s college-educated millennials face a complex array of opportunities

and vulnerabilities after this higher education expansion that reshaped the transi-

tion to work for college graduates in the 2000s compared to those who completed

college in the 1990s. We conceive the macro-factor-driven difference between

two successive cohorts’ experience as a natural experiment of the 1999 college

expansion, an exogenous shock, to China’s young adult population. We evaluate

the causal effect of this college expansion on job acquisition of college graduates.

This study may shed light on our understanding of universal early adulthood in

newly developed countries in Asia and around the world (Yeung and Alipio 2013).

The multifold increase in college enrollment rates in the 2000s offered oppor-

tunities for Chinese youth to accumulate human capital. Simultaneously, the

acceleration of higher education expansion in a short period caused a series of

repercussions. First, demand for skilled labor in the then labor- intensive, export-

oriented economy did not grow at the same speed as the supply of skilled labor.

Second, universities were not ready to serve a massive student body, contributing

to graduates of lower quality. Third, university curricula and training programs

did not prepare college graduates to execute work responsibilities with additional

training. These consequences spurred an increase in unemployment rates among

college graduates (Bai 2006; China Statistics Bureau 1990–2015).

The unemployment problem among college graduates may be viewed within

the context of the time it takes graduates to find an appropriate job. The college

education rate in China’s labor force is low, at 17.4 percent (China Statistics

Bureau 1990–2015). And a sudden increase in labor supply may decrease one’s

success in finding a job. Therefore, rather than asking whether college graduates

are able to find skilled jobs, we ask how long it takes college graduates to find a

skilled job. To answer this question of timing, we exploit the unique education

and work history data of a nationally representative survey (China Labor-Force

Dynamics Survey) to estimate a causal inference model for the effect of the 1999

expansion on the timing of the college-to-work transition.

College Expansion and Macro Conditions for the

College-to-Work Transition

We consider China’s college expansion to be a plausible explanation for the

emerging “early adulthood” in the course of China’s transforming economy.

Furstenberg (2010) identifies factors that cause later transitions to adulthood,

including the expansion of education, consistent with China’s situation in the

early 2000s. China’s 1999 college expansion targeted both four-year universities

NOTE: This study was supported by the Hopkins Population Center under a small grant (PI:

Lingxin Hao; R24 HD042854). The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the

authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the National Institutes of

Health.