Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China by Andrew Kipnis. University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 2011), 174 pp. ISBN 13:978-0-226-43755-2; $27.50.
Reviewed by Lisa Nagle
Chinese families have a deep cultural desire for education.
Geography, economics and access all contribute to creating inequality in Chinese education.
More Chinese young people are attending university than ever before. A look at the current situation in higher education and key contributing factors.
Even after thirty years of economic reform, the majority of rural migrants in China's cities are still kept out of the formal labor market and professional tracks. Most of them pick up jobs in the informal sector. Such social inequality is likely to be perpetuated given the fact that their second generation is not provided with quality education. In China, education, often considered a way of changing one's life trajectory, now only reproduces social status and reinforces class boundaries.