This thesis explores the sociological issue of how and with what outcomes students' trajectories through the Chinese higher education system are shaped by the nature of policy, on the one hand, and their social backgrounds, on the other. In relation to policy, from 1999 on-wards there have been major changes in higher education policy which have provided new opportunities for higher education development in China. As a consequence, during the period from 1999-2010, the gross enrolment rate increased nearly six-fold. However, this expansion has been paralleled by other policies that allocate additional resources to model (formerly key) schools as well as to a small group of already elite universities. The question, then, of who gets to go to these exclusive and elite institutions, and the ensuing social justice outcomes, are at the heart of this thesis. A mixed-methods research design strategy was used to investigate the relationship between higher education expansion and access, institutions, key schools and university applicants. To identify those influences shaping students' choices and experiences required a focus on both their families' social, cultural, economic, and political capital and their personal understanding of their choice and experiences. The fieldwork design involves focus groups with university applicants, interviews carried out in China with policy makers and university applicants, as well as a survey examining the kinds of social backgrounds of students in key and non-key schools. This study examines both policy makers' perspective of China's higher education expansion since 1999, and university applicants' experiences and understandings of the choices of higher education access. Theoretically, the study is based on a critical conceptual framework and is inspired by Bourdieu's theory of the forms of capital to understand differences in higher education access in China. The research findings suggest there is a relationship between families' social, cultural, economic, and political statuses, and that these relationships have important implications for social outcomes, equity and justice. Widening access to higher education in China does not appear to be matched by equal access to opportunities for social equity, and mobility. The findings reveal that Chinese higher education policy makers fail to see, take account of, and respond to, the outcomes of higher education expansion outcomes and their unequal consequences and impacts on university applicants as this is mediated through key schools. The study also finds that the differences between students is less a question of aspiration - in that all Chinese students and their families have high aspirations. Rather, those families with access to economic, social, cultural and political capitals strategize their paths through the institutions - including access to key as opposed to non-key schools. Interviews with students reveal the pressure on them to be a 'good person', and that this status is the outcome of securing a place in university . . By exploring how higher education trajectories are shaped by students' family backgrounds . in China, this study offers a more holistic approach to examining the influences shaping student's experiences and outcomes. This study also contributes to sociological debates on ways to understand the relationship between higher education expansion policy and social equity and mobility issues in a global context.

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Internationalization has brought many changes to the landscape of higher education in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government's move to expand research training, develop Hong Kong into a regional education hub, build a closer connection with Mainland China after the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997, and the proportional decrease in University Grant Council's (UGC) annual funding to the higher education sector has led to an increasing number of Mainland Chinese Research (MCR) students enrolling in Hong Kong universities. They have gradually outnumbered the local students and become the majority of the research student population in Hong Kong. This study aims to identify the unmet needs and problems of MCR students and to evaluate the support provided by universities in Hong Kong. This is done with reference to a detailed empirically grounded case study of one university department's support services, from the perspective of MCR students enrolled during the period 1991 to 2008. The students' perspectives are examined in the light of their experience, personal backgrounds and the changing contexts of the case study university and department. In many respects MCR students experience some of the same problems international research students experience when they move to study in Hong Kong because of the difference between the academic training and living environments in Hong Kong and Mainland China. The theoretical framework of this study is therefore based on research relating to the internationalization of higher education and the experiences of international students. Focus is placed on a combination of the models of internationalization of higher education proposed by Altbach, Marginson and Knights and De Wit, which display the different levels of contexts for the case study, namely global, local, and institutional. From this a new research model is proposed that combines all three levels of contexts and aims to present a better understanding of the phenomenon by exploring the dynamics among the factors displayed in these different levels of contexts. The analysis investigates the impacts of the socio-economic and cultural contexts and changes in the higher education sectors in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Attention is given to the development of research training in the university during the case study period, and to policies related to the flow of MCR students to Hong Kong. Results reveal the changing profiles of MCR students during the case study period, their diverse backgrounds, and goals, and the demands they make for support services from the university. Conclusions examine the gaps between the needs of this group of students and the student support services provided by the university. Results also call for greater reflection on the impact on the Hong Kong higher education sector brought about by MCR student mobility.

Subsequent to the surge in China’s economy and its impact worldwide, higher education in China has correspondingly witnessed unprecedented development and growth. In line with the institutional policy of higher educational expansion, this research investigates whether this expansion, together with its associated educational reforms and institutional policies, has brought about notable equal opportunity in student access to tertiary education as called for by Chinese Marxist/socialist ideology. The primary purpose of this research is to address the absence of literature on university students’ internal mobility, in particular focusing on the perspective of educational equality or lack of it. It underlines the colossal internal movement of Chinese students prior to and after obtaining their first degree and how students respond to socio-political, economic and cultural factors. This research breaks through traditional research on the rationale for migration. It explores whether and how institutional policies have formed complete or incomplete free student mobility in China. Under such movement, it examines the variables determining Chinese university students’ internal mobility behaviour, using art and design students as a case study. Under the robust financial position and with favourable political support from central government, as well as its global influence, cultural and creative industries have been singled out to become publicly recognised as the predominant vehicle for China’s future economic growth. Exploring university students’ internal mobility and their choices in higher education and employment will help shed some light on the growth and success of regional economies. These in turn determine and to some extent shape the overall socio-economic shifts that are currently being witnessed in China. Furthermore, this research investigates the form of Chinese art and design university students’ study and learning experience. This is compared with the UK educational system and forms of delivery. The results are used to offer recommendations for achieving the required higher education innovation to educate the talent needed for the creative industries in China. This research has deployed multiple approaches, including action research. A design   practice project in the form of practice leading quandary is presented as the final section of this research. It proposes recommendations aimed at maximising higher institution’ marketing and communication pursuits and the effects that these may have on the recruitment of the most suitable students. The proposed marketing campaign also aims to underpin possible solutions for addressing aspects of inequality from the perspective of educational affordability, study experience and employability prospects.

Utilizing a theoretical framework drawing on Gramsci's theory of hegemony; Jonathan Joseph's critical realist 'duality of hegemony'. and Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field, this thesis aims to promote an understanding of Chinese HE reform and development within the wider context of China's teleological modernization project. It aims to understand how agential hegemonic projects and the corresponding HE reform policies and initiatives are mediated through the Chinese HE context; how deeply-rooted structurally hegemonic conventions and practices impact upon this process of mediation; how competition over resources strategically deployed by the state mobilizes individual actors in the field of Chinese HE and directs their efforts to accumulate various forms of capital, and how such mass action results in the propulsion of the Chinese HE sector on a trajectory which contributes to the achievement of national development objectives. Methodologically, the thesis adopts Burawoy's extended case method, incorporating critical discourse analysis of policy documents, interview data, and ethnographic participant observation to facilitate a theoretically informed analysis of the reform and development of Chinese HE. This reflexive approach has the overarching objective of reconstructing Gramsci's theory of hegemony to take into account the particularities of the Chinese case. The thesis ultimately characterises the Chinese HE sector as a robust social institution in service of the integral Chinese state and which combines elements of consensus building and dissent negation to contribute to a limited, as opposed to expansive, hegemony. The constraining effect of cultural structures, practices and conventions effect the negation of dissent and reduce the requirement for explicit coercive interventions, while consensus is actively negotiated around ideas that centre on national solidarity and the provision of opportunities for the accumulation of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. This capacity for dissent negation without recourse to explicitly coercive means is viewed as arising from the distinctly differentiated modes of association prevalent in Chinese society, rooted in Confucian norms and values, and which characterize social relations in the field of Chinese HE and in wider Chinese society.

In the last two decades Information Technology (IT) has changed everyday life and had a profound impact on culture, the economy and industry in many ways. The digital economy, led by IT, is growing quickly and has become an important part of the world economy. At the same time, IT brings opportunities to the world and also challenges. As a technology, IT requires a lot of new knowledge, expertise and new types of personnel. Thus innovation and training of personnel has become more and more important. Higher Education (HE) systems in different countries play an important role in the information era and the fast-growing digital economy. As the source of personnel and knowledge innovation. the HE system is a pool of talent and a bank of ideas. It is one of the key factors that drive social productivity forwards. How the HE system meets the challenges of the IT revolution has become a new research subject in recent years. From another perspective, the HE system benefits from IT, e.g. IT provides new ways of teaching and learning by allowing access to worldwide information resources. The impact of IT on HE is significant. Meanwhile, the development of IT has changed the structure of and social requirements on personnel. In many developing countries, although the digital economy requires a large number of new types of personnel who are highly motivated, adaptive and have cutting-edge knowledge and skills, their HE systems are still not able to facilitate students to develop non-academic competence for meeting employers' requirements. As a result, a shortage of personnel hinders economic growth in these countries. Thus a reform of the Chinese HE system is required. As part of this reform, IT could be used to deliver highly efficient, quality education to large populations. This thesis investigates HE in China and proposes a solution to the existing problems in the Chinese HE system. Taking advantage of Semiotics in relation with Information Systems and organisations, the semiotics framework is used for identification and analysis the cultural differences in the HE systems between the developed countries and the developing countries. Together with the stakeholder theory and system theory, this research delivers a reference model with a set of techniques for cultivating the non-academic competence of graduates by Chinese Universities. The model helps Chinese Universities to maintain and improve the overall quality of education by incorporating the Don-academic competence development into the educational system. It also benefits the HE system from utilising advanced technologies in teaching and learning, managing the requirement changes of educators and students, and meeting the increasing market demand for quality graduates.

The issue of critical thinking (CT) amongst Chinese students has emerged as an important topic among educators. While there is some literature on CT and Chinese students’ performance, no study has tackled how this increasing focus on CT is impacting on higher education in China and what CT means to policy makers, teachers and students. This thesis sets out to fill this gap using insights from the theory of knowledge transfer. This theoretical framework was chosen in order to examine the ways in which Western CT theory and practice is gradually being imported to and integrated into Chinese culture, largely focusing on the understanding of CT. Using a case study approach, the thesis reports on empirical findings that have emerged from analysing Chinese Ministry of Education press releases and mission statements, observing university CT classes and studying chats about CT on a student internet discussion forum. Findings show that: 1. some core aspects of modern Western approaches to CT, such as how to deal with uncertainty, are missing in Chinese teaching; 2. disposition and emotion are sidelined in favour of a strong focus on logic and reason, and their inseparable relationship to reasoning ability found by Western scholars was neglected. 3. CT is regarded as crucial by Chinese educators and students but currently the teaching fails to make CT accessible and interesting to students and might therefore not foster CT itself. These findings have important implications for how policy makers and educators might continue to implement and teach CT in China.

This research analyses the expansion and transformation of higher education in Asia, focusing in particular on Chinese universities. It shows the rising of the so-­‐‑ called global university, that is, above all, an inclusive process which makes academic knowledge production something heterogeneous, complex and composite – characterised by different actors both private and public, institutional and non-­‐‑institutional. The global university is a point of multiplicity that places our view in the midst of the transformation of educational policies and knowledge taken as whole. It reveals a ‘global knowledge order’ parallel to a ‘new international division of labour’, where the higher education is becoming an important device in the filtering, restriction, and return of population and skilled workers around a whole set of internal national/transnational borders based on knowledge. Developing the concepts of stratification and differentiation, I investigate how the transformation of the educational system brings out and multiplies, rather than mitigates, the differences between universities, while this same segmentation refers to an original and powerful method of management of the increasingly qualified workforce. Higher education and its internationalization nowadays is an important dispositive to segment population within globalization, reconfigures hierarchies and manages the complex displacement of the present having the same force (or even more) as those of gender and race. Moreover, the Global University represents the most interesting terrain to observe the development of an original measurement of labour in its metamorphosis and the value form in cognitive capitalism. The growing intra-­‐‑regional mobility in Asia and the internationalisation of higher education characterise the innovative cartography of the present, wherein knowledge production becomes spatially dispersed and globally integrated. Knowledge, geographically embedded, defines the order of the current post-­‐‑ colonial space, while the Global University describes not only this kind of order, but also how this imbalance is used by the skilled workforce to survive in the local labour market.