Supporting data for "Educational Aspirations of Working-Class Students in Elite Universities in China"

The concept of students’ aspirations has informed research on student success for some time. In the Chinese higher education context, a troubling paradox remains between increasing university access and the intensification of class inequalities in achieving university success among the working-class students in elite universities, who have been identified as experiencing lower levels of educational aspirations and higher levels of dismissal. Among the studies on investigating working-class students’ educational aspirations, some research gaps remain unaddressed. First, there is very little research within the higher education field which has considered aspirations as a fundamental construct in terms of university experience and graduate outcomes. Second, research has not adequately addressed the interactions among family, school/university and personal influences. Third, few studies have examined both realistic and idealistic educational aspirations simultaneously. Therefore, this study examined educational aspirations among working-class students in elite universities in China, investigating their relationships with family SES, cultural capital, college adjustment, academic self-concept, and academic attainment, and exploring in what ways working-class students’ educational aspirations are constructed in their family and elite university environments.<br>A sequential mixed-method research design was adopted. A pilot study (<i>N</i>=160) was conducted to refine the items and scale structure of four latent constructs. The main study surveyed 558 working-class students from elite universities in mainland China. CFA indicated satisfactory measurement reliability and model fit. SEM was then used to test the hypothesized relationships. The final structural model achieved an acceptable model fit. Controlling for students’ gender, ethnicity, grade level, and the number of their sibling(s), this study found that, first, for working-class students, their family SES was positively related to cultural capital. Second, the relationships between family SES and their educational aspirations were mediated by cultural capital. This result suggested that despite higher family SES support for the development of higher educational aspirations, these students’ perceived cultural capital might decrease the effects. Third, these students’ college adjustment and academic self-concept mediated the relationships between cultural capital and their educational aspirations. Their greater academic and social adjustment, and academic self-concept developed in elite universities accounted for higher educational aspirations through mitigating limitations exerted by family cultural capital. In the qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews with 21 students were analyzed thematically. A total of 17 main themes comprising 41 sub-themes were identified. The qualitative research findings provided insights for the quantitative results from the SEM model. They revealed the nuanced dynamics of how the Chinese social context, and the family and elite university environments collectively shaped the working-class students’ educational aspirations. They also illustrated how family cultural capital contributed towards sparking these students’ educational aspirations, and how elite institutional support contributed towards nurturing their educational aspirations.<br>The present study contributes to the literature in two important ways: (a) elucidating underlying mechanisms of educational aspiration construction through three pathways and (b) providing insights on the conceptualizations of cultural capital in the Chinese educational context. The practical implications are useful for policymakers, higher education institutions and parents to enhance the feasibility of students’ educational aspirations.