General and Vocational Tracks and Equity of Higher Education Enrollment Opportunities among Classes: A Reconstruction of Indicator System for Social Class-based Differential Enrollment Opportunities and its Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Based on the educational hierarchical reproduction theory and the MMI and EMI hypotheses, this paper discusses the impact of the tracking of general and vocational education at the secondary level on higher education opportunity equity among social classes. The study finds that increasing gross enrollment rates of both general high schools and secondary vocational schools can help improve the equity in admission opportunities of colleges and universities among social strata; expanding the share of general high school places by adjusting the structure of general and vocational tracks (that is, the general-vocational ratio) can effectively reduce the class disparities in college and university admission opportunities; neither the change in the scale nor in the structure of general and vocational tracks will contribute to alleviating class inequality in top university enrollment opportunities.