THESIS
2017
Abstract
How educational expansion affects educational inequality has long been a key concern for students
of social stratification. In recent decades, there has been a global surge of students from rapidly
developing countries studying overseas. However, extant literature has not paid sufficient attention
to the role of overseas degrees in educational stratification. Using Hong Kong census and by-census
data from 2001, 2006 and 2011, this thesis examines how the omission of overseas degrees affects
our understanding of the process. The analyses find that (1) omitting overseas degrees
underestimates the effects of family background on tertiary attainment but overestimates the
negative effect of immigrant status; (2) upper-class families disproportionally opt to send their
children overse...[
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How educational expansion affects educational inequality has long been a key concern for students
of social stratification. In recent decades, there has been a global surge of students from rapidly
developing countries studying overseas. However, extant literature has not paid sufficient attention
to the role of overseas degrees in educational stratification. Using Hong Kong census and by-census
data from 2001, 2006 and 2011, this thesis examines how the omission of overseas degrees affects
our understanding of the process. The analyses find that (1) omitting overseas degrees
underestimates the effects of family background on tertiary attainment but overestimates the
negative effect of immigrant status; (2) upper-class families disproportionally opt to send their
children overseas, conforming to the expectation of the Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI)
hypothesis; and (3) the effect of family income decreases over time for local students but increases
among those who receive overseas training. Such visible trend divergence strongly suggests that
unless researchers explicitly incorporate overseas tertiary training into their analyses, they may run a
strong risk of underestimating the active role of families in educational stratification, not only in
Hong Kong but also in other similarly situated societies.
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