ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some of the results of a content analysis of articles on higher education published in People’s Daily during the 1970s, which was a very important decade in terms of educational policy and economic development strategy. It deals with the implementation of wide ranging reforms in education that were intended to alter the mixture of types of higher education institutions and to increase the access of formerly disprivileged groups—such as peasants and workers—to educational opportunities. The chapter focuses on various economic and political-ideological goals of higher education, and the extent to which particular kinds of goals are regularly associated with particular kinds of schools. It looks at the issue of differentiation in mainland China’s higher education system during the 1970s, considering the kinds of schools emphasized in the press. The chapter explores the question of whether students from different social backgrounds are systematically associated with one or another type of higher education institution.
