ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief description of the outcomes of regression analysis of students' educational expectations, followed by an analysis of inter-class differences between working-class and middle-class parents in their expectations regarding their children's higher education. It operationalises Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital and examines whether there exist inter-class differences in terms of the students' and parents' expectations regarding higher education and explores what they are, and what these differences reveal about social class in urban China. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, social class differences in terms of parental expectations regarding children's higher education are revealed. The chapter discusses social class differences in terms of parents' expectations of children's higher education, and students' choice of undergraduate subject and university. There is extensive disagreement among sociologists in education as to the effects of cultural capital on children's educational attainment.
