Unpacking the Extraordinary Academic Success of Rural Students

Over the past three decades, the unprecedented expansion of enrollments for higher education has led to the continual devaluation of university degrees in China (Fan and Ding 2013). Admission to elite universities has become increasingly important for rural youngsters who, without strong guanxi or social capital in the competitive labor market, are eager to move up the social ladder. A growing number of empirical studies (Yang 2006; Luo 2011; Li 2014; Wu, X 2016) attests to the fact that the proportion of rural students is very likely to be negatively associated with the prestige of universities they attend. Studies in the field are usually preoccupied with the economic, social and cultural obstacles that contribute to academic failure among many rural teenagers (Yu 2004; Gao 2011; Xie 2016; Li 2017). But, how small numbers of rural teenagers manage to enter prestigious universities has largely remained a black box. Cultural barriers to academic success are usually more difficult to overcome than poverty (Li 2010; Hannum, An, and Cherng 2011; Bourdieu and Passeron 1979). Researchers argue that, in comparison to their urban counterparts, rural students in China are more likely to encounter academic failure. The meritocratic character of school education (in textbooks, the medium of instruction, and examinations) give primacy to mainstream urban culture (Li 1999; Yu 2004; Wu, J 2016). The distance between the national school curriculum and rural life is revealed in the rural students’ shortage of mainstream cultural capital. This becomes a formidable obstacle in the school career of rural students. Studies in this volume illustrate how rural students’ disadvantage in cultural capital is addressed and compensated by rural families, school teachers, and rural students themselves. The first paper is a collaborative work by Professor Yu Xiulan and her student Han Yan. Professor Yu has long been known in the field for her pioneering work on how cultural capital (the preferences for urban culture in school education) leads to academic failure for the majority of China’s rural students (Yu 2004). Yu and Han illustrate how underprivileged students are successful in gaining admission to University A—a top-tier institution. Yu and Han specify that underprivileged students only receive spiritual or verbal support from their parents, but the learning atmosphere at school, the inspiring teachers, and their outstanding classmates made up for their disadvantages in cultural capital. Moreover, the financial and cultural predicament engenders certain forms of embodied cultural capital unique for underprivileged students, i.e., the determination to upgrade their lives through their own efforts.