I’ve recently come across two impressive Chinese articles on education and school choice:
- How Many Crossroads Does It Take to Go from the First Year of Primary School to a Top University (FDU or SJTU). Link
- Do Students Perform Better If They Are Admitted to Middle School by Lottery? Link
These articles form a quasi-series studying Shanghai’s education ecosystem. The first examines factors influencing university enrollment—specifically at Shanghai’s top two universities, SJTU and FDU. The second investigates high school admissions as a reflection of middle school education outcomes.
Shanghai is a relatively closed ecosystem regarding student enrollment, with little migration—typically, children with Shanghai “户口” (verified resident status) progress from primary to middle to high school through various admission mechanisms, while competing among themselves. As China’s most open city and a pioneer in experimenting with innovative school admission policies, Shanghai serves as a living laboratory for education economists. The rapid changes in admission mechanisms provide a golden natural experiment to isolate the effects of schools, lotteries, and more. Moreover, the culmination of this educational journey is the college-entrance exam, which serves as a clear endpoint, simplifying the study of educational effects.
I find these two articles impressive because they tackle meaningful questions and utilize fascinating data. While the analysis doesn’t entirely make sense to me—I’m not a professional econometric person—it’s excellent work. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this data featured in top economic publications soon. I’ll consider translating and summarizing them later and perhaps even get my hands on the data to explore further.
A final thought: While school choices can be studied on a large scale, it’s important to remember that each data point represents a student’s life. And, it feels inhumane to conclude, “If randomly assigning students via lottery yields the best overall welfare outcome, we should definitely do that.” And there should be room for ambitious ones to strive and climb the ladder. Egalitarianism, when taken to extremes, is also another form of unfair and even, cruel for some.