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Spatial recruiting competition in Chinese higher education system

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Abstract

How geographical neighboring competitors influence the strategic recruiting behavior of universities is still unclear because previous studies assume spatial independence among universities. Using data of Subordinate Universities of the Ministry of Education in China, this study found that the choice of admission score level by one university was spatially autocorrelated with its neighboring competitors and four strategies came into being within spatial enrollment competition. The intenseness of spatial competition decreased as the number of neighboring competitors increased while the difference of admission score increased as the distance between competitive universities increased.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities, Project 2009JJD880002. Special thanks go to W. Norton Grubb, Luc Anselin and Mun C. Tsang for general guidance and specific comments. We are grateful for comments and suggestions by Zeqi Qiu, Xiaohao Ding, Chongren Xu, Xiaodong Lu, two anonymous referees and the editor, Amy Scott Metcalfe. All remaining errors and omissions are my own.

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  1. Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University, Room 445, Science Building 5, 100871, Beijing, China

    Jiafeng Gu

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Gu, J. Spatial recruiting competition in Chinese higher education system. High Educ 63, 165–185 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-011-9429-8

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