Free Choice and Institutional Selection: Cultivation of the Elite in the Era of Mass Higher Education,Based on a Case Study of Peking University

Abstract

On the basis of reforms to undergraduate education at Peking University, this article sets out from students’ free choice and strict institutional selection, focusing on the process of the cultivation of the elite in mass higher education. The article analyzes the systems for student recruitment, talent training, educational programs, testing and assessment, and so on, revealing the plural logic behind the selection of the elite, the expansion of the number of courses under the trend of generalism, competitiveness under the power of rigorous testing and assessment, and rational management and skill-based performance by the individual. Going a step further, this article examines the fracturing of campuses due to erosion by instrumental rationality and consumerism, alienation in teacher-student relationships, and the essential hollowness of education. Finally, the article discusses students’ dispositional characteristics as shaped by trial and error through free choice.