Along with the arriving of globalization, transnational higher education (THE) has been playing a role in the social reproduction process accordingly. In mainland China, the transnational higher education is generally regarded as a “Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools”, and is explicitly defined as: “the cooperation between foreign educational institutions and Chinese educational institutions in establishing educational institutions within China to provide education service mainly to Chinese citizens” (State Council of China, 2003). As for 2017, there are 87 THE institutions and 1145 programs approved by the Ministry of Education of China (2017). However, not all students have opportunities to choose it. Those from advantaged social class who have more family capitals are more likely to choose THE. Through THE, students gain their competitive advantages in foreign language, diplomas and employment.

According to Bourdieu (1986), family capital is presumed to be multidimensional, including economic, cultural, and social resources that exist in embodied, objectified and institutionalized forms. Coleman (1988) categorized the capitals into three groups, and elaborated that “physical capital is wholly tangible, being embodied in observable material form, and human capital is less tangible, being embodied in the skills and knowledge acquired by an individual, social capital is less tangible yet, for it exists in the relations among persons”.

Based on the theories of family capital, the paper first attempts to measure the family capital in three different existing forms, including objectified, embodied, and institutionalized family capital, and then analyzes the effects of family capitals on the student choice of transnational higher education in mainland China.

An empirical survey was conducted in three transnational cooperative universities in mainland China. Based on the similar entry requirement and similar geographical situation with three transnational universities, one local public university was selected as reference group. Finally, 1,600 student questionnaires sent to four major subject areas (engineering, economics & management, humanities, and nature science) in the four universities. A total of 1349 valid questionnaires were collected, 714 from the transnational universities and 635 from the local public university, which showed a response rate of 84.31%. Different dimensions of family capitals were constructed by principal components analysis. And then the binary logistic regression analysis was used to examine to what extent and how family capital in different existing forms affect student’s choice of transnational education.

The results suggest that the institutionalized family capital, such as mother’s education and father’s occupation have the most significant impacts on the choice. Additionally, objectified family capital such as annual family income and embodied family capital such as social network, also exert significantly positive influence over the choice of transnational education. The association between family capital and the choice of transnational education was: the more the family capital, the more likely the student is going to choose the transnational education that could make students gain their competitive advantages in foreign language, diplomas and employment. Therefore, the findings also provide insights for the possible mechanism of how the socioeconomically advantaged might use transnational higher education as a stepping stone to reproduce their social status. As such, social inequality tends to perpetual.

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