Academic Stratification and Faculty Hiring Networks: Analysing the Hierarchical Structure of Schools of Education in China (1982–2022)

Faculty hiring networks are crucial for maintaining academic exchange and openness. However, existing studies have almost exclusively focused on the American context, with limited understanding of the academic labor market in China, where doctoral education has rapidly expanded and quasi-marketization reforms have been implemented in faculty recruitment. This research examines the faculty hiring network of 1,806 academic staff with doctoral degrees from 56 leading Chinese schools of education. The findings reveal a highly hierarchical recruitment structure in the education discipline in China, reflecting an inherent academic stratification system influenced by symbolic recognition consistent with signal screening theory and the academic relationship conceptualized in class theory. This structure, on the one hand, challenges Chinese doctoral graduates securing positions in higher-tier schools and leads a "one-way road" rather than a "two-way road" of faculty flow. On the other hand, it reflects profound inequality of academic labor market, with a noticeable increase in inequality over the past decade, evidenced by a higher overall Gini coefficient (0.87) compared to other disciplines in the United States. This implies that it would be imperative to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of human resource allocation in the academic labor market through macro policies, and thereby ensuring and promoting the prosperity and development of global education science