Ruichen ZHANG

Abstract: How do we approach the mentality of students in today’s day and age and what can we learn from it? This panel brings theoretically and empirically minded young scholars who unpack and answer this question through multiple pathways: the understanding of meritocracy, the shaping of new selfhood, and the management of socially approved image. Interested in higher education in general, and its influences on students’ mindset in particular, this group of social scientists connect these topics to the context of contemporary China. Specifically, recent survey data from Beijing’s colleges show how students’ beliefs in meritocracy change over time along different tracks of mobility, and weighted belief network analysis based on Chinese social mentality survey provides an alternative to mapping the effects of higher education on students, manifest in their awareness of image management and self-description, while insights from scholarship on Chinese youths point to an emerging way of negotiating the loaded and contested boundary between the self and the public, which might find its counterparts in other Asian-Pacific societies. These findings open much-needed space for researchers and practitioners alike to understand the complex interconnection between education and cognition tied to social and cultural commonalities and specificities. Learning objectives: - The majority of changes in attitudes towards meritocracy take place during college. Upwardly and downwardly mobile students show significant differences in the changes in their beliefs in meritocracy. - Institutional tier significantly predicts only low-cost enlightened self-descriptions, such as “curiosity” and “thinking before accepting or rejecting an opinion.” Weighted belief network analysis shows that students’ attitudinal structure is neither purely enlightened nor obedient; instead, reflective self-description, school authority, and the disciplinary schema of the “good student” jointly connect multiple domains of belief. - Chinese youths have developed new forms of relations that dissolve the specificity of others, along with the specificity of obligations in relations so that they can better serve the authentic selfhoods of individuals. These relations together may constitute intersubjective publics with reintegrative potentials. Target audience: Researchers interested in education, attitudes and wellbeing. Practitioners and educators who care about students’ experiences and wellbeing, especially regarding thoughts and mentality