National and Local Dynamics of Higher Education Mobility: A Complex Network Analysis on China’s Independent Admission Program (2015–2018)

Existing research on student mobility in higher education has largely focused on macro-level trends, overlooking micro-level structures that shape access and inequality. This study addresses the gap by reconstructing China’s Independent Admission Program (IAP) field from 2015 to 2018 using school-level student mobility data and complex network analysis, combined with Bourdieu’s field theory and proximity theory from economics. The analysis reveals a distinct core-periphery structure: elite universities attract students nationally with minimal spatial constraint, while eight regional clusters rely heavily on geographic proximity. Regression models show consistent effects of key school status and administrative hierarchy across clusters, but also highlight localized differences in how economic and cultural capital influence student mobility. Path dependency analysis further illustrates how high schools reinforce their comparative advantages by sending students to structurally similar universities over time. While the IAP tends to amplify educational inequality—favoring urban, resource-rich schools—it also plays a compensatory role in certain regional clusters by offering access routes to disadvantaged schools. These findings reveal the dual logic—national and local—underpinning the IAP, and demonstrate the value of complex network methods for uncovering hidden structures and informing policy on educational equity and institutional stratification.