Despite the general consensus on the importance of university degrees in leadership selection, researchers in elite studies have not focused on how education differentiates and stratifies elites. Many important questions remain unanswered, for example: Are the returns to education linear in different political institutions? Is the payoff to education allocated among different dimensions of educational attainment? Using a 1994 data set on top Chinese leaders, I show different effects of educational credentials on elite stratification in two major bureaucratic structures in China. I conclude with a discussion of the nature of the political elite in China and the implications of my study for future research on educational credentialism and elite stratification.
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