The New "Credential Game": The Disillusionment of Higher Education Promises and the Renarration of Education by Chinese and American Youth on Short-Form Video Platforms

Abstract

This article explores how Chinese and American youth use short-form video platforms—TikTok, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu(RED)—to narrate disillusionment with the value of higher education. Drawing on 15 user-generated videos (2022–2024), the study adopts a qualitative interpretive approach to examine how young people articulate emotions such as anxiety, irony, and critique in response to credential inflation, employment instability, and shifting life expectations. Findings reveal cross-cultural convergence in narrative themes such as degree devaluation and career fallback, yet diverging emotional grammars and platform practices. Chinese youth often express frustration through metaphor, self-deprecating humor, and visually templated storytelling, shaped by cultural norms and algorithmic amplification. American youth, by contrast, use ROI logic and direct satire to critique systemic failure, often employing data and commentary as tools of affective protest. By treating short-form videos as cultural texts and affective publics, the article contributes to research on digital platforms, youth agency, and the global reconfiguration of educational legitimacy. It argues that platform logics and cultural constraints co-produce distinct narrative strategies through which youth render structural uncertainty visible and emotionally intelligible.No embargoAcademic Major: Sociolog