Xuanxin Liu

Xuanxin Liu

Oct. 30, 2026

Cultural capital, University students, Employment competitiveness, Lifting path.

With the popularization of higher education and increasingly fierce employment competition, enhancing the employment competitiveness of university students has become highly significant. This article explores pathways to improve their employment competitiveness from the perspective of cultural capital, with a particular focus on its manifestations in language, literature, and the humanities. The study analyzes the theories of cultural capital and university students’ employment competitiveness, revealing that cultural capital exists in three forms: embodied, objective, and institutionalized, each closely related to employment competitiveness. It finds that different forms of cultural capital distinctly influence various elements of university students’ employment competitiveness. Embodied cultural capital enhances competitiveness through personal literacy and abilities such as language expression and aesthetic cultivation; objective cultural capital provides learning resources that strengthen professional skills, including literary and artistic materials; and institutionalized cultural capital serves as a credible signal of competence and gains recognition from employers. Based on these insights, this article proposes practical pathways to improve employment competitiveness through the accumulation of embodied cultural capital, optimization of objective cultural capital, and acquisition of institutionalized cultural capital, thereby offering clear and targeted conclusions for both theoretical and practical applications.

© 2026, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license