The impact of family capital differences on music majors' academic achievement: an empirical analysis based on structural equation model

This study examines how family capital differences affect music majors' academic achievement, an underexplored educational equity issue. Using Bourdieu's and Bandura's theories, we built a multi-path mediation structural equation model with three family capitals (economic, cultural, social) as predictors, learning engagement and self-efficacy as parallel mediators, and multidimensional achievement as outcome. Based on 952 music undergraduates from eight Chinese universities across eastern, central, and western regions, we used CFA, bootstrap mediation, and multigroup path comparison including a 2 × 2 crossed analysis. The dependent variable was measured through a multi-source design combining faculty rating [ICC (2, k ) = 0.86], official course-grade records, and artistic-practice evaluation, partially decoupling it from self-report. The results show that (a) cultural capital is the strongest predictor of multidimensional academic achievement (β = 0.19, p < 0.001), followed by the direct effect of economic capital (β = 0.12, p = 0.004), while the effect of social capital qualifies as indirect-only mediation—the direct path within the full structural model is non-significant (β = 0.08, p = 0.060) and both indirect paths through learning engagement and professional self-efficacy are significant; (b) learning engagement and professional self-efficacy play significant parallel mediating roles between family capital and academic achievement; (c) institution type and student origin moderate the capital-to-mediator pathways in directions consistent with theory—the cultural capital → professional self-efficacy path is stronger in key universities than in regular universities (Δβ = 0.14, p = 0.009), and the economic capital → learning engagement path is stronger among rural students than urban students (Δβ = 0.14, p = 0.015)—while mediator-to-outcome paths show no between-group variation. The structural estimates remained stable under covariate-controlled and reverse-direction robustness checks. This study identifies a domain-specific inversion of the family capital hierarchy in art higher education (traced to the primacy of embodied cultural capital, upstream selection through specialized music admission, and the role of aesthetic taste as an evaluative criterion), develops a multi-source multidimensional achievement measurement tool for music majors, and reveals a stage-specific moderated mediation mechanism that provides empirical and policy references for promoting equity in music higher education.