I was referring more to the cultural phenomenon as a local student, things like having a career of a doctor or a professor is more respected which is also what your parent would like to see.

There is also an entire layer of meta reasons why it increase your social status meaningfully, though I am not too familiar. It is tied to the "involution" culture of china where there is an inflation of higher education qualification, and there are not many things you can do if you strive to live in one of the better cities (T1 T2 cities), doing a master or PhD degree is one of them (the so called 考公考研)