Social integration of the migrant population is the goal of new urbanization in China, which is also inextricably linked to access to higher education. Based on data from a sample of 105,219 rural--urban migrants from the 2017 China Migrant Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey, whether acquisition of higher education among the surveyed sample affected their level of social integration was analyzed using mediation effect and multilevel linear models. The results showed that access to higher education effectively promoted the social integration of rural--urban migrants. Higher education can promote migrants' social integration through employment quality factors such as increased work income, employment formality, higher social security level, and reduced work intensity. A greater share of tertiary education enrollment should thus be allocated to rural households. Improving the quality of employment for rural--urban migrants would also help to ameliorate their social integration difficulties.