Social stratification and education

Social stratification = refers to a society’s classification of its people into categories based on a
set of specific characteristics and material and/or symbolic resources, which produces a
hierarchy among individuals/families
- Socially defined as a property of a society rather than individuals in that society
- Is reproduced from generation to generation
- Is universal (found in every society) but variable (differs across time and place)
- Involves not just quantitative inequality, but qualitative beliefs and attitudes about social
status
Reproduction across generations
- Social mobility : the process through which individuals move between positions in the
social structure
o Intergenerational mobility: the relationship between the individual’s social
position and the one of their parents
o Intragenerational mobility: the relationship between the individual’s social
position in different points of their life
- The movement between the social position of origin to the ‘social destination’ is
regulated by series of processes that are expression of and produce social inequalities
- Social inequalities: The phenomenon according to which different positions in the social
structure provide individuals a different set of resources which are linked to different life
chances
- Social positions provide individuals with a set of economic, social and cultural resources
that guarantee various degrees of advantage
- Thus analyzing social mobility process means to focus on whether, to what extent and in
which way inequalities in one generation are reproduced in the following generation
- The higher is the association between social origin and the social position attained the
lower is the fluidity of society (less open society)
 Sociological theories of education
- Structural Functional View  Durkheim, Parsons, Davis & Moore
- Conflict perspective  Marx, Weber, Bowles & Gintis, Bordieu
- Interactionists Approaches  Mead, Cooley, School of Chicago
Structural functionalist view
- Social Reproduction – the process by which social order and continuity are maintained
from generation to generation – is viewed as consensual and harmonious in nature
- Educational system is a central social institution that plays a key role in maintaining
social order
- The purpose of formal education is to provide each individual with the knowledge and
capabilities that are essential for meaningful participation in particular societal contexts
- The task of sociology with respect to education is to uncover and specify the ‘normal’
characteristics for any given society in order to ensure closer integration between the
individual and society and among all members of that society
- Educational systems contribute to the maintenance of the social system through two
functions
o Allocation: schooling through the mechanisms of grading, granting credentials,
and more informal selection processes, sorts individuals to fill distinct positions
in the social hierarchy
o Socialization: schooling contributes to individual personality formation by
inculcating the dispositions necessary for successful participation in general
 social life and specific social roles  Knowledge and values are not only
transmitted to the students by the school, but have to be internalized by
individuals as part of their personalities
DAVIS & MOORE: Main arguments
1. Certain positions in any society are functionally more important than others, and require
special skills to fill them
2. Only a limited number of people in any society have the talents that can be trained into
the skills appropriate to these positions
3. The conversion of talents into skills involves a training period during which sacrifices of
one kind or another are made by those
4. To induce talented people to undergo those sacrifices, their future positions must carry
scarce privileges and advantages
5. These scarce privileges are attached to the social positions, and includes
economic/material resources as well symbolic rewards/distinction signs in terms of
status and public recognition
6. Therefore, social inequality among different strata is both positively functional and
inevitable in any society
DAVIS & MOORE: the role of education
- Social reproduction ( the process by which social order and continuity are maintained
from generation to generation) is viewed as consensual and harmonious in nature
- Educational system is a central social institution that plays a key role in maintaining
social order
Structural functionalist views
- A central assumption: social stratification and inequality are necessary structural
features of advanced societies.
o The reproduction of society involves an assumed hierarchy of positions that must
be filled with suitably qualified and motivated people.
o This requirement gives rise to the specified functions of schooling, including the
tasks of sorting and socializing individuals and contributing to common values
- Social stratification is seen as the result of open and fair selection mechanisms
- Inequality among individuals is seen as the result of the differentiated abilities and
efforts put by the individuals in the educational system
- Simplifying “everyone deserves the places he has in society”
- Generally optimistic assessment about the role of education for expanding individual
opportunity and social productivity
Critical/ Conflict perspectives
 - The various strands in the critical analysis of schooling are unified by their concern to
find the underlying causes of educational inequalities and change
- Education system has largely failed in its promise to promote a more egalitarian society
- Schooling, in content and process, contributes to the subordination of socioeconomically
disadvantages individuals and minorities
- Various strands: Marxism, Cultural reproduction theory, Critical pedagogy, Feminism
Critical/Conflict: Marxist theories
- Main authors: Althusser, Bowles & Gintis
- Marxism attributes the root causes of social inequality to structures of class and
economic reproduction
- Despite its apparent contribution to individual and social development, schooling serves
primarily to coordinate and prepare students for adjustment to the routines of a world
dominated by monopoly capital
- Formal education serves primarily to facilitate the transformation of capitalist
development in such a way as to maintain social order
- Education as an oppressive institution against pupils from subordinate social classes
Critical/Conflict: Weberian approaches
- Main authors: Collins, Murphy
- Stratification of resources among individuals not only based on economic resources, but
also on status and political power  more complex definition of social classes
- Social inequality in education as the outcome of competition among social classes
- Education has not the primary role of transmitting skills, but of distributing educational
credentials
- Social closure in key occupations
Critical/Conflict: cultural reproduction
- Main authors: Bordieu & Passeron, Bernstein
- Link detailed examination of specific educational practices, akin to interpretative studies,
with processes that contribute to the maintenance of social structures
- Capital exists in the form of social, cultural and symbolic assets as well as being an
economic factor
- Power and prestige convey advantages to members of privileged social groups, which in
turn can be transmitted across generations, but these are only effective to the extent
that they can be converted from potential to real benefits
- A person’s family background and social circumstances contribute to her ‘habitus’
dispositions, which embraces rules of conduct, manners of expression, etc
- Schools and other educational institutions are infused with class-based assumptions and
expectations related to rules of conduct, manners of expression, background knowledge
 - This will give upper class children competitive advantage over others in the educational
system
Interpretative/Interactionist analysis of schooling
- Focus on two features of schooling
- Learning and interaction with others are viewed as social processes, not simply as
aspects of social positions and structures
- Schooling, in this view, is a sit of perpetual adjustment as participants attempt to
decipher and share meanings with one another and, in the process, shape their
personalities and lives
Premise
- Education as a basic human right (Art 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights)
- Education as an experience that enhances each and every individual’s capabilities and
freedoms (Sen, 1999)
- Nowadays, it is widely believed that every child should have access to formal education
in state-sponsored, public schools (Green, 1990)
- Where does the idea of universal education come from?
Changes in :
- Compulsory school prolongation
- Transformation of diverse educational frameworks into formal school systems
- Inequality and equity issues
Legal-institutional conditions
- A major issue in achieving universal education is the degree to which the state is
committed to providing educational services for all children in particular age groups
- Universal basic education depends on the ability of national governments to organize
sequences of relatively uniform classroom activities in authorized schools as part of an
integrated national system
- Compulsory, state-sponsored schooling emerged from extremely heterogenous legal
frameworks and initial conditions
Systematization process
- Three systematization processes:
1. Creating an integrated national system of mass education in which clear links are
established between elementary, secondary and higher education
2. Determining the level of centralization or decentralization in the governance and
finance of the education system
 3. Determining the extent to which the state recognizes (and incorporates) schools and
educational programs established by private organizations or religious associations
The origins of expansion of universal education
Critical needs in nascent states
- The early national education systems can be understood as conscious strategies to
address several critical needs in nascent states:
1. The need to shape citizens’ loyalty through the inculcation of ideologies of
nationhood
2. The need to provide the state with trained public administrators and military
personnel
3. The need to mobilize society for economic purposes and industrial development
4. The incorporation of distinct ethnic and cultural groups within an integrated national
territory
Compulsory schooling and its prolongation
- Compulsory school (CS) legislation represents both an important enabling condition and
a significant political intention in national attempts to universalize access to basic
education
- Political leaders came to view the building of a national system of public secular schools
as a conscious strategy to weaken the influence of religious institutions in local
communities and to empower the state in its pursuit of industrialization and national
unity
- CS as an instrument to transmit to children instruction in basic literacy and numeracy as
well as in ‘appropriate’ (non -religious) moral precepts and political principles
Timing of CS law
- US: individual states made provisions for CS in state constitutions and/or legal statutes in
the XIX century
- Southern and Central America: passed CS statutes fairly early during the 19 th and 20th
centuries
- German states: forerunners (XVIII-XIX centuries)
- European countries: earlier in western Europe and later in Eastern Europe – enacted CS
laws during the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century
Nationa states and CS
- The ideology of CS was not inherent in the formation of nation states during the 18 th and
19th centuries, but became increasingly part of the nation state model during the 20 th
century
- Two documented facts:
 o The gap between the date of independence and the date at which CS rules were
enacted shortened in each successive wave of national independence (Ramirez &
Boli, 1982)
o No strong link between the date of approval of CS and educational expansion
(Ramirez and Ventresca, 1992)
Different roots of compulsory schooling
- The political, social and institutional meanings associated with the establishment of CS
varied significantly over time and place
o France: state promoted CS against the Church
o Prussia/Scandinavia: Protestants supported CS
o Japan: industrial leaders to foster productivity
o Sri Lanka: reduce child labour
o Arab States: reduce gender inequalities

Prolongation of CS
- 1950s, international policy discussions led countries to establish two age boundaries
o The entry age, when parents were expected to enroll their children in school
o The minimum exit age, when children could leave school and either remain at
home or enter the labour market
- In the 1930s: age of entry was fixed between 6 and 8 years; minimum exit age varied
between 11 and 15
Trends over time
- CS incorporated younger children over time, but the overall changes were minor
- More changes occurred in the minimum leaving age: in the 200s in most Western
countries it ranges between 15 and 18
Standardization and centralization
- An organized, interconnected system involved at least two processes: the formation of a
national system of schools and the standardization of educational forms
o The incorporation or development of diverse establishments, activities and
personnel under a central national educational framework of administration
o Increased standardization of curricula, examinations and certification enabled
the articulation and coordination of different educational levels
- The actual level of standardization depended, to a large extent, on the extent of
centralization within the educational system
Centralized vs decentralized systems
 - Archer(1979) argues that the basic structure of an educational system – centralized
versus decentralized – had important effects on the nature of school provisions
- A centralized bureaucracy was better positioned to engineer education systems by
ensuring clearer ties and better coordination among various parts of the system
o Centralization promoted, for example, closer linkages among teacher training
programs, intended curricular policies, and national systems of examinations
- Decentralized education systems, on the other hand, involved less explicit controls and
oversight of educational purposed, practices and processes, and thus facilitated more
heterogenous outcomes
Recent trends
- From 1970s and 80s: neoliberal discourse that stresses the value of decentralization
pervaded national policies of educational government
- Educational power and decision-making authority re-allocated from central to
intermediate and local levels
- Some convergence across countries is occurring:
o Highly centralized systems, such as France and Sweden, have incorporated some
degree of decentralization by means of deregulation and increased schools
autonomy
o Decentralized systems such as US and UK have introduced some national laws
regarding goals and standards
Privatization
- In the mid XIX century, differences across countries in the degree by which the State was
involved in the funding and provision of primary education
o Prussia and France succeeded in financing elementary schooling at a relatively
early stage, and public funding encouraged families to withdraw their children
from private institutions
o In England, until 1833, educational establishments were organized on a purely
voluntary basis
Tensions between secular and religious education
- A public education system typically meant a secular system, which often resulted in
hostile and antagonistic attitudes towards religion by state builders and modernizing
elites
- Nowadays, various approaches:
o In Saudi Arabia and Israel religious education is an integral branch of the national
education system
o In France, by contrast, religious schools that do not adopt the official curriculum
and remain private institutions outside of the public system
 o In Spain, despite constitutional prohibition against a state religion, dominant
Roman Catholic Church has continued to enjoy preferential treatment by the
government
Inequality and equity issues
Traditional elitist education in EU
- Secondary school
o Schools devoted to the consolidation and reproduction of elites through the
education of the children of privileged or propertied classes have a long history
in Europe
o Membership in European elite classes, whether political, economic or cultural,
meant receiving a classical academic education involving a rigorous program of
humanistic and sometimes scientific studies as a selective school
o Examples:
 Germany: the education of the cultured upper middle class personal
cultivation, probity and social courtesy
 France: the education of elites emphasized linguistic proficiency,
academic distinction, and devoted service to the state, either in
administrative or military affairs
 England: inculcated a sense of honour, faith, entitlement and privilege,
together with a willingness to serve and defend the country and British
Empire
Democratic roots of US education
- In the US, a strong elite ruling education was missing
- Although private institutions had served the children of dominant classes in the United
States since the founding of the early colonies, democratic and egalitarian views
permeated the historical development of schooling
- Protestant principles, infused the common school movement in the nineteenth century,
and had important consequences for the spread of schooling in both rural and urban
areas
- Education as a means for creating literate and morally upright citizens and create social
cohesion in a diverse population
Trends in US education
- The American high school was the first entirely free secondary school in the orld
- Unprecedented expansion in secondary education: from 7 percent of the youth
population in 1890 to 80 percent in the 1960s (Ulich, 1967: 242-3)
- However, race, ethnicity and immigrant status strongly affected access to, and
completion of, secondary and higher education in the United States
 - Calls for explicit compensatory measures
From elitist to popular education in EU
- Traditional European forms of secondary education, provided in a gymnasium, lycee or
grammar school, represented an advanced stage of liberal education and a narrow
gateway to higher social and occupational statuses
- Academic secondary schools began as institutions serving universities, with the purpose
or preparing upper-class youth for study in higher education
Shifts to more inclusive secondary education
- Prolongation of CS served to make access to lower secondary education almost universal
- New national entry examinations with stronger academic or IQ – like elements +
counselling
- Increasing slots:
o Broadening access to primary education and, at the same time, increasing the
number of academic secondary schools
o Development of vocational schools or curricula

Comprehensive schooling vs educational tracking

- ‘Comprehensive educational model’ follows the inclusive idea of teaching heterogenous
students together
- ‘Educational Tracking’ refers to sorting students into different types of education –
school tracks, curricula, subjects, and classes – either by aptitude, by preferences or by
both
Two idealtypical education models
- Comprehensive model:
o Students attend the same school/curricula/educational environment without
sorting
o Rationale: joint learning might be superior in terms of both efficiency and equity,
because lower performing students may profit from mixing with higher
performing students while not hampering the development of the latter
o For the comprehensive model to be efficient, it is crucial that teachers can
effectively manage students’ heterogeneity
o It should also prevent that proficient students perform under their potential
because of teaching occurring at a lower pace
o It could be complemented by some flexibility in the choice of non-compulsory
subjects
- Tacking model:
 o Students are sorted to school environment and curricula tailored to their needs
and capacities
o Rationale: Quality of instruction and teaching in classes might be enhanced and
more targeted when offered to a more homogenous body of students, thereby
increasing students’ overall scholastic achievement
o For tracking to be efficient, it is crucial that institutions and families assign
students reliably to the ‘right’ track for their achievement
o Tracking may increase the dispersion in learning and achievement outcomes,
thereby amplifying inequality between individuals and social groups
o These issues appear to be even more relevant when tracking occurs at a
relatively early age
Some convergence
- Countries with a traditionally rigid system of early tracking have been introducing
reforms with the aim to make their education systems more flexible
o Increased the permeability of tracks
o Facilitated mobility between types of school
o Promoted inclusive school types in addition to track schools
o Performance hurdles limiting access to the prestigious academic track have been
reduced in part
- Nations with comprehensive school systems have been fanning out curricula programs
by the introduction of new educational options (eg types of school, curricula and
subjects) which lead to an unprecedented differentiation of the educational landscape in
these systems
- Many of these transformations have been sponsored by a liberal stance on ‘school
choice’ which became increasingly dominant in the 1990s (Asher et al, 1996)
Growth of vocational education
- Development of enrolments in vocational programs due to:
o The economic need of skilled and semi-skilled technicians
o The incorporation of more science and technology in scholastic curricula
o The increased heterogeneity in students’ attitudes, talents, interests and
previous preparation
The role of vocational education
- Strong role in Germany
o Science and technology as key factors for development
o Elaborate system of training and apprenticeship
o Strong education-LM links
o Good occupational returns to VET
 - Weaker role in France, Italy and UK
o More emphasis on traditional academic studies and ‘classical subjects’
o Later incorporation of science and technology in school curricula
o Vocational education perceived as lower-tier secondary education
o Not very good returns in the LM

Main changes in higher education (HE) Systems

Martin Trow’s model
- All HE systems, at some point, face the same basic problem: the rapid growth of student
participation
- This entails:
o Increase in the total number of students
o Increase in the % of students enrolled on the appropriate cohort
o Higher rate of enrollment growth
- The expansion has repercussions on many aspects of the operation of HE
o Eg funding, governance and administration, curricula, teaching practices and
research, recruitment of teachers, rules of admission of students, relations
between teachers and students, financial support to students)
- High growth rate  need of expanding the teaching staff  challenges for governance
structures
- Growth in the absolute number of students 
o Changing relationship between teachers and students, teaching methods and the
availability of time of teachers
o HE becomes more visible, a spending area in competition with other spheres
such as health, social policy and the pension system
- High proportion of enrollments  attract able low background students  increase in
non-traditional students
- Growth of enrollment is an immanent feature of all HE systems
- This growth is non-linear: there are thresholds that mark transitions of HE systems
between qualitatively different states/conditions
- These thresholds are mainly degined by the proportion of enrollments:
o 0-15% elite HE
o 16-50% mass HE
o Over 50% universal HE

Trow’s conceptions of elite, mass and universal higher education

Elite Mass Universal
Attitudes to access A privilege of birth or A right for those with An obligation for the
talent or both certain qualifications middle and upper
classes
Functions of higher Shaping mind and Transmission of skills; Adaptation of ‘ whole
education character of ruling preparation for population’ to rapid
class; preparation for broader range of social and
elite roles technical and technological change
economic elite roles
Curriculum and forms Highly structured in Modular, flexible and Boundaries and
of instruction terms of academic of semi-structured sequences break
professional sequence of courses down; distinctions
conceptions of between learning
knowledge and life break down
The student career ‘sponsored’ after Increasing numbers Much postponement
secondary school, delay entry; more of entry, softening of
works drop out boundaries between
uninterruptedly until formal education and
gains degree other aspects of life;
term-time working
Institutional Homogenous with Comprehensive with Great diversity with
characteristics high and common more diverse no common
standards, small standards; ‘cities of standards;
residential intellect’ migxed Aggregates of people
communities; clear residential enrolled but rarely or
and impermeable commuting; never on campus;
boundaries boundaries fuzzy and Boundaries weak or
permeable non-existent
Locus of power and ‘The Atheneausem? Ordinary political (The Daily Mail!)
decision making Small elite group, processes of interest ‘Mass publics’
shared values and groups and party question special
assumptions programs privileges and
immunities of
academia
Academic standards Broadly shared and Variable: Criterion shifts from
relatively high (in system/institution ‘standards’ to ‘value
meritocratic phase) ‘become holding added’
companies for quite
different kinds of
academic
enterprises’
Access and selection Meritocratic Meritocratic plus ‘ ‘open’ emphasis on
achievement based compensatory ‘equality of group
on school programmes’ to achievement’ (class,
performance achieve equality of ethnic)
opportunity
Forms of academic Part time academics Former academics More specialist full-
administration who are ‘amateurs at now full-time time professionals.
 administration’; administrators plus Managerial
elected/appointed large and growing techniques imported
for limited periods bureaycracy from outside
academia
Internal governance Senior professors Professors and junior Breakdown of
staff with increasing consensus making
influence from institutional
students governance
insoluble; decision-
making flows into
hands of political
authority

Further pressured to convergence between HE systems

- In Sociolofy, an isomorphism is a similarity of the processes or structure of one
organization to those of another, be it the result of imitation or independent under
similar constraints (Powell & Di Maggio)
- Types of isomorphism:
o Coercive: recommendations by international agencies like OECD and UNESCO,
Bologna process
o Imitative: increase internationalization allows more exchanges between
governments
o Normative: professionalization of administrators of universities in different
countries
1950s and 60s
- European systems
o Elite university (small % of enrolments and mainly high-class students)
o Dominant Humbolt’s idea of university:
 Academic freedom
 Unity of teaching and research
 Homogenous standards across institutions
o Mainly public institutions
o Long degree programs
- US system
o Already expanded (‘mass’ stage)
o High level of differentiation between institutions and curricula
o Relatively higher share of public institutions
o Vertical differentiation of degree qualifications
o Role of external actors in university governance committees
1950s and 60s: reforms aims
- Increasing investment in higher education
- Rationale rooted in human capital view: education is seen as a key driver to foster
economic development
- Expanding access also among low-income students to avoid lost of talents
- Set-up a meritocratic way of selecting and allocating individuals into occupational and
social positions
Reactions to the demand expansion
- 4 ideal-typical models (Teichler 1988)
- Elitist model: university as restricted to the elite’s children, closed numbers, access test,
strict requirements to enrol
- Vertical model: vertical differentiation of HE degrees in order to match with different
occupational levels in the LM
- Unitary model: accommodate increased enrolments but maintaining homogenous
standards across institutions and degree programs
- Further education model: inclusive access also to workers and older students
1950s and 60s: policy interventions
- Promoting access of low-income students
- Scholarships and grants
- Some forms already existed but they were local, particularistic and targeted to very
excellent students
- New forms of financial support to students:
o Increased public involvement
o Extended support to more students
o Various forms of support

1970s and 80s

- Less favourable economic conditions (eg 1975 oil crisis, smaller rates of economic
growth)
- Reports on HE show:
o Persisting inequalities in education
o Increasing difficulties of graduates in the transition to the labour market (eg
longer unemployment spells, overeducation)
- Limited public financing possibilities and new approaches to cope with changes in HE
1970s 80s: ‘soft’ differentiation model
- Late selection in the school system (late tracking)
 - Restructuring of educational supply, with upgrading of non-tertiary courses at the
tertiary level (eg teaching, nursing)
- Introduction of different educational options in HE in terms of institutions (universities,
colleges, institutions of applied sciences, etc) and degree programs
- Introduction of new types of ‘first-level’ degrees:
o Restructuring and extending some advanced secondary education courses (eg US
junior colleges, Japanese senshu gakko)
o Creating of new courses and programmes within universities (eg diploma
universitari in Italy)
o Creationg of new separated institutions (eg regional colleges in Norway,
Fachochschulen in Germany)
o New programmes in high schools (eg further education in UK)

1970s and 80s: institutional autonomy

- Partial ‘retreatment’ of the state (remote control) and decentralization processes
- Increasing decisional autonomy of universities and HE institutions
- Less constraints in budget management
- The state usually maintains control over the establishment of standards, hiring
conditions, students’ admission, scholarships and grants
- Freedom of university usually stronger than that provided to other types of institutions
Consequences of institutional autonomy
- The increased autonomy pushed institutions to rely on alternative sources of funding
- Three mains reasons:
o Need to reduce public funding
o Introduce competition among institutions to increase efficiency
o Redistribute the financial burden of HE studies, particularly towards those who
benefit most
Opposition to increasing tuition fees
- In European countries the tuition fees were generally low
- Great opposition from students’ associations to increase in tuition fees:
o Introduction to fixed caps to the maximum fees (Italy)
o Elimination of tuition fees after introduced (Portugal, Ireland)

Market, accountability and evaluation

- Institutional autonomy has been accompanied by the request of more accountability by
universities
 - Accountability: the obligation of an organization to account for its activities, accept
responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner (Business
Dictionary)
- Instruments of accountability (accreditation systems; performance indicaors; extetrnal
and internal evaluation system of administration, teaching and research; management
approach; external stakeholders in the governing boards)

1990s and 2000s: globalization and the Bologna process

- Universities challenged to adapt to the new needs derived from the ‘knowledge society’
and by the globalization processes
- Entrepreneurial universitires (Clark 1988) within a context of academic capitalism
(Slaughter & Leslie, 1997), inspired by neo-liberal ideology (Vaira, 2004)
The ‘model’ of entrepreneurial university

Market principles - Establishment of markets or quasi-

markets in which there is competition
between the institutions within a
state regulatory framework
- Price as a regulatory mechanism of
students and professors flows
between the institutions
- Preparation of government incentives
to increase efficiency and mobility
local students and teachers
Decentralization - University autonomy of
administration and funding
management
- University can set tuition fees and the
salary of professors and
administrative staff
Financing - Distribution of fundings to universities
on the basis of performance
indicators
- Diversification of funding sources
Accountability - Evaluation and monitoring systems
- Incentives to improve universities’
quality
- Multiple stakeholders
Openness to the economic world - University as a driver of local
economic development
- Professionalization of the teaching
 staff and high share of contract
teachers
- Attention to the links between
academia and industry
- Introduction of practical/applied
courses
- Activation of offices that deal
relations with the business world

TABELLA BOLOGNA PROCESS?

Main aims of higher education reforms nowadays
- The international agenda mainly focuses on the following objectives:
1. Increase participation in tertiary education (in order to increase the level of human
capital of the workforce, promote development cultural and social participation of
citizens in public life)
2. Encourage the participation of young people from disadvantaged social origin, with
proper motivation and skills, with the aim of reducing social inequalities in
educational opportunities
3. Improve the effectiveness of university education, enhancing connections between
tertiary education and the labor market, so as to approach possess the skills of
graduates to those required by enterprises, facilitating the entry of young people
into the labor market
4. Increase efficiency of the operation and organization of universities, in order to
ensure financial sustainability and achievement institutional mission
The role of education in contemporary society: Four tasks of education
The role of education
- The two most important questions concerning the role of education in society are (van
de Wefhorst, 2014)
1) What should education do?
2) Does it do that well?
- The answers to those 2 questions may change over time, due to…
o Changes in the prevailing society norms, beliefs and values
o Changes in the organization/structure of the educational system

4 tasks of education
- Socialization: Socialize citizens into active civic engagement
- Labour Market: prepare for the labour market
- Equal opportunities: provide equal opportunities to children of different backgrounds
 - Optimization: efficiently sort students according to their talents and interests in order to
optimize the production of knowledge and skills
Labour market task
- Education teaches skills that are productive for work
- By this way, education should help school leavers in improving their labour market
opportunities,
- And employers in optimizing their production
- Educational policies related to this task include:
o Changes in the curricula,
o The form and extent of vocational training (VET)
o Specialization in higher education (HE)

The optimization/sorting task

- Students have different talents and interests
- Education can help to sort students in finding their destinations
- Those with high level of learning ability should have the opportunity to reach higher
levels of schooling (vertical dimension)
- Optimizing the match between personal interests and talents and field of study pursued
(horizontal dimension)
The optimization/sorting task
- Educational policies related to this task include:
o School tracking or ability grouping
o Differentiation of curricula between fields of study in higher education
o School counselling activities

The equal opportunities task

- Equality of opportunity should be distinguishes from equality of position (Coleman,
1968)
- Equality of opportunities does not refer to the distribution per se, but rather to the
chances that different people have to obtain a particular position in the distribution
o An equal distribution in terms of dispersion may be unequal in terms of
opportunities
o An equal opportunities distribution may be unequal

Equality vs equity vs justice

- Equality: the assumption is that everyone benefits from the same supports. This is equal
treatment
 - Equity: Everyone gets the supports they need (concept of affirmative action) thus
producing equity
- Justice: All 2 can see the game without supports or accommodations because the cases
of the inequity was addressed. The systemic barrier has been removed
The equal opportunities task
- The role of society as a whole
- Large inequalities between families lead to strong differences in children’s chances in
education (Breen & Jonsson, 2007; Swift 2001)
o Equality of educational opportunities is promoted if equality of position is
granted at earlier stages in the educational career
o Equal societies in terms of dispersions are also more equal in terms of
opportunities (Kenworthy, 2008); Duru-Bellat & Suchaut, 2005)
Policy tools for the equality opportunities task

Skill development Educational decisions

Educational system/schools Universal access to pre- Even distribution of resources
school across schools
Individuals/families Remedial courses Information interventions
Personalized tutoring School counselling
Student grants

The socialization task

- Schooling should promote civic attitudes and competencies in order to foster active
citizenship
o Personal, interpersonal and intercultural competencies
o Forms of behaviour that equip individuals to participate in an effective and
constructive way in social and working life, and particularly in increasingly diverse
societies, and to resolve conflicts where necessary (youthpass.edu)
- Some of these competencies may have a value also in the labour market (extraversion
etc)
The big 5: personality (example)
- Neuroticism: tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety or
depression
- Openness: general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination,
curiosity, and variety of experience
- Conscientiousness: tendency to display self-discipline, act dutifully, and strive for
achievement against measures or outside expectations. It is related to the way in which
people control, regulate and direct their impulses
 - Extraversion: characterized by breadth or activities (as opposed to depth), surgency from
external activity/situations, and energy creation from external means. The trait is
marked by pronounced engagement with the external world
- Agreeableness: reflects individual differences in general concern for social harmony.
Agreeable individuals value getting along with others. They are generally considerate,
kind, generous, trusting and trustworthy, helpful, and willing to compromise their
interests with others.
Trade-offs between the four tasks?
- We could think of these tasks as ‘functions’ of education, because we can assess
whether an educational system functions well by assessing the quality of these
outcomes
- Possible trade-offs the performance of these tasks:
o Between the optimization task and equality of opportunity
 There are wide inequalities in ccess to gymnasium for children with
different social backgrounds, with same level of academic ability
o Between the task of labour market preparation and equality of opportunity
o Between the task of labour market preparation and citizenship education
 A gap in political engagement between general/academic and vocational
education by tracking of the educational system;
 Gap in political engagement between tertiary and vocational education by
tracking of the educational system
Societal trends and their implications
1. Changing labour markets
2. Educational expansion  Call for selection and excellence
3. Increasing diversity of society and individualization
Challenges of transforming LMs
- Decline of the primary industries (agriculture, fishing etc), a growth and later decline of
the secondary sector of industry and manufacturing, and a steady growth of tertiary
sectors (private and public service sectors)
- Within occupations, technological developments have changed the job tasks  skills
have the risk to become obsolete
- Increasing flexibility in labour contracts  demands on the ability of individuals to work
at different organizations, especially during economic recessions
- Does the educational system prepare students well enough for the changing
occupational structure and requirements of the LM?
Implications for the school system
 - “It is no longer sufficient to learn specific knowledge and skills on vocational subjects.
Rather we should equip students with general skills and work attitudes that make them
more likely to be able to develop new skills once they have enrolled the labour force. We
need to prepare workers for a career full of life-long learning, where the continuous
updating of skills is needed for changing occupations and mobility across organizations”
(van de Werfhorts, 2014)
Implications: vocational vs academic skills
- Find the right balance between specific/vocational and generic skills (Van der Velden,
2006)  A trade-off emerges between short-term gains of vocational education and
long-term gains from general education (Hanushek et al, 2011)
- More generic skills are needed. Teaching vocational skills may be less relevant in a
rapidly changing economy
o Vocational skills may be quickly outdates
o The growing sectors of employment are in various kinds of services where
vocational skills are less needed
- However, focusing too strongly on those skills would make vocational programmes
perhaps too general  competition with general education
Implications: soft skills and inequalities
- Risk of greater demand for soft skills that are not primarily learned in school, but rather
originate from the social class of origin (Jackson, 2007; Goldthorpe, 1996)
- Many services occupations (also in the higher end of the income distribution) require
social skills and manner because of the large human interactional component of their
duties
- Recruitment in elite professional service (EPS) firms (Investment banks, consulting firms,
and law firms) does not only take into consideration candidates’ educational credentials
and cognitive skills, but also their leisure activities and participation in prestigious
extracurricular activities, to judge applications’ social, intellectual, and moral worth
(Rivera, 2015)  reproduction of social inequalities
Educational expansion  Call for selection and excellence
- Primary and lower secondary education virtually universal
- Great expansion in upper secondary and tertiary education
- Difficulties in managing enlarged and more diverse student population
- LEADS TO
- New forms of differentiation of secondary education (ability grouping, subject choices)
- New forms of differentiation of tertiary education (new HE sectors, university rankings,
‘honor programs’, research masters etc)
Implications
 - On the LM side: do employers recognize the differences between different types of
education?
- On the educational side:
o Do different programs convey different skills or is it only a matter of
prestige(signalling?
o Do all students are aware of the different standards and returns of various types
of education (possible information bias)?
o Have all students the financial possibility to attend the best educational options?

Increasing diversity of society and individualization

- Individualization: individual life courses and choices are increasingly detached from the
influence of institutions such as the family, religion, social class, or politics (eg decreasing
household size, declining membership rates of religious organizations, and more volatile
voting behaviour across elections)
- Diversity: large migration fluxes  first and second generation students in schools,
pupils with heterogenous ethnic origin in schools
A focus on higher education: The multiple roles of HE (Stevens, Armstrong & Arum, 2008)
4 main functions of HE (Stevens et al 2008)
- Sieve
- Incubator
- Temple
- Hub
Sieve (Social stratification research)
- HE selects and sort students into different institutions and fields that are linked to
different occupational positions and rewards in the labour market
- HE has a dual character – both facilitating and constraining individuals’ social
opportunities:
o HE can work as a ‘social elevator’ for lower-class students
o HE can work as an instrument used by the upper classes to maintain their
advantages
Incubator (Studies on experiential college life)
- Colleges and universities are primarily social places, shaping the number, quality, and
type of social ties that particular individuals and groups enjoy
- Higher education may offer contexts for the development of cultural capital in ways that
are useful for establishing an upper-middleclass life
 - Social networks and cultural capital may have myriad lifelong consequences, as people
often find jobs, marriage partners, medical care, homes, and schools for their children
through people they know
Temple: the legitimation of knowledge
- The primary purpose of higher education was to preserve, promote, and inculcate the
modern ‘cognitive complex’, a rational, universalitistic mode of thinking (Parsons & Platt,
1973)
- Education is an essential component of nation-building, through which the state
assumes jurisdiction over the production of competent citizens and workers (Ramirez&
Boli, 1987)
- As the organizational instantiation of intellectual progress, the university is the secular
temple of modern societiees (Meyer et al, 1994; Schofer & Meyer, 2005)
Hub
- HE can be seen as a hub connecting some of the most prominent institutional sectors of
modern societies:
o The labour market and the large economy
o The philanthropic sector
o The family
o The nation-state

Links between different aspects

- The status of universities and their students is reciprocally generated:
o The academic quality of universities is often assessed, in part, on their
admissions selectivity and admitted students’ prior academic performance
o Students’ quality is assumed (by employers, graduate schools, etc) to be linked
with the university they have attended
Overview of education datasets (da recuperare)
Temporal dimension
- Cross-sectional
- Retrospective longitudinal
- Prospective panel
Various designs
- Student population surveys
- Population-based surveys
- Age-based surveys
- Grade-based school surveys
 - Birth cohort studies
- School leavers surveys
Multi-actor educational surveys
- Students
- Parents
- Teachers
- School
International datasets
TIMMS: sample
- One of the largest cross-sectional international surveys, provided by IEA. It started in
1994. It covers about 45 countries
- It focused on performance in mathematics and science of students from different grades
(mainly 4° and 8° grade)
- It adopts a stratified two-stage cluster sample design
o 1^: sampling schools in the target population of students
o 2^: sampling one (or more) classes within the selected schools
- Sample size (eg 2015 release) : the TIMSS requirements are a school sample of 150
schools and a student sample of 4000 students for each target grade (4 and 8)

Characteristics of educational systems

Key problem
- Educational expansion: mass schooling after WW2
- The growing heterogeneity of students by motivations, ability and social background
- The need to differentiate educational options
- The unintended consequences of these differentiations
- The growing number of upper-secondary graduates
- Working class & immigrant students from vocational tracks with moderate ability asking
for more education
- The need to differentiate to preserve educational quality (competencies, drop-outs) and
provide heterogenous occupational supply
- The unintended consequences of these differentiations (in terms of social inequality)
Key features of educational systems
- Key dimensions for the comparative analysis of educational systems:
o Institutional stratification (or tracking): the rules about the allocation of students
in different educational branches
 o Vocational orientation: the degree by which educational curricula are based on
academic vs vocational subjects
o Centralisation: the balanceof power between the national level and
schools/universities in different decision-making areas
o Standardisation: degree of uniformity or variation across schools in resources,
subjects, rules governing examinations, etc
o Privatisation: prevalence of private education

Institutional stratification: Tracking and differentiation of secondary education

Institutional stratification
- Age of first separation of students
- Prevailing rules governing student allocation
- Intensity of the differences between educational tracks/branches (curricula, teachers,
etc)
- Mobility between tracks and presence of dead-end tracks
- Apprenticeship and dual systems
Clarifications
- Stratification (eg Shavit & Muller, 1998) or Tracking (eg Bol & van de Werfhorst, 2013)
mainly takes place in secondary education, although there is tracking in post-secondary
education as well (Shavit et al, 2007)
- Highly stratified systems are those that separate students in different school branches
early, in which the tracks differ widely in their content and possibilities of enrolment at
university after secondary education
The German case: high stratification
- Age and rules of allocation: 10 years (4th year of primary education), assignment to one
of three main branches (or to the Sonderschulen) based on teacher recommendations,
according to academic performance
- Differences between branches: strong, in terms of: curricula, teaching requirements,
access to tertiary education (including applied sciences), social prestige
- Mobility between tracks: in principle it is possible, but uncommon (but increasing)
- Apprenticeship (dual education): apprenticeship system based on alternance between
classroom-based and firm-based learning activities
The Norwegian case: low stratification
- Age when students are separated: 16 yrs (end of lower secondary), with choice between
general and vocational education
 - Differences between tracks: lower than in Germany, also thanks to the comprehensive
model (selection is not based on academic performance). The vocational track opens
access to vocational higher education
- Mobility between tracks: higher mobility between tracks, also thanks to the
comprehensive model
- Apprenticeship: underdeveloped
School tracking in Italy
- Undifferentiated lower secondary
- Age of first allocation to tracks: 14
- Main form of differentiation: formal external tracking
- Number of tracks: 3 main tracks (Lyceums, Technical, Vocational), but further
differentiation within tracks
- Allocation into tracks mainly depends on parents/students’ decisions; teachers’ express
recommendations, but they are not mandatory and are considered as general advice
- Mobility between tracks: mobility is possible in principle, but uncommon. All tracks
afford access to university courses
- No major dead-ends (only the 3 years vocational qualification does not allow
continuation at university)
Italian school system
- Lyceum (classic or scientific):
o The most prestigious track
o Academically demanding
o The main route to university
o HOWEVER, increasingly heterogenous
- Intermediate/Technical:
o Different curricula (computer, electronics, arts, foreign languages)
o Prepare for jobs, but allows enrollment at university
- Vocational:
o 3 years + 2
o Practical orientation
o Direct entrance into LM
o If 5 years allows enrollment at university

Main de-tracking reforms

- 1963: abolition of tracks in lower secondary education (now comprehensive)
- 1963: enforcement of compulsory education at 14
- 1969: ‘open access’ at university
 o Restrictions to enrolment in specific fields of study or to entering university
according to high school track are abolished
o All high school leavers with a 5 year diploma can choose any field of study
- 2007: compulsory education at 16
Summary on the Italian case
- The Italian case does not fit either in the Nowergian-like, open model, nor in the
German-like highly stratified model. It is a hybrid case.
- There is a rigid separation between tracks at the age of 14, but not strong vocational
options. Students are separated, but they are all offered rather theoretical curricula
- The advantage of this model is that it looks egalitarian, because everyone can access to
university education. But there is strong informal selectivity (high school & university
drop-out rates)
An overall index of external tracking
- The index summarizes (Bol & van de Werfhorst, 2013)
- Age of first selection: when the actual tracking starts  it is the most important
indicator of tracking and often used as the only indicator
- Length of the tracked curriculum: the tracked curriculum as a percentage of the total
curriculum in secondary education
- The number of distinct school types that are available for 15 year old students when
tracking occurs in many countries
Limitations of this index
- Most of the comparative studies consider tracking between educational programmes,
instead of the differentiation of students within different streams or tracks within the
same educational programme
- We need a more comprehensive classification of differentiation forms in secondary
education
Two lines of differentiation
- External vs internal differentiation
o External differentiation refers to differences between schools
o Internal differentiation refers to heterogeneity within schools such as differences
across school classes or courses
- Formal vs informal differentiation
o Formal differentiation refers to regulated forms of diversity that are recognized
by law and visible in school certificates and qualifications
 o Informal differentiation refers to differences between types of education that are
not recognized formally but can impact on the quality of instruction and levels of
students’ learning
A comprehensive classification of differentiation forms

External (between schools) Internal (within schools)

Formal - Formal school tracks - Specializations
- School maintainer - Subjects on advanced
(public vs private) level
- School specialization
(generalist vs
denominational
school, etc)
Informal - School reputation - Ability grouping (class
(ranking) composition)
- Student composition - Teachers’
at the school level characteristics in
- School resources different classes
Models of secondary education
- Early tracking model
o Formal tracks since lower secondary education (age 10-12)
o Selection based largely on previous scholastic performance
o Tracks traditionally linked to later educational opportunities (but increasing
flexibility over time)
o Countries: Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Netherlands
- Nordic inclusive model
o Late formal external tracking (age 16)
o Public sector dominant, but high decentralization
o Two track system: academic ( univ) vs vocational track ( LM)
o Various forms of individualized teaching and subject choice (hidden forms of
differentiation)
o Countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark
- Individual choice model
o Lack of external formal tracking
o Lower degree of standardization in the curriculum
o Strong levels of within-schools differentiation
o Choice of individual course/subjects depending on both prior achievement and
personal preference
o Countries: England, Scotland, Ireland, USA, Australia
- Mixed tracking model
 o Formal external tracking in upper secondary education, but not in lower
secondary education
o First sorting around age14/15
o 3 main tracks (academic, technical, vocational)
o No formal constraints for transition to university
o Countries: France, Italy, Russia, Israel

The role of vocational orientation

Context
- Muller and Wolbers (2003) separate ‘vocationally oriented’ countries from ‘academically
oriented’ countries, not so much on the basis of eg the age of tracking, but mostly on
the objectives that are attached to the educational system
- Vocationally oriented systems see as their main target the preparation of their pupils for
particular places in the labour market
- Academically oriented systems aim to bring as larga a proportion of the pupils to as high
a level of general ability as possible (with entry into tertiary education as the first target)
Vocational orientation across countries
- Vocationally oriented systems
o High % of entrants in the labour market has a vocational qualification (ISCED 3)
o Dual: Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland
o School-based: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Norway
- Academically oriented systems
o High % of entrants in the labour market has a general or tertiary qualification
(ISCED3)
o Countries: Belgium, France, UK, Ireland
- Southern countries
o Very low % of entrants in the labour market with a vocational qualification
(ISCED3), high % with no qualification
o Countries: Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal

A definition
- Vocational orientation: the extent to which education provides students with vocational
skills, and the specificity of these skills
- Education can supply students with general and specific skills, and the balance between
these two differs across educational systems
- The specificity of skills in education is mainly associated with vocational programmes,
where the emphasis lies on learning highly work specific skills
Degree of vocational orientation
 - Educational systems differ in:
o The prevalence of vocational education vs academic education
o The specificity of the skills that are taught in vocational educational programmes
 The skills that are provided in the dual system are more specific than
those in broad vocational programmes
o Systems that are highly vocational provide (more) students with specific skills,
while less vocational systems produce more generally skilled students
Measuring vocational orientation
- The extent of vocational orientation is measured as:
o The prevalence of vocational enrolment: the % of students enrolled in vocational
programmes in upper secondary education
 Vocational schooling mostly takes place in upper secondary education
 Programmes that provide the final schooling before entering the labour
market
o The importance of the dual-system: percentage of students in upper secondary
education that are in a dual system
The role of vocational orientation
- On one side, vocationally oriented countries have large shares of students in vocational
track and lower proportion of tertiary graduates
- Inequalities in access to higher education are also very large and largely explained by
tracking in secondary education
- On the other side, vocational education is relatively well-valued in the labour market 
it may represent a ‘safety net’ for low backgrouns students to avoid underskilled
occupations
Definition, measurement and consequences of privatization
A definition of private education
- Private education: the degree by which education occurs in privately owned or funded
institutions
- The private nature of the school may refer to the ownership or to the sources of funding
- Distinction between typs of schools (OECD)
o Public owned and funded schools
o Private but public funded schools (often religious schools)
o Private owned and funded schools

The status of private schools

 - The most fundamental aspect is the degree to which private schools are funded by the
(local, regional, national) government, alongside students fees, donations, sponsorship,
and parental fundraising.
- In a number of societies, private schools have a juridical right to funding by the state,
provided they meet certain conditions
- Often, private government – dependent schools have less autonomy regarding their
curriculum, mode of examination, payment of teachers and admission criteria of
students compared to independent private schools
Extent of privatization across countries
- Higher privatization
- Lower privatization
Privatization and overall performance
- International studies on the PISA data indicate that private school management tends to
be positively associated with student achievement, with a difference to publicly
operated schools of 16-20 percent of an international standard deviation in three
subjects
- However, the pattern is not uniform across countries
Privatization and overall performance
- Privately operated school perform better If schools in the system are autonomous in
formulating the budget and in staffing decisions, suggesting that the incentives created
by parental choice of private schools work particularly well if (private and public) schools
in the system have autonomy to respond to the parental demands
- At the school level, the advantage of privately operated schools over publicly operated
schools is particularly strong in countries with large shares of public funding.

Implications of private education

- Private education is more client-seeking than public education
- On one side, it can be more inclusive:
o It may be less selective on merit
o Expands faster in response to demand
- On the other side, private education is also more expensive
o As such, it is more exclusive of those who can’t pay

Privatization creates inequality, but increase attainment

- The upper classes are more likely to attend private institutions
- Private institutions seem to enhance educational attainment
Conclusions
- Privatization might reduce inequality:
o When selection in public education is largely based on cognitive criteria rather
than on ability to pay
o When tuition fees are low of heavily subsidized (eg vouchers)

The consequences of standardization and accountability

Definition
- Standardization: the degree to which the quality of education meets the same standards
nationwide (Allmendinger 1989)
- Standardization is achieved by institutions like the use of central exams, uniform
curricula, the same training for teachers, and standardized budgets
- Two forms of standardization: standardization of input and standardization of output
(Rowan 1990)
Input and output
- Standardization of input: the extent to which schools have limited control over the input
in education
o Example of such standardization are restrictions for schools on what they teach
and how they teach it
- Standardization of output: the extns to which educational performance (the output) is
tested against external standards  how much schools are held accountable for their
performance
o Central examination leads to a standardization of the educational system as it
obliges schools to learn their students what is examined in the central exams
Centralization vs standardization
- Two different logics of functioning:
o Centralization  Controlling the educational processes
o Standardization  uniformity in the inputs and outcomes of educational
processes
Decentralization and accountability
- Generalized trend toward decentralization, with differences between countries, between
schools and universities, and with some exceptions
- Growing standardization: more control on outcomes
- Accountability is the key word, the logic of the governance of contemporary educational
systems
Neo-liberal trends
 - The growing critics to current school system
- Public budget constraints
- New Public Management: the model of market competition for the public sector
(assessment and incentives as a means to generate competition between schools)
- The discourse about globalization, national competitiveness and human capital
Measuring standardization
- Standardization of inputs: the extent to which schools are autonomous in choosing (1)
textbooks (2) the course content, and (3) thecourses that are being offered (from PISA
data on school principals)
- Standardization of output is a dummy variable: when there are central exams in
secondary education a country scores a one (from European Glossary on Education,
Eurydice, 2004)
- 5 criteria proposed by Bishop (1997)
1. Exams should have real consequences
2. Degrees issues after exams are tested against an external standard
3. The central examinations are organized by discipline
4. It is not only a pass and fail exam, but there is also some differentiation in the
possible outcome
5. It covers almost the complete secondary students population
External exit-exam and achievement
- Students in countries that have external exit-exam systems very consistently perform
significantly and substantially better on the international student achievement tests than
students in countries without external exit-exam systems
- The effect of external exit exams on student achievement may well be larger than a
whole grade level equivalent, or between 20 and 40 percent of a standard deviation of
the respective international tests
The role of other accountability measures
- Student achievement in PISA 2000 is also positively associated with teachers’ monitoring
of student progress by regular standardized tests
- Data from PISA 2003 reveal positive associations of student achievement with
accountability measures aimed at teachers (eg internal and external monitoring of
teacher lessons) and with accountability measures aimed at schools (eg assessment
used to compare them to district or national achievement)
Variations across student types ?
- The effect of standardized exams tends to increase with student ability but does not
differ with most family-background measures. Moreover, it increases during the course
of secondary education
 - Substantial cultural biases might bias these results but… The same positive association
between central exams and student achievement is also found within countries where
some regions have external exam systems and other not, eg Canada, US and Germany
The role of centralization vs school autonomy
A definition of centralization in education
- Centralization: which level (central government/regional government/schools) takes
decisions about:
1. Funding
2. Selection and management of teachers
3. Curricula
4. Organizational issues (eg school timetables)
- The more the decisions are taken by lower level authorities, the higher is the
decentralization and institutional autonomy
Centralized and decentralized systems
- IT & FR: closer to the ideal type of centralized systems, but increasingly decentralized.
Also Scandinavian countries were highly centralized, but much less so recently
- UK & US closer to the ideal type of highly decentralized systems, but some growing
centralization at the federal level in recent years
-  National differences are becoming less pronounced
Critics to the centralized model
- Low incentives to be a good teacher, a good school manager, a good researcher – with
negative consequences for the performance of schools & universities
- Local differences (cultural, economic, etc) ignored
- Not flexible to tackle the needs of individual students effectively
- In a mass school system a homogenous educational supply for everyone cannot work 
the school level has the best information to adapt to individuals and contexts
Consequences of school autonomy
- On the one hand, when school autonomy is high, local decision-makers tend to have
superior information
- On the other hand, in decision making areas where their interests are not strictly aligned
with improving students achievement, local decision-makers may act opportunistically
unless they are held accountable for the achievement of their students
Research findings
- Students perform significantly better in schools that have autonomy in process and
personnel decisions (Woessman, 2005)
 - In some areas, autonomy is negatively associated with student achievement in systems
that do not have external exit exams, but the association turns positive when combined
with external exam systems
Higher education characteristics
Main features of HE systems
- Stratification
- Selectivity
- Economic affordability
- Funding
- De/Centralization: institutional autonomy
Stratification of HE
Institutional differentiation
- The main axes of institutional differentiation involve the distinction between:
1. Universities vs other institutions
2. Specialized vs comprehensive institutions
3. Private institutions, public or private but publicly funded (OECD 2008)
Models of differentiation in HE
- The mode of differentiation in higher education varies between countries. 3 main types:
unitary, binary and diversified systems
- Unitary systems: HE is offered primarily by a single type of institution – usually, a
research university. Tend to be quite rigid. They are controlled by professional elites who
are not inclined to encourage expansion (eg Italy in the 1990s)
- Binary systems: it consists of two main types of institutions: academic and vocational.
The second tier of teriaty education takes the form of vocational or semi-professional
training (eg the German fachhochschulen)
Models of differentiation in HE
- Diversified systems: A mix of institutions that are stratified by prestige, resources, and
selectivity of both faculty and students.
o A well-known example is the American system, which consists of prestigious
research universities, a second tier of private and public 4 year colleges, as well
as many 2 year colleges
o France: practical/vocational HE(Brevet de Technicien Superieur, BTS oppure negli
IUT (Institut Universitaire de Technologie) Universities, Grande Ecoles
Stratification in HE supply
 - Vertifical stratification refers to the distinction between non-university higher education
(short courses, annual or biannual), university of first level (usually three-year) and
second level (typically five-year) and PhD
- This distinction is based mainly on the duration of the course, but these programs lead,
on average, to different employment opportunities
Stratification in HE supply
- The horizontal stratification involves two axes (Charles and Bradley, 2002)
o Institutions
o Field of study
- Even if they refer to ‘horizontal differences’ both institutions and fields of study can be
ranked according to the level of academic-scientific prestige or income they enjoy
(Bordieu, 1996)
- Often, the two horizontal stratification axes can intersect, leading to specific set of
occupational outcomes (Davied & Guppy, 1997)
Example from the UK
- Ancient Universities: From the University of Oxford in 1096 to the University of Dublin in
1591
- Plate glass universities: Next batch of universities to be given royal charter between
1963 and 1991
- Red Brick Universities: referred originally to 6 civic universities that were given charters
in the late 19th century in the big industrial cities of the UK
- New universities: a group of universities that were previously called Polytechnics and
then given university status; these institutions are referred to as ‘New Universities’.
Recently a number of further education and treacher training colleges have been given
university status and these are generally referred to as ‘Recently created universities’
Selectivity
Selectivity at HE entry
- Types of entry restrictions
o Set by the state or regions/provinces
o Set by single universities
o A combination of both
- Main criteria used to select students
o Upper secondary final marks
o Entry test scores
o Interviews
o Job experiences
o Extra-curricular activities
 - Main rationales for selecting students at entry:
o Easier organization and management
o Better teaching and learning processes
o Limit overcrowding in specific occupations
o Increase the reputation of specific degree programmes

Policies related to student access in HE

- Various approaches to selection at entrance:
1. Social selection model: eg Nordic countries
a. Numerous clausus in most degree programmes
b. Multiple criteria to get access to HE
2. Bureaucratic model: eg Germany
a. General, abstract and complex rule
b. Administrative-oriented system of selection
3. Postponed selection: eg France
a. No major restriction at access
b. Selection mostly occurs after 1st year due institutional expulsions or students’
dropout
Costs and affordability of HE studies
Direct and indirect costs of HE
- Tertiary education involves mainly two types of costs, direct and indirect
- Direct costs:
o Tuition fees
o Fees for services not strictly related to teaching (secretarial services, workshops,
contributions to student organizations, etc)
o Expenses for books and other school supplies
o Expenses for food, accommodation and transports
- The main indirect cost is what economists call ‘opportunity costs’, which expresses the
income not earned by the student for the fact that he continued with his studied after
upper secondary education
Public support for HE studies
- Public support directed to different actors
o Students
 Subsidies or grants for partial / full coverage of tuition costs, maintenance
costs of the purchase of academic material
 Exemption from payment of registration fees, the provision of canteen
services and established cost housing
 Student loans, with an interest rate for repayment of debt publicly
  Part time jobs at universities
o Families
 Family allowances
 Tax deductions/exemptions
o Institutions/Universities
 Public funding to institutions to provide additional scholarships
Approaches to model for financing HE
- Model 1: Countries with no or low tuition fees and generous student support systems
o Countries: Nordic  Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden
o These countries have more progressive tax structures (OECD, 2011) and students
pay no tuition fees and benefit from generous public support for higher
education
o However, individuals face high income tax rates
- Model 2: Countries with high tuition fees and well-developed student support systems
o Countries: Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom
and the United States
o These countries have potentially high financial obstacles to entry into teriaty type
A education
o But they also offer significant public support to students
- Model 3: Countries with high tuition fees and less developed student support systems
o Countries: Chile, Japan and Korea
o Most students are charged high tuition fees (on average, more than US 4500 in
tertiary type A institutions)
o Student support systems are somewhat less developed than those in Models 1
and 2
o This approach can impose a heavy financial burden on students and their families
- Model 4: Countries with low-tuition fees and less-developed student support systems
o Countries: all European countries with available data (Austria, Belgium, the Czech
Republic, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and Spain) and
Mexico.
o All of these countries charge moderate tuition fees compared to those in Models
2 and 3, although since 1995, reforms were implemented in some of these
countries – particularly Austria and Italy – to increase tuition fees in public
institutions
Indicators used to classify HE systems
- Age of first selection
- % of time in primary and secondary school spent in tracking system
- % of students in vocational track in upper secondary education
 - % of expenditure for tertiary education on total expenditure in education
- % of expenditure for tertiary education on GDP
- Student-teacher ratio
- Autonomy in the selection of students at entrance
- Autonomy in the setting of educational offer
- Degree of evaluation of institutions
- Degree of output oriented funding mechanisms
- % of students enrolled in non public institutions
- % of private resources on the total investment itinerary education
- % of students enrolled in ISCED 5B programmes
- Educational costs as a % of GDP per capita
- Total costs as a % of GDP per capita
- Out of pocket costs as a % of GDP per capita
- Relative wage of ISCED 5A graduates compared to ISCE 3A graduates
Educational attainment: Years and levels of education
Two main approaches
- Quantitative measure of final educational attainment: years of education
o Definition: formal years of schooling needed to complete the educational level
attained
o PROS: easy to understand, easy to use in analysis
o CONS: assumes some linearity, do not account for non-vertical educational
pathways
- Categorical/ordinal measure: highest level of education attained
o PROS: account for non-linearities in educational attainment, can accommodate
non-vertically stratified qualifications
o CONS: more difficult to make comparable

The ISCED classification

- The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) belongs to the United
Nations International Family of Economic and Social Classifications, which are applied in
statistics worldwide with the purpose of assembling, compiling and analysing cross-
nationally comparable data
- ISCED is the reference classification for organizing education programmes and related
qualifications by education levels and fields. ISCED is a product of international
agreement and adopted formally by the General Conference of UNESCO Member States
- ISCED is designed to serve as a framework to classify educational activities as defined in
programmes and the resulting qualifications into internationally agreed categories
Changes in the ISCE classification
 - Initially developed by UNESCO in the 1970s and first revised in 1997, the ISCED
classification serves as an instrument to compile and present education statistics both
nationally and internationally
- The framework is occasionally update in order to better capture new developments in
education systems worldwide
- The last version is the ISCED 2011 classification, which includes improved definitions for
types of education and clarifies their application to ISCED
- Categories have been added to the classification of levels in recognition of the expansion
of early childhood education and restructuring of tertiary education
The recent ISCED schema
- International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) is the reference international
classification for organizing education programmes and related qualifications by levels
and fields
- ISCED 0: Early childhood education (‘less than primary’ for educational attainment)
- ISCED 1: Primary education
- ISCED 2: Lower secondary education
- ISCED 3: Upper secondary education
- ISCED 4: Post-secondary non-tertiary education
- ISCED 5: Short-cycle tertiary education
- ISCED 6: Bachelor’s of equivalent
- ISCED 7: Master’s or equivalent
- ISCED 8: Doctoral or equivalent
Educational achievement: students’ knowledge and skills
The modern concept of ‘literacy’
- Accountability and the ‘PISA revolution’: need to check whether schools are ‘doing their
job’
- Focus on pupils’ knowledge and competencies, not on the attainment of educational
qualifications
- Knowledge and skills useful in the daily life of modern economies versus curricula-based
knowledge
o Are students able to apply understandings in reading, mathematics and science
to everyday problems and situations?
- How do educational systems differ in their ability to teach useful knowledge to pupils?
Literacy dimensions
- Achievement
o Financial literacy
o Problem solving
 o Scientific literacy
o Mathematic literacy
o Language literacy
 Getting information
 Interpreting information
 Elaborating information
The key PISA literacy dimensions
- READING: an individual’s capacity to understand, use and reflect on and engage with
written texts, in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential
and to participate in society
- MATH: an individual’s capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics play
in the world, to make well-founded judgements and to use and engage with
mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that individual’s life as a constructive,
concerned and reflective citizen
- SCIENCE: an individual’s scientific knowledge and use of that knowledge to identify
questions, to acquire new knowledge, to explain scientific phenomena and to draw
evidence-based conclusions about science-related issues, understanding of the
characteristic features of science as a form of human knowledge and enquiry, awareness
of how science and technology shape our material and intellectual, cultural
environments, and willingness to engage in science relates issues and with the issues of
science, as a reflective citizen
The OECD ideology
- Education is primarily regarded as ‘Human Capital’
- The quality of education is essential
- The quality of educational systems can be assessed by measuring students’ knowledge
and skills
- Decentralisation and competition between schools improve quality
o PISA tests are a way to effectively apply accountability of schools and teachers
(that is why they are not appreciated in the Italian ‘uncontrolled’ system)
Overview of results across countries
- Country clusters
1. East – Asia
2. Scandinavian
3. Anglo-Saxon and Western continental Europe
4. Mediterranean countries
5. Developing countries
- Rankings are quite consistent across the different literacy domains
Interpreting PISA country rankings
- The differences in performance can be due to a multitude of student and institutional
characteristics
- Other things to be considered:
o Proportion of pupils who attende kindergarten and pre-primary education
o Age spent in education at the time of the test
o Proportion of pupils that have been retained
o Proportion of 1° generation migrant students
o Culture of standardized testing in the country
o Cheating

Measuring Educational Inequality in Achievement

Effectiveness and equality
- Effectiveness. Refers to the maximal development of talent. It usually refers to the
average performance of an educational system on a certain outcome, like the average
score of all pupils in a country on a student assessment test
o Note: sometimes it is called ‘efficiency’ but this is imprecise, since these
indicators usually do not consider any measure of inputs, as required by
(economic) efficiency measures
- Inequality: it refers to differences in educational outcomes among individuals or among
groups/categories of students
o Note: various terms and concepts

The temporal dimension of outcomes

- 3 stage on which assessing the outcome of the institutional features of educational
systems
o Short term outcomes: the level and distribution of students’ skills as measured in
international student assessments like PISA and TIMSS  Most of international
research focuses on these outcomes
o Middle-term outcomes: educational pathways in secondary and tertiary
education, final educational attainment, and transition to the labour market
o Long-term outcomes: long term labour market consequences, like the probability
of employment or the average income in the long run participation in life-long
learning, needed to continually update skills
Many terms and concepts
- Van de Werfhorst &Mijs (2010): inequality as dispersion vs inequality of opportunity
- Ferreira & Gignoux (2011): inequality of educational achievement vs inequality of
educational opportunity
 - Solga (2014): inequality of outcomes vs inequality of opportunity
- Lavrijsen (2013): Dispersion, fairness, inclusion
More comprehensive view

Conception Definition Idea of justice Measures

Dispersion inequality Any difference in the Strict egalitarianism 1. Standard
distribution of deviation
educational 2. Interquartile
achievement range
3. 5th -95th
percentile
range
Threshold inequality Lack of basic educational Capability approach 1. Proportion of
achievement in the students
population below PISA
Level 1a/1
2. Proportion of
students
below PISA
level 2
3. Proportion of
students
below PISA
Level 3
Between-group Systematic differences in Equality of 1. Absolute
inequality the distribution of opportunity difference
educational between
achievement of some children of
social groups parents with
and without
tertiary
education
2. Standardized
difference
between
children of
parents with
and without
tertiary
education
3. Relative risk
of being low-
achiever for
 children of
parent
without
tertiary
education vs
children of
parents with
tertiary
education

Inequalities in educational attainment

Context: educational expansion
- An impressive growth of participation in education has occurred over the twentieth
century in all industrialized societies
- Increase in the average years of schooling and to an upward shift in the distribution of
educational degrees in the population
- Nowadays primary and lower secondary education have become virtually universal in
most of industrialized countries
Context: the value of education
- In modern societies education is one of the most important resources for occupational
careers and in the status attainment process
- Highly educated individuals have more chance than others to enter in the service class
and to receive higher wages
- Education affects several non-monetary aspects of individuals’ lives, as health, political
attitudes, and patterns of consumption
Equality of opportunity principle
- The idea of meritocracy and equality of education opportunity as regulative principles
for the allocation of individuals in the social structure has gained consensus (Young,
1961, Roemer, 1998)
o Socioeconomic rewards should be allocated on the basis of individuals’ effort,
competencies and skills, which must be achieved on the basis of talent,
aspirations and effort
o The possibility to acquire a given level of education should not depend on
individual circumstances, ie ascriptive characteristics like gender, race and social
background
Inequality of condition vs inequality of opportunity
 - Inequality of condition is concerned with the distribution of differential rewards and
living conditions, either in the simple form of distributions of scarce goods or in relation
to different inputs (such as effort and time) or rights (such as citizenship or employment)
- Inequality of opportunity: a person’s chances to get ahead (attain an education, get a
good job) should be unrelated to ascribed characteristics such as race, sex, or class (or
socioeconomic) origin
- (Breen & Jonsson, 2005)
- In sociology
o Studies of inequality of opportunity typically are about attainments of
educational qualifications and how these attainments are associated with
ascribed characteristics
o Studies of inequality of condition, in contrast, are concerned with income
differences or differential rewards in the labor market or in the larger
distributional system, including the welfare state
Key questions
- Has socioeconomic background become less important in affecting educational destinies
across cohorts?
- To what extent inequalities in educational attainment on the basis of social origin
diminished?
- Are the trend similar across countries?
- In which periods did this happen?
Contrasting expectations
- Modernization and liberal industrialism theories (Parsons, 1970; Treiman, 1970) predict
a decline of social inequality in educational attainment
- Conflict (Bowles and Gintis, 1976; Bordieu and Passeron 1977) and neo-weberian
(Collins, 1971) perspectives predict stable or growing association between social origins
and educational outcomes
Modernization and liberal industrialism theories
- In modern societies the selection of individuals through the educational system and
their allocation in different occupational positions is mainly based on achievement,
motivation and effort
- Since capitalist economies are based on human capital and productivity, it is inefficient
to allocate individuals on the basis of their ascriptive characteristics
- Predict a decline of inequality as a result of macro and general trends, but they do not
identify which specific phenomena could have played a crucial role
Breen et al, 2009: achievement
 - Specific factors that could weakened the relationship between social origin and pupils’
achievement in school :
- (Society’s trends):
o Improvement in living conditions
o Public welfare allowances
o Reduction of the social class hap in health and nutrition
- Education:
o Public provision of pre-school education
o Increase in the number of hours pupils spend in schools
o School support programs to reduce achievement gaps

Breen et al, 2009: school-related decisions

- Decline of the direct costs of education:
o School fees have been abolished in many countries
o The number of school has increased and their geographical distribution has
become less uneven
o Improvements in travelling conditions and public transports
- Indirect costs become less relevant, despite being still important
o The average family size has declined
o The average family income has increased

Breen et al, 2009: institutional factors

- The length of compulsory schooling has expanded  forced working class children to
attend school for longer periods than in the past
- In some countries tracking has been postponed (eg Italy in the 1960s)  more time for
lower class pupils to show their academic potential
Conflict and Neo-Weberian approaches
- Education is an important resource for future occupational attainment  upper class
parents make effort in order for their children to have advantages in access to the best
educational alternatives available
- School expansion has intentionally been supported by the elite classes who:
o Take the major advantages of new openings
o Promote the creation of new barriers and social closures, for example creating
‘dead end’ tracks in secondary and tertiary education, professionalized curricula,
formal exams and qualifications to enter specific professions
Maximally Maintained Inequality Hypothesis (MMI)
- The MMI hypothesis (Raftery and Hour, 1993) is elaborated in the framework of conflict
theory
 - The influence of social background on the probability of obtaining a given level of
education does not decrease until that level of education become saturated, when
almost all upper class children are enrolled in it
- When the saturation is reached inequality begins to decrease on that level of education
but increases on the next level
How to study changes in IEOut
Key aspects to define
- Educational attainment
- Social background variables
- Choice of the age span
- Measurement of the time/cohort variable
- Country study vs cross-national study
- Statistical method
Measuring educational attainment
- Traditional approaches (education in absolute terms):
o Years of education
o Highest educational degree attained
o Highest educational level attained
o Educational transitions: passing trough subsequent school transition points
- Recent approaches (education as a positional good)
o Relative position in the distribution of educational credential in a given cohort
o Average occupational value of educational degree attained

The ISCED schema

- International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) is the reference international
classification for organizing education programmes and related qualifications by levels
and fields
CASMIN educational classification
- Rooted in the social stratification literature
- Functional equivalent categories across countries
- Certificate-based classification based on two dimensions:
o Hierarchical level
o Tracking into different pathways
- Two perspectives:
o Social selectivity: demarcation of class barriers in education
o Returns in the labour market
Measuring social background
- Frequently used indicators
o Parental education
o Social class of origin
 Macro-classes
 Micro-classes
o Family income
o Family wealth
o Composite index summarizing different components (eg ESCS index by OECD-
PISA)
Definition of the social space
- Discrete categories
o Education
o Social classes (big vs micro-classes)
- Continuous measures
o Years of education
o Socio-economic status
o Occupational prestige

Measuring social background

- Referring to parental education and social class, there is a debate on using both father
and mother’s, only father, dominance criterion
- Classical solution: use the dominance criterion  the highest level between the father
and the mother
- Other solutions: include separately mother’s and father’s indicators or a combination of
the two
Research design
- General population survey
- Retrospective information on
o Highest educational attainment
o Social origin during childhood
o Year of birth

Empirical evidence on IEOut

Empirical evidence
- For long time the main empirical evidence on this issue came from Blossfeld and Shavit
(1993)
 - Collaborative cross-national study to examine changes of IEOut in 13 industrialized
nations using nation-specific datasets
- They use regression models to analyse the effect of father’s education and class on
educational transitions and years of education
- In general, the main pattern found was of ‘persistent inequality’ in 11 out of 13
countries, where Sweden and, partially, the Netherlands are the exceptions
- The association between social origin and the probability of passing each educational
transition dimishes along the educational career (lower for higher transitions)
- 2 explanations:
o ‘life course hypothesis’ (Muller & Karle, 1993)
o Differential selectivity (Mare, 1993; Cameron & Heckman, 1998)
- More recently, Breen et al (2009) analysed larger datasets from 8 European countries
covering cohorts of people born in the first two-thirds of the 20th century
- They found a widespread decline in the association between social class of origin and
educational outcomes
- Apart of the specific statistical technique employed, the larger sample sizes for each
country could be a crucial factor in explaining the different with Blossfeld and Shavit’s
findings
Conclusions: good news
- Currently IEOut is substantially lower than it was 50 years ago in Europe
o This conclusion applies to both men and women
o It is robust to different measurement strategies for social origins and education
- The decline was similar looking at social class, social status and parental education
- The decline was more pronounced in the cohorts born in the priods 1930-1944 and
1945-1954
o Period of unprecedented economic growth, increasing affluence and significant
improvement of the living conditions of the lower classes across Europe
o Relevance of structural changes, possibly operating through a cost-equalizing
mechanism
Conclusions: bad news
- The equalizing trend weakened considerably, or even flattened out, for most European
countries in the cohort born in 1955-1964, which experienced the key educational
transitions mostly in the 1970s
- This stagnation continues in the more recent cohorts, born between 1965 and 1980
- The ‘golden age’ of educational equalization seems to be already behind us
Which countries’ characteristics affect trends IEOut
Economic development and industrialization (van Doorn, Pop & Wolbers, 2011)
 - In highly industrialized country-cohorts, the relationship between parents’ education
and their children’s educational achievements in weaker than in developing country-
cohorts
o This finding is in accordance with the industrialization thesis
- Yet, in country-cohorts that are rapidly industrializing, the relationship between parents’
education and their children’s educational achievements is stronger than in country-
cohorts where the pace of industrialization is slower
o This findins might be compatible with the MMI thesis

Left-wing policies (van Doorn, Pop & Wolbers, 2011)

- One can expect that social-democratic and communist state policies would lead to
higher access and equality of educational opportunities
- The empirical evidence does not support this hypothesis
Educational institutional features
- The consequences of organization of educational systems for participation in education
and inequalities in education have been extensively studied
- Most of the comparative research is cross-sectional
- Some recent studies on single countries analysed the role of educational reforms  in
particular the outcomes of changing compulsory schooling leaving age and tracking
Contradictory findinfs
- Reduction of IEO
o Dollman (2011) introduction of performance-based sorting into tracks in North
Rhine-Westphalia
o Meghir et al (2013), detracking reforms from 1949 to 1962 in Sweden
o Kerr et al (2013) and Pekkarinen et al (2009) 1972-77 Finnish de-tracking reforms
- No change in IEO
o Lauterbach and Fend (2016) introduction of comprehensive schools in Germany
o Barone and Fort (2011), 1962 postponing tracking to age 14 in Italy

A cross-national analysis of tracking reforms

- Van de Werfhorst (2019, Am Ed Journ) studies socioeconomic inequalities in educational
attainment in 21 European countries for cohorts born between 1925 and 1989
- 14 have experienced reforms of the age at which students are first selected into fully
separate school curricula
- European Social Survey Cumulative File 1-7 (2016)
- Pre and post reform design (country fixed-effects estimation)
Macro-control variables
 - Reforms in the minimum school leaving age
- Political (in)egalitarian climate during the child’s youth
o Parties’ standpoints on equality (coded as pro-equality)
o Proportion of social democratic seats in government
o Income redistribution

Tracking postponement
- Do educational policy reforms to postpone the moment of tracking into different school
types reduced socioeconomic gradients in educational attainment?
- Reforms to later tracking reduced inequalities by class background
o They reduced the advantage of children of senior managers and administrators
and, to a minor extent, also the advantage of professionals
o They increased educational opportunities of the skilled working class
- The influence of parental education was much less susceptible to policy reforms (Van de
Werfhorst, 2019)
- Groups that are strongly connected to the schooling system are not much affected (ie
higher educated parents and parents with an occupation in the professions)
- Possibly these groups find strategies to keep their children ahead in the educational
system irrespective of the age at which children are tracked
Stratification in higher education and social inequality: A comparative overview
Basic concepts
- Stratification of higher education (HE)
o Different types of higher education programs, pathways and degrees
o Types of HE may be ranked in terms of social desiderability/prestige and
occupational returns
- Social inequalities
o Systematic differences in educational opportunities among individuals with
different social backgrounds
Conceptual scheme to examine social inequalities in HE
- Vertical:
o Access:
 Enrollment in Bachelors, Master, PhD
o Process:
 Dropout
 Marks
 Academic progression
o Outcome:
 Degree attain
  Year of HE
 Final Mark
 Time to degree
 Competencies
- Horizontal:
o Access:
 Enrollment: Fields, Sector, Institution
o Process:
 Shifts between: fields, sectors, institutions
o Outcome:
 Degree attainment: Fields, Sectors, Institutions
General research questions
- Are students from upper social strata more likely to get a degree in the most prestigious
and rewarding HE degree programs?
- Does this relationship vary across contexts and time?
- Can we explain differences among social strata by students’ prior achievement in upper
secondary education?
Background
- Traditional social stratification research often overlooked the role of horizontal
stratification of qualification in the reproduction of social inequality (Blossfeld and
Shavit, 1993; Breen et al, 2009)
- In the last 15 years, researchers have began to consider different tracks/subjects in
secondary education into ‘school-transition models’ (Breen & Jonsson, 200; Lucas, 2001;
Tieben et al, 2010; Panichella & Triventi, 2014) and within higher education (Duru-Bellat
et al, 2008; Shavit et al, 2007; Reimer & Pollak, 2010; Triventi, 2013)
Motivation
1. Great expansion of enrollments in tertiary education (OECD, 2010)
2. HE systems increasingly diversified in course levels, fields of study, sectors and types of
institutions (Teichler, 1988)
o In the earlier part of the 20th century little institutional differentiation, due to
centralization and elitism of this educational level
o With the expansion of student access (‘mass’ HE):
 Introduction of new sectors, courses, types of non university institutions
(Kinzer, 1984; Goedegebuure & Meek, 1988; Teichler, 1988)
 Growth of institutions’ autonomy (OECD, 2008)
 Establishment of restriction criteria to enter some fields of study
(Eurydice, 1998; 1999; 2000)
  Development of university rankings and ‘league tables’ (Stolz et al, 2010)
3. Different types of HE qualifications are associated with different labour market rewards
o HE institutional differentiation is relevant from a social stratification perspective
if it is related to graduates’ labour market outcomes
o There is empirical evidence that it is the case, not only in the US, but also in EU
 Fields of study are associated with different wages, occupational status,
unemployment and overeducation risks (eg Reimer et al, 2008; Barone &
Ortiz, 2011)
 Types of institution and also institutional ‘quality’ lead to different labour
market reward in several countries (Chevalier & Conlon, 2003; Bunello &
Cappellari, 2007; Holmlund, 2009)
Framework

- Attaining an HE degree is no longer sufficient to reach a high-level occupational position


- Employers will search for additional signals in the candidates for a job (eg institutional
quality, field of study, etc) 
- Students from upper social strata will use their resources to get access to the more
rewarding HE degree programs
Theoretical arguments
- The ‘lingering effects’ perspective: ascriptive characteristics do play a relevant role in
higher education
 o Diversion thesis (Brint & Karabel, 1989): in stratified HE systems, lower classes
are channeled, or self-select themselves, into less prestigious and less
remunerative fields, institutions or sectors
o Effectively maintained inequality (Lucas, 2001): when educational expansion
occurs, upper class families will choose the best educational options in order to
favour their children in the occupational attainment process
Mechanisms behind horizontal inequalities in HE
- Rational choice decisions (Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997)
- Information bias on the expected returns, probability of success and the costs (Olson &
Rosenfeld, 1984; Ikenberry & Hartle 1998; Kane 1999; Barone et al, 2017)
- Educational/occupational aspirations (Sewell, 1971; Buchmann & Park, 2009)
- Cultural capital (Bordieu, 1979)
- Social capital and peer effects (Epple et al, 2003; Perna & Titus, 2005)
- The dissipating effects arguments: ascriptive characteristics do not play a relevant role in
higher education
o Life-course hypothesis (Muller & Karle, 1993): young people become increasingly
independent from their parents as they grow older
o Selectivity hypothesis (Mare, 1981): differential strength in the selection on the
basis of ability between high and low background students in earlier educational
transitions
Empirical evidence
- To provide empirical evidence on vertical and horizontal inequalities in higher education
(HE), I will present key findings from this article
A cross-national analysis
Objective
- Analyse the relationship between social background and graduation from:
o Longer programs (vertical inequalities)
o Top institutions and prestigious FoS (horizontal inequalities)
o Cross national variation

Hypotheses
- Integrating the effectively maintained inequality thesis (Lucas, 2001) with the
credentialist argument (Collins, 1979) and signalling theory (Spence, 1973), allows me to
formulate the following ‘comparative’ hypotheses
- The role of social background will be stronger in countries:
o With a higher percentage of tertiary graduates (selectivity + competition
hypotheses)
 o In which advantages in the labour market associated with the ‘best educational
alternatives’ are larger (resource relevance)
Data
- RELFEX survey (Research into Employment and professional Flexibility)
o Harmonized cross-section survey carried out in 2005 among tertiary graduates in
ISCED5A
o Mail questionnaire for most of the countries
o 11 countries included in this study (approximately 25000 cases)
o Sampling weights are used in all estimations

PROS CONS
Harmonized variables and recent cohort Only graduates (a selected sample) are
included  results reflect both choices
and drop-out
Detailed information on institutional Only ISCED 5A graduates are included 
differentiation not possible to analyze inequality in short
vocational vs academic courses
Information on social origin and previous
school career
- Countries included: UK, ES; FR, IT, BE, NL, DE, AT, CZ, NO, FI
Variables
- Outcome variables:
o Vertical inequalities. Graduation in long vs short program
o Horizontal inequalities: Graduation from an institution with high quality
o Horizontal inequalities: Graduation from a prestigious field of study
o Institutional quality: indicates whether on egraduated from an institution in the
highest quartile of ‘quality’  quality summarized information at the
institutional level on : selectivity, student intake quality, occupational outcomes
o Prestige of the field of study: indicates whether one graduated from a field of
study in the highest quartile of ‘prestige’  prestige summarized information at
the FoS level (30 fields) on: graduates’ perception of prestige of her own field and
mean occupational status (ISEI) of occupation by graduates from a given field
- Independent variable:
o Parental education (4 categories) : 1. No more than one UppSec 2. Two UppSec 3.
Only one tertiary 4. Both tertiary
- Control variables:
 o Basic controls: Gender, Age, Dummies for region of residence at 16, at least one
parent born abroad
o Additional controls: Academic tracks in upper secondary education; Final Grades
in upper secondary education (low, medium, high)
Methods
- 1 part: micro-level analysis
o Binomial logistic regression models, separate country analyses, 2 model
specifications
o Results in terms of average partial effect (APEs) intuitive interpretations, better
comparability across groups)
- 2 part: macro-level analysis
o Build a synthetic measure of vertical and horizontal inequalities
o Correlate the two macro variables with the measures of inequalities in higher
education
Results (GRAPHS)
- Average advantage of those with tertiary educated parents over those with less
educated parents (total effects)
- Average advantage of those with tertiary educated parents over those with less
educated parents (total and net effects)

Mechanisms of educational inequalities: Micro level theories of educational inequalities

Recap:
- Social background is related to educational attainment: individuals from the upper social
classes and with highly educated parents study longer and obtain on average higher
educational degrees
- Smaller inequalities in the Nordic countries, larger in Eastern European countries
- Some reduction over time, but not much in the last 30 years
Question: Which mechanisms/processes contribute to explain the advantages of higher
background individuals over lower background?
Primary and secondary effects
- Inequality in educational transitions results from two distinct general mechanisms
(Boudon, 1974)
- Primary effects: inequalities due to differentiated performance across social
backgrounds (social origin affects level of academic competencies + socially
differentiated competencies lead to differentiated educational decisions)
 - Secondary effects: social origin affects educational decisions in the case of equal
academic competencies (usually interpreted in terms of family choices)
Path diagram

Usefulness of this analytical tool

- The concepts of primary and secondary effects:
o Allow sociologists to gain greater precision in identifying the determinants of IEO
 Generated by different processes and thus different theories might be
more or less adapt to explain the two components
o Implications for social policy
 The appropriate policy interventions will also differ depending on which
type of effect is to be addressed
Policy implications
- If differences in performance are the main rivers of educational inequality, policies
aimed at reducing those differences will have a very large impact in reducing overall
inequality
o Early interventions, such as intensive preschool education or economic support
for families with young children, seem to have great potential for reducing
primary effects (see Cameron and Heckman, 1999; Carneiro and Heckman, 2003;
Heckman, 2006)
- If differences in the choices made by students at the same level of performance have a
significant impact, policies aimed at changing constraints and incentives hold more
promise (Jackson et al, 2007)
How inequality in educational opportunity is created
 - Should IEO be understood as a consequence of differences in academic ability and
performance between members of different social classes?
- Or should it be understood as a consequence of differences in the educational decisions
made by members of different social classes, such that students from advantage
backgrounds choose higher levels of education more frequently than students from
disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of their academic performance?
Decomposition of IEO in P6S effects
- The key problem when estimating the direct, indirect, and total effect is that the
standard method of estimating them – comparing estimates from models that do and
do not control for Z – will not work in nonlinear models like logistic regression (Mood
2010; Buis, 2010)
- Erikson et al (2005) developed a method to decompose the odds ratio describing
inequalities between social groups into a part due to primary effects and another due to
secondary effects; a percentage estimate of the relative importance of the two effects in
creating IEO can thus be derived
Explanations of primary effects: Factors that explain differences by social background in
academic performance
Determinants of primary effects
- Primary effects are understood to be the consequence of a complex interaction between
educational institutions and the cultural, economic, and social resources of individuals
and their families
- Six classes of mechanisms might be relevant to the generation of performance
differences between groups:
1. Genetic
2. Health and nutrition
3. Home environment
4. Sibship size
5. Cultural biases exhibited by schools
6. Psychological mechanisms
1 Genetic endowments
- Not easy to study
- Previous research mainly rely on twin studies and ACE models decomposing the
variation in an educational outcome in 3 components:
o 1. Additive genetic effects: factors (genes) that identical twins share 100% and
fraternal twins share 50%
 o 2. common or shared environmental effects: factors shared 100% between twins,
which make a pair of twins more similar to one another regardless of whether
they are identical or fraternal
o 5. unique of non-shared environmental effects: factors unique to each individual,
which make twins less similar regardless of whether they are identical or
fraternal
- These models found high hereditability of IQ components (50%)
- These models have some problems, in particular they are not able to investigate gene X
environment interactions (Beckwith and Morris, 2008)
- Recent studies using a more advanced methodology (polygenic risk score) – overcoming
some problems of twin studies – found that around one-sixth of the transmission of
educational attainment from parents to children is due to genetic transmission (eg
Conley et al, 2015), which is much lower than what usually found by twin studies
2 Health and nutrition
- Differences in levels of health and nutrition between social groups have been shown to
influence socioeconomic inequalities in performance
- These stem from:
a. In utero differences due to mothers’ eating and drinking behaviour
b. Nutrition in early age
c. Exposure to pollution and other environmental ‘risk factors’
- Recent work in neuroscience also points to the consequences of deprivation for brain
development
3 Home environment
- Socioeconomically advantaged households are abel to employ their superior economic
resources in ways that boost their children’s academic performance: investment in
private tuition, summer schools, books
- Children from economically advantaged households having substantially greater access
to books, newspapers, and computers and more opportunities for educational trips and
private tuition than those from economically disadvantaged households, and school
materials
- Students from the upper social classes are also exposed to a family environment
characterized by:
o Better language skills (Feintsten, 2003; Farkas and Beron, 2004; Kloosterman et
al, 2011)
o Higher cultural capital (Bordieu and Passeron, 1977; Bordieu, 1984; De Graaf, De
Graaf and Kraaykamp, 2001; Lareau, 1987, 2003)
o More developed social capital and higher-quality social networks (Coleman,
1988)
4 Sibship size
- Number of siblings has been found to be negatively related to students’ scholastic
achievement (Tanskanen et al, 2016)
- According to the parental resource dilution model parental resources should influence
children’s academic outcomes, and since parental resources are finite, the higher is the
number of children the lower is the level of resources invested in any particular child, all
else being equal (Downey 1995, 2001)
5 The cultural biases exhibited by schools
- The social inequalities present in the home environment are likely to be exacerbated by
the practices of educational institutions, where the language styles and cultural practices
of the socioeconomically advantaged are rewarded (eg Bordieu 1988; Bernstein 1971;
Bowles and Gintis, 1976)
- Teachers’ bias has been detected in :
o Expectations  Pygmalion effect (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968; Jussim and
Harber, 2005)
o Grading (Kiss, 2013; Argentin & Triventi, 2014; Triventi, 2019)
o Recommendations for high school track (Rist, 1970; Barg, 2013; Barone et al,
2016)
6 Psychological mechanisms
- the big 5
o Openness
o Neuroticism
o Agreeableness
o Extraversion
o Conscientiousness
- Another psychological mechanism likely to contribute to socioeconomic inequalities in
performance is stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson, 1995; Steele, 1997)
- Students of disadvantaged social origin, aware that they are from a group that performs
poorly in school assessments, will underachieve when faced with similar exercises
(Croizet and Claire, 1998)
Limits to policies
- The mechanisms underlying the generation of primary effects relate to features of
individuals, families, and societies that are difficult to change
- Educational and social policies may reduce performance inequalities, but on the whole,
the most successful of these policies are extremely expensive and time intensive
- Example: limited potential reduction of inequalities
Explaining secondary effects: Rational action theory
Bree & Goldthorpe (1997) RAT model
- The BG model starts from the rational choice assumption that decisions about
educational investments reflect an assessment of their costs, benefits and chances of
success
- U = (P x B) – C
- U=utility; P= perceived risks of making a specific educational transition (eg dropout); B =
perceived benefits of making a specific educational transition (monetary and non-
monetary; C = costs (direct and indirect)
The focus
- In the RAT, social class differences in economic resources, occupational aspirations and
academic performance are assumed to drive educational inequalities
- The BG model focuses, in particular, on explaining secondary effects, that is social
inequalities in educational transitions for equally performing students
Definition of the Utility
- The benefits of educational decisions (B) as expectations concerning the class
destinations afforded by different educational credentials
- In line with loss-aversion theory (Kahneman and Twersky, 1979), it is assumed that the
utility of these expected benefits reflects not only their ‘objective’ value, but also a
framing effect: families regard potential class destinations as losses or gains relative to a
reference point, given by the social class position of the parents
o For instance, gaining access to a skilled white collar job entails a different utility
for an upper class student (downward mobility as a loss) than for his/her woring
class counterpart (the fain of upward mobility)
Relative risk aversion
- All social classes share the same priority: mimising the risk of a loss, that is, of social
demotion  their absolute risk aversion is assumed to be identical
- However, because students from different classes have different reference points, they
have different relative risk aversion (RRA)
o For upper class students, the priority is to maximise the chances of reaching
upper class jobs
o For working class students, the main foal is to maximise the chances of reaching
at least the working class (as opposed to downward mobility into the
‘underclass’)
Economic resources and liquidity constraints
 - This explains why the formed have higher occupational aspirations, which in turn feed
into higher educational aspirations and more ambitious educational choices
(Goldthorpe, 2006)
- Class differences in occupational aspirations are further reinforced by differences in
economic resources
o Even if the absolute costs of education were the same or different classes,
working class families are less equipped with financial means to meet them
o In particular, explaining secondary effects, the BG model refers mainly to short
term liquidity constraints
A study on explanatory power of RAT
- Barone, Triventi and Assirelli (2018) assessed to what extent social inequalities in
enrolment to university in Italy are explained by RAT factors
Measuring RAT factors
- Expected direct costs: should you decide to continue to university education, how much
do you think you would pay for: university fees, study materials, lunches, transportation.
Please try to provide an estimate even if you have never thought about it. Sum of the
expected monthly costs
- Perceived indirect costs: Enrolling at university would mean waiting too long before
earning an income. Student agreement on a scale from 1 to 10
- Perceived returns: Additive index summarizing answers to three questions: a university
degree does not improve the chances of finding a good job, b university grauates have
more chances than upper secondary graduates to find a good job, c the costs of
university studies are widely repaid by the wages earned as a graduate. 1-10 scale
- Expected wage returns: Difference between expected earnings as a university graduate 1
and expected earnings as upper secondary graduate 2
o 1 if you enrolled at university, what might your net monthly income from full-
time employment be four years after earning a degree (bachelor or single tier
degree
o 2 Should you not continue to university education, what might your net monthlu
income from full time employment be four years after completing upper
secondary education
- Perceived difficulty: University studies are very difficult: student agreement on a scale
from 1 to 10
- Expected probability of success: If you enrolled at university, what chance of completing
each of your preferred fields do you think you would have? Please give a number
between 0 (no chance at all) and 100 (sure to achieve the degree). Average of the
answers that referred to the first three selected fields of study
Some issues with the primary and secondary effects framework
Indicators of academic performance
- Time location: before the educational transition
- Measures:
o Standardized tests
o Teachers’ marks
o Teachers’ recommendations

An extended model
- Integrating various previous contributions (Boudon, 1974; Jackson 2013, Esser, 2016), we
distinguish three main channels by which social inequalities in educational transitions
are reproduced
1. Primary effects: the part of socioeconomic background differences in educational
transitions due to different students academic abilities
2. Secondary effects: the part of socioeconomic background effects holding constant
student academic ability and performance
3. Tertiary effects: the role played by teachers signaling with grades and track
recommendations that are not aligned with students’ competencies
Marks are endogenous
- School marks are an endogenous factor
- Some students may have obtained a low school mark because they were not interested
in continuing their studies
- Marks may be correlated with (unobserved) motivations that are themselves strongly
linked to the educational transitions probabilities
Additive effects
- Primary and secondary effects are considered as additive (P + S = IEO)
- Social origin and performance may interact
- The advantage in educational transitions of higher background students (over lower
background students) may be different among low-achieving vs high achieving students
Compensatory advantage model
- Compensatory advantage (CA, hereafter) is a general mechanism for inequality that
complements those of cumulative disadvantage and path dependence (Bernardi, 2014)
- The key insight of the notion of CA is that the life course trajectories of individuals from
privileged backgrounds are less dependent on prior negative outcomes or on some
disadvantageous trait or event when compared to individuals from lower classes
In education
 - Students from socio economically advantaged families are expected to compensate the
negative event of achieving poor grades by ignoring them and disproportionally moving
on to the next level of education
Graphs
Gender inequalities in education
Premise
- The literature on gender inequalities in education ‘often treats all aspects of education
as disadvantaging women’
- This assessment is less valid today, as much research now examines the ways in which
girls and women are advantaged in some aspects of education
Gender and test scores
- Results from various national and international large scale assessments indicate that
boys have higher test scores in mathematics and girls have higher test scores in reading
- But there is considerable cross national variation in the size of these gaps
- Some evidence suggests that gender gaps in test scores are more pronounced among
low income children, but results are not definitive
The higher sex related variability hypothesis
- These results refer to the mean, what about the dispersion of results among males and
females
- The higher male variability hypothesis
Gender differences in low test scores
- In most of the countries, there is a higher proportion of low achievers among males tha
females, as measured by low performance (below proficiency level 2) in the PISA study
Gender differences in math proficiency along the performance distribution
- In most of the countries, the advantage of boys over females in math performance is
larger at the highest levels of performance in the PISA study
Gender and test scores along the life course
- There is also a life course component to gender differences in test scores. Research
consistently finds generally:
o Similar performance of girls and boys in mathematics and reading in the arly
grades
o A growing male advantage in math scores and growing female advantage in
reading scores as they move through school
Gender differences in grades along the life course
- In the US, girls have long obtained higher grades in school than boys. Even in the 1950s
and 1960s girls earned higher grades than boys and had higher class standing in high
school
- Today, from kindergarten through high school and even in college, girls get better grades
in all major subjects, including math and science
How to explain the gender differences in performance
- Attitudes towards school and learning
- Educational expectations and aspirations
- Effort put in the test
- Time spent to do homeworks
- Behaviour in class
- Teachers’ expectations
Gender inequalities in higher education
- Increase in participation rates to HE larger among females than males
- Reduction of inequalities and reversal of the gap (in the 1990s): nowadays females are
attending HE to a larger extent
- This is true both at bachelor and master level in most of the countries
Gender segregation across fields of study
- Gender segregation is a key to understanding gender inequality in the labor market
- Growth of female participation in secondary and tertiary education and in the labor
market
- BUT still a long way from gender parity in the occupational arena
o Segregation at school is among the prominent causes of persistent inequality
(Jacobs, 1996; Smyth and Steinmetz, 2008)
o Educational institutions still work as engines of gender inequality

Ethnic inequalities in education

Premise
- The increasing incidence of immigration has become a rather common trait of Westerns
societies in the last decades
- In contrast to the past, the number of immigrant families is now growing considerably
also in southern European countries (Castles & Miller, 2003)
- As a result, the goal of integrating ethnic minorities in host societies represents a
common challenge today for all European nations
Multidimensional view of ethnicity
 - Ethnicity
o Citizenship: Citizen or non citizen in the host society
o Migration experience/background: natives, Mixed couples, 2nd generation or 1st
generation
o Country of origin: Country of birth of parents and pupil
o Race/Ethnic group : Ethnic minorities

Pros and cons

- Using a multidimensional approach to conceptualize ethnic origin (Weber, 1921) avoids
an essentialist view:
o Socially constructed
o Interrelated to the social context
o Changing over time
- Pros: possibility to study how ethnic identities affect educational outcomes
- Cons: measurement problems (only proxy of ethnic identity)
Policy relevance
- While policy interventions to minimize barriers face by migrants on the labour market
are needed especially for first generations (individuals born in foreign countries)
- The long term integration of ethnic minorities passes through the school participation of
second generations (children of immigrants born in destination countries)
- Not only do descendants of immigrants at school participate in social networks with
natives and are socialized to the host country’s norms, but they also acquire
fundamental competencies and credentials that can favour their successful transition to
the labour market
- The acquisition of high educational degrees is usually perceived as one of the most
powerful tools that can be used to fight against immigrants’ poverty and marginalization
The relevance of country of origin
- Migrants are not a random sample of the population from their country of origin
- If migrants are more motivated and talented, better educated and have higher
aspirations  positive selection
- If migrants have desirable traits than the population in their country of origin 
negative selection
Relative education (Brunory, Luijkx and Triventi, 2020)
- One can use relative education as a proxy of selectivity of immgrants in a given country
- The degree of immigrants selectivity on unobserved characteristics (eg ability and
motivations) is proxied by an indicator of relative education, measured as the
 individual’s relative position in the age/gender specific distribution of educational
qualifications in the country of origin
- Effect of relative education on unemployment: Migrants who are more positively
selected tend to refuse job offers that do not match their expectations, especially in the
first period after arrival in the host society
- Effect of relative education on children’s school dropout: relative education, net of
absolute level of education , reduces the risk of children’s early school leaving (more
aspirations, support to their children)
Quantitative research designs
- Single destination multiple origins
- Multiple destination single origin
- Multiple destinations and origins
Common research questions
- Individual level
o Are ethnic minorities/students with a migration background (SMB)
disadvantaged in their educational career compared to natives?
o Which factors can explain the educational gaps between native students and
SMB?
- Contextual level
o Does a higher share of children of immigrants in school/classroom negatively
affects educational outcomes?
o Does a higher share of children of immigrants in school produce a ‘native flight’
phenomenon?
Educational gaps
- Most analysed outcomes:
o Academic performance (test scores, teacher grades)
o Early dropout and retention risks
o Academic aspirations
o Educational choices: academic track placement
o Transition to higher education
o Labour market outcomes

Explanations of the gaps:

- Structuralist explanations
o Claim: Largest part of the gaps SMB face in the educational systems are due to
the lower socioeconomic resources of their family of origin the host countries
 o Empirically: ethnic gaps in educational outcomes are expected to vanish or
reduce a log once family socio-economic resources (eg income, wealth,
occupation, house conditions) are controlled for in multiple regression models
o According to the ‘composition hypothesis’, the ethnic gap in educational
outcomes depends precisely on the lower access to socio-economic resources
that children of immigrants have, rather than to any ethnic-specific cultural
aspect (Schnepf, 2007; Heath and Brinbaum, 2007; Health & Rothon, 2014)
o Scarce transferability of educational degrees acquired in the country of origin +
Language barriers and lack of social networks + Discrimination on the labour
market  Immigrant parents overrepresented in less remunerative, stable and
prestigious jobs  Lower socioeconomic resources
o Rational choice framework
 Because immigrant families lack socio-economci resources, the costs of
their children’s participation in education will be higher for them in
relative terms
 In Addition, taking as reference the on average lower status position of
their parents, children of immigrants would be able to avoid downward
social mobility without the need to acquire higher educational degrees in
the country of destination
o Demographics
 The structure of immigrant families as an additional factor hindering
children of immigrants’ educational success needs to be examined
 The lack of socio-economic resources can, in fact, be exacerbated by the
necessity to share them between a higher number of siblings (Blake,
1981) compared to what happens in native families
o Recently the claims of the composition hypothesis have been supported by a
number of empirical analyses in several European countries examining (Heath &
Rothon, 2014; Gabrielli et al, 2019)
 The ethnic gap in educational achievements (Marks, 2005; Brinbaum and
Guegnard, 2013; Health & Rothon, 2014)
 Post compulsory educational choices (Brinbaum & Cebolla-Boado, 2007;
Kristen et al, 2008; Jackson, 2012), even when students show a similar
level of academic competencies (Jonsson et al, 2014)
- Cultural explanations
o Immigrant parents are in fact seen as characterized by specific cultural assets and
values, in contrast to those commonly supported by educational institutions in
the destination country (Rist, 1970)
o One of the ethnic specific cultural traits more frequently connected to delays in
the development of competencies is language proficiency (Schnepf, 2007)
 o When the language spoken at home is other than that used by teachers and
scholastic books, students can encounter greater difficulties in actively
participating in lessons and completing homework, and thus perform less well in
standardized competency tests
o Teachers might better remunerate the efforts of natives than those of first and
second generation students with a similar level of competency (Leopold 6 Shavit,
2013), because they more easily recognize the cultural assets and values of
natives, which are similar to their own (Bordieu & Passeron, 1970)
Variations across countries
- Marks (2005) and Schnpef (2007) found that the role of social origin in explaining the
ethnic achievement gap is not the same in every country
- The lack of socioeconomic resources accounts for
o Almost all the gap in France, Germany and the Netherlands
o 50% of the ethnic penalty in Belgium and England
o A minor share of the gap in Scandinavian countries

Interaction between structural and cultural factors

- Native parents have been found to be more keen than immigrants to participate in
children’s formal education (Dalla Zuanna et al, 2009) and get in touch with teachers
(Portes & Rumbaut, 1996); two kinds of activites that are important drivers of
educational achievement
- Interactions with native teachers could be impeded by:
o The lower language proficiency of non native parents
o Social networks with natives, where important information on the school system
are exchanged
o Tighter work schedules

School related attitudes and behaviour

- Being part of a strong ethnic community in the country of destination
- Educational aspirations
- Parenting style
Native/White flight phenomenon
- White flight refers to the exodus of white Americans from central cities to suburbs in the
early and mid 20 century, a phenomenon which led to declining tax revenue and
business closures that created lasting damage to urban neighbourhoods
Residential preferences and movements
 - Studies document preferences for neighbourhoods dominated by the individuals’ own
racial or ethnic group, especially among US whites, and preferences for mixed
neighbourhoods among minorities (Clark, 2002; Clark and Coulter, 2015; Clark and
Fossett, 2008; Emerson, Chai and Yancey, 2001; Fossett, 2006; Krysan, 2002; Krysan et al,
2009)
- Flight and avoidance of neighbourhoods with high or increasing shares of racial or ethnic
minorities (South and Crowder, 1997; Crowder, 2000; Crowder and South, 2008;
Crowder, Pais, and South, 2012)
School preferences
- Some US studies have shown that White parents tend to prefer sending their children to
majority White schools, often resorting to private or charter schools (Betts and Fairlie,
2003; Renzulli and Evans, 2005; Fairlie and Resch, 2002)
- A Finnish study also found that the ethnic and socioeconomic composition of the school
mattered for school choice and avoidance behaviour among middle class residents in
Helsinki (Bernelius and Vaattovaara, 2016)
- Bjerre-Nielsen and Gandil (2020) found that parents opted out of schools where a high
share of students had low socioeconomic status or non-Western immigrant origins in
Denmark
Motivation for fleeing
- ‘Pure race’ Explanation: Whites or other racial groups’ preferences for schools or
neighbourhoods are primarily motivated by stereotypes, prejudice, ethnocentric or
racist attitudes towards out-groups, such as Blacks
- ‘Racial proxy’ explanation: people use the racial or ethnic composition of a school or
neighbourhood as a rpoxy for other, salient characteristics
- ‘Racialized prism’ explanation: people evaluate otherwise similar options differently, and
make biased judgements of known information about schools depending on their racial
demographics
- Negative peer effects: a belief amont native parents that their child will fare worse by
attending schools with higher shares of minorities
Occupational returns of education
Social mobility: the OECD triangle
Outcomes:
- Labour market outcomes:
o Employability (employment, unemployment)
o Occupational standing (class attainment, occupational stats, occupational
prestige)
o Economic returns (income, wages, earnings)
o Overeducation
o Also non labour market outcomes (health, smoking, etc)

Main theories
Human capital theory
- Schooling as Meritocratic selection
- Schooling provides marketable skills and abilities relevant to job performance  more
highly schooled applicants more valuable to employers because more productive 
higher incomes and opportunities for securing job
- Schooling-acquired skills are typically seen as ‘ general’ (transferable across employers),
whereas ‘specific’ skills are acquired in the workplace
- Employers act rationally by selecting on the basis of educational credential
- Job seekers (in their prior role as students) act rationally by investing in their own human
capital
- Main limitation: difficulty in conceptualizing and measuring ability
Screening theories
- Main authors: Arrow, 1973; Spence, 1973; Stiglitz, 1975
- In the job search process, job seekers send signals to employers
- In the recruitment process, employers use screens of job seekers
- Screening is a mechanism by which markets react to imperfect information about the
qualities of individuals
- Individuals are aware of their ability  they will pursue educational paths and attain
degrees that testify their abilities at best
Signaling theory
- The signaling position is most closely associated with Spence (1973, 1981), who
conceptualized hiring as an investment under uncertainty
- Employers evaluating job candidates have available to them a range of observable
personal characteristics:
o Unalterable: social background, gender, ethnic origin
o Signals: can be invested in or manipulated, at a cost
- Two conditions for a signal to be an active signal:
o Signaling costs are negatively correlated with the individual’s unknown
productivity
o Signals matter for employers’ beliefs

Screening and signaling

- Labor market signaling complements labor market screening: employers screen, and job
seekers signal
- The difference between screening and signaling models is that, in the former, firms
move first and, in the latter, students move first
Two versions of screening/signaling theories
- Strong version: Schooling is exclusively a signal, adding no productive capacity to those
who acquire it
- Weak version: schooling provides a signal bu also augments productivity
- Employers may pay higher starting wages to the more highly schooled but will make
adjustments after watching the worker on the job
The queuing theory of Thurow (1975)
- Even if schools do not teach specific job-relevant skills, they do enhance trainability, thus
making the highly schooled more valuable to employers and making educational
credentials a rational screen
- Educational qualifications put individuals in a queue, with the top candidates having the
more scarce and desirable skills (for employers)
Institutional theory
- In modern societies, adult success is assigned to persons on the basis of duration and
type of education, holding constant what they may have learned in school (Meyer, 1970,
1977; Meyer and Rowan, 1977)
- The content of the schooling matters less than the legitimizing role of the credentials
- Aggregate prediction, no theory of individual-level job assignment
Credentialist theory
- Formal schooling leads to socioeconomic success not because of the superior skills and
knowledge of the more highly educated, but rather because of the ability of the highly
educated to control access to elite positions
- Employers are not rational actors, but instead operate on widely shared societal
assumptions: make choices that are nonrational, unreflective, and at least potentially
counterproductive
- The credentialist position does not need to posit that education and productivity are
unrelated or negatively related
- Rather, it needs merely to argue that the ratio between education and productivity is
smaller than that between education and rewards (Boylan, 1993)
- The difference between these rations is the unearned rent collected by degree holders
Sheepskin effects
- A nonlinear effect of education on earnings is expected, in which a degree provides a
larger boost to earnings than does a single year of schooling
- Limitation: it does not consider that employers who select job candidates whose
educational level exceeds their actual level of skill will adjust for the fact over time by
offering fewer promotions and pay raises to the mismatched workers
Returns to upper secondary education
- Despite the rising share of tertiary educated adults over recent decades, investing in
upper secondary attainment continues to pay off in the long run for both individuals and
society, compared to not completing upper secondary
- On average across OECD countries, for each USD invested in upper secondary education,
men can expect to receive US 9 over the course of their working age life, while women
can expect to receive USD 11.6
- The gender difference is related to the fact that women’s foregone earnings while they
continue their education are much lower than men’s, even though women receive a
smaller net financial return from upper secondary attainment than men
Returns to teriaty education
 - Individuals’ net financial returns from teriaty education are generally higher than from
upper secondary education
- On average across OECD countries, the net financial return for teriaty educated men or
women is around 1-5 times as much as for those with upper secondary education as
their highest attainment
Changing returns over time
A skill bias technological change (SBTC)
- A shift in the production technology that favors skilled over unskilled labor by increasing
its relative productivity and, therefore, its relative demand
- The recent rise in wage inequality is usually attributed to SBTC, associated with new
computer technologies
- A key problem for the SBTC hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s
despite continuing advances in computer technology
- SBTC also fails to explain the evolution of other dimensions of wage inequality, including
the gender and racial wage gaps
Credentialism perspective
- ‘Credential inflation’: the unreflective employer practice of raising the ante over time in
hiring standards
- The main effect of expanding education is to raise the credentials necessary to get a
given job
- Expanding educational requirements have accompanied the rising education of the past
few decade
DESO: direct effect of social origin
Logic between these studies
- Education is the great equalizer if there is no direct effect of social origins (DESO) on
labour market achievement, over and above the effect of own education
- If among individuals with the same level of schooling those from better off families still
on average achieve better jobs, education is not the great equalizer
Main research questions:
- Is there a direct effect of social origins (DESO) on labour market achievement, over and
above the effect of own education?
- Has DESO changed (declined) over time?
5 possible mechanisms underlying DESO (Erikson & Jonsson, 1998)
- Direct inheritance of family business
 - Differences in productivity: non cognitive skills (eg communication skills) or personality
characteristics (eg assertiveness) not adequately measured by education
- Social networks
- Aspirations: those from higher social standing are more career-oriented and more willing
and able to take risky choice that, later on, pay off in terms of higher earnings (Breen-
Goldthorpe, 1997)
- Favouritism: employers’ preferences to hire for better jobs those who come from high
SES families, all other conditions being equal
DESO on ISEI: main findings
- Father-son gross correlation for occupational status (TESO) is in the order btw .2 and .4
in all countries. This is the magnitude found (for the US) by Blau & Duncan (1967). A
constant over time?
- When education is controlled for (grey bars), the association decreases by ½ to ¾. So the
main impact of family background goes through education as expected.
- However, the remaining direct effect is not trivial. In most countries DESO lies
between .10 and .15

Example
- 6-10 points higher ISEI between doctors and construction workers
 - A 65 points variation in parental ISEI (ie having a parent who is a medical doctor instead
of an unskilled worker) is associated on average with an increase of 6-10 points in own
ISEI, net of achieved education
Is it relevant?
- Such a difference is the one separating, for instance, a university professor from a high
school teacher, or a taxi driver from a windows cleaner
- Some comparisons (from the country chapters):
o In US, net of education being black is associated on average to 4 ISEI points
penalty
o In Norway, Spain, the UK, net of education the gender penalty is 2 ISEI point

Results for income

- Results concerning earnings are less clear, because of measurement problems: family
income (US) / individual income; annual (France) / Monthly (UK), gross (NO) / net (UK,
etc
- However, a DESO on (log)earnings is everywhere to be found
- In this case, a difference in parental ISEI of 65 points (medical doctor versus unskilled
labourer), is associated to an increase in monthly earnings of about 2’% (65* . 003). For
instance: 1500 + 300 monthly premium (3600 per year)
Conclusions on DESO
- A statistically significant and substantially relevant DESO was found in all countries,
larger in Southern EU
- No major signs of change over time in most countries