Abstract
This paper analyzes the development of social inequality in the Polish higher education system during its expansion after 1990 using data from the Polish General Social Survey. Focusing on the special case of a former socialist society, where higher education expansion has been very rapid and achieved mainly through marketization, this paper highlights the micro-level mechanisms that underlie the inequality dynamic. It shows how actor preferences embedded in the specific historical context shape educational behavior, producing moments of equalization and de-equalization. Class inequality regarding access to tertiary education decreased in the early 1990s and then increased again, as participation in the working classes stagnated at a low level in the later phases of the expansion. In contrast, no equalization has been observed between children of different educational origins. The analysis shows a persistent intergenerational reproduction of educational disadvantage in spite of the expansion. Lastly, consistent with the Effectively Maintained Inequality thesis, this paper provides evidence for underprivileged strata being diverted into second-tier, lower-prestige educational opportunities in the private sector.
Highlights
Throughout the last three decades, the educational landscape of developed countries has changed much due to the processes of expansion in higher education
According to the Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) hypothesis, because the rate of growth in participation rates is higher than shifts in the distribution of social background characteristics, I expect to find rising participation levels across all social origin groups
The major goal of this paper was to test the Maximally Maintained Inequality and the Effectively Maintained Inequality theses on the case of a post-socialist society with very rapid growth in higher education opportunities, which was mainly achieved by the marketization of this sector
Summary
Throughout the last three decades, the educational landscape of developed countries has changed much due to the processes of expansion in higher education. The expansion of education is seen as a chance to diminish educational inequality and increase social mobility by political means (Pinheiro and Antonowicz 2015; Beller and Hout 2006). The assurance of growing equity in access to higher education has been formulated as an explicit goal of European policy (London Communiqué 2007, Bucharest Communiqué 2012). Widening access to tertiary education is most often accompanied by processes of internal stratification, which result from processes of horizontal differentiation (Marginson 2016; Noelke et al 2012; Ayalon and Shavit 2004; Lucas 2001; Czarnecki 2018; Duta et al 2018)
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