Abstract
This paper analyses the role that different components of the academic strength of the secondary-school curriculum (i.e. number, subjects and grades of advanced academic courses) play in explaining social origin differences in access to prestigious universities (but also to other higher education institutions) in Scotland and the USA. A central aim of the paper is to investigate whether the mechanism behind the studied patterns of inequality differs depending on the characteristics of each educational system. Our results show pronounced social class gaps in entering top higher education institutions in both Scotland and the USA. Academic curriculum plays an important role in explaining these social class differences in both countries. However, while in Scotland type of subjects taken at an advanced level is the strongest mediator for the identified social class differences, in the USA, number of advanced subjects is the strongest. Moreover, taking into account the three academic components combined entirely explains the social class differences in Scotland. Considerable inequalities which are not explained by the strength of academic curriculum remain in the USA.
Highlights
Participation in secondary and tertiary education has increased considerably in modern societies over the last decades
This study has provided new insights on the importance of national factors related to school curricula and status of institutions in the reproduction of social inequalities in higher education (HE)
A key objective of our study was to investigate the relative importance of different components of the academic strength of secondary school curriculum in explaining social class differences in entering selective HE institutions
Summary
Participation in secondary and tertiary education has increased considerably in modern societies over the last decades. School-related factors have been suggested to be among the key explanations for horizontal stratification in HE (Gerber and Cheung 2008) and some studies have empirically tested the extent to which different school factors (e.g. attainment and subject choice) mediate inequalities in entering more prestigious universities (Boliver 2013; Iannelli et al 2016; Sullivan et al 2014) None of these studies have systematically assessed the different ways in which academic curriculum explains social inequalities in entering more selective HE institutions (the lone exception is Schührer et al 2016). Our paper addresses this gap by investigating the relative importance of different dimensions measuring the academic strength of secondary school curricula—that is the number and type of academic courses taken, and performance in these courses—in reproducing social class inequalities in entry into selective HE institutions in Scotland and the USA
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