Elite Education Research Articles

Cultural and Educational Elite in the Field of Politics: Understanding, Structure, Analysis of the Russian Case

This article discusses the process of recruiting and ways to implement their own social capital of representatives of the cultural and educational elite in the political space. In particular, based on the results of a study of the biographies of representatives of the cultural and educational elite present in government bodies on the example of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the Government of the Russian Federation and the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, the author demonstrated the process of deploying types of careers in the political space. Based on the research conducted by the author, examples of successful “transit” of one’s own cultural capital into the political field and back are presented. It has been shown that the recruitment of the cultural and educational elite implies a complex system of actions, suggesting how representatives of the cultural, scientific, and at the same time educational community are recruited into the political space.

Reconstructing choice: parental choice of internationally-oriented “public” high schools in China

ABSTRACT This article examines a new trend of high school choice in China – parental choice of emerging international high-school curriculum programs (IHSCPs) recently established by Chinese elite public high schools. We add to the existing critical literature on school choice by providing a detailed empirical analysis of why, how, and under what conditions Chinese parents with high socio-economic status choose a particular IHSCP. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual triad of practice – capital, habitus, and field, the article points out that Chinese upper-middle- and upper-class parents engage in complicated conversion strategies surrounding their individual and collective struggles for elite education in both national and international fields of power. The study foregrounds the role of neoliberalism in articulating local and global education markets that allows privileged Chinese to transcend structural constraints in China and seek out opportunities in the international education field for their children.

Employer Learning and the Dynamics of Returns to Universities: Evidence from Chinese Elite Education during University Expansion

Employer Learning and the Dynamics of Returns to Universities: Evidence from Chinese Elite Education during University Expansion

Educating the Elites: An Examination of the Characteristics and Social Impacts of Elite Universities and Students in the United States

Nowadays, going to elite schools becomes a fashion for students worldwide. However, there are also increasing concerns on the functions and social impacts of the elite education. This essay is going to discuss the following three topics: first, the characteristics of the elite universities and the reasons and implications behind; next is on the characteristics of the students who received elite educations form the top universities in the States; and last is on the social impacts and future of the elite education.

A Study of Elite Education in Chinese International High Schools

The article examines the meaning of elite and elite education, as well as the characteristics of elite schools in China. Elite schools are institutions that offer education to a small number of predominantly middle or upper-class students. The admissions process for these schools is competitive and costly, resulting in a majority of middle- or upper-class pupils. The schools are also distinguished by the acquisition of cultural capital, a resource that embodies or generates cultural worth. Due to the lack of cultural capital, students from lower socioeconomic origins are excluded from top universities. In addition, the piece discusses the effects of tiny class sizes in top institutions, which are touted as a way to provide each student individualised attention. Yet, the effect of class size on student progress is dependent on instructional strategies. The article claimed that elite education has caused a vicious cycle of increased educational inequality, which has widened the gap between socioeconomic classes.

A Feminist Analysis of the Changing Roles of Women in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Anthills of the Savannah

Chinua Achebe is one of the pioneering figures of African Fiction. In his several critical essays and interviews Achebe has discussed the role of an author belonging to a postcolonial country, and declared that he writes his fiction with a definite role. He has penned five novels including his masterpiece Things Fall Apart (1958) in which Achebe, with his realism, has taken up the task of telling his people the greatness and weaknesses of their Ibo culture. Here, the object of his criticism is the colonizer British exercising power under the guise of a civilizing mission. On the other hand, in one of his most discussed novels Anthills of the Savannah (1987) he takes the role of a conscience builder in a new nation engulfed in cutthroat power politics; and the object of his criticism shifts to his own people, the corrupt educated elite and military officials who have failed to contribute in nation building. However, the role of women in Nigerian society is also one of the prominent issues depicted significantly in both these celebrated novels. The paper focuses on a feminist analysis of these novels with the aim to find out the changing roles of women in Nigerian society depicted in these novels. It takes recourse to the method of explication and close reading of these primary texts and the secondary data in the light of Feminist Criticism.

Clearing the hurdles: Revisiting the under-performance hypothesis for women-led VC funded firms

ABSTRACT This study revisits the female underperformance hypothesis by investigating the influence of CEO gender on key performance factors for VC funded firms from 2011–2016. We used a matched case-control sample approach to reduce the confounding influence of industry sector on gender differences for four key performance outcomes – total capital, raised total rounds of funding, successful exit or business failure. Results show gender does not predict funding raised or firm performance, and that key legitimacy markers, including elite education, external endorsement and high-status investors, offset potential gender discounts for women-led firms. Implications are that the female underperformance hypothesis should not be perpetuated as a legitimizing myth or stereotype predicting performance of women entrepreneurs in management studies. In practice, VCs should not rule out investments or expect poor performance based on CEO gender.

Representation of Educational Elitism and Entrepreneurship Merit in Contemporary Africa: A Cultural Shift to Self-Fulfilment

This paper explores and acknowledges the recurring theme of education in African literature, which is often depicted as both a means to reclaim African identity and culture and a tool for social mobility and economic empowerment. Using the Interpretive Interactionism methodology, the study identifies a growing emphasis on the representation of entrepreneurship as a form of vocational training, experiential and work-based learning that can supplement or even replace traditional educational qualifications. This evolving perspective reflects cultural shifts to self-fulfilment, where entrepreneurship is seen as a viable path to success. This study contributes to our understanding of the multifaceted role of education in postcolonial francophone African literature. The findings highlight the complex nature of education in many African societies and its potential for positive transformation as well as challenges to traditional notions of elitism, empowerment, and self-fulfilment.

‘They think it’s trendy to have a disability/mental-illness’: disability, capital and desire in elite education

Research has long demonstrated the exclusion and Othering experienced by young people with disabilities in education. This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study conducted in an ‘elite’ sixth-form college in England, set against the backdrop of a shifting social, political, and cultural landscape, where neo-liberal discourses of dis/ability and healthism—centring on mental health and wellbeing—are becoming further embedded in educational policy. Drawing on theoretical work by Bourdieu and Foucault, we demonstrate how the students in this study appeared able to re-make disability as a liberal intellectual identity marker and use it as a form of capital within the bounded college sub-field. However, we argue that these empowered disabled subjectivities were strongly middle-classed and precarious. The findings have implications through advancing current understandings of young people’s complexifying relationships with disability in education, of enduring inequalities around disability, and how social class is implicated in this.

Medical imagery in Maximus of Tyre's Orations.

Imagery is an overarching feature of Maximus of Tyre's Orations which has never been the subject of systematic investigation. This paper provides a starting point by focusing exclusively on medical imagery, one of the most pervasive and instrumental types of imagery in Maximus' work that has gone entirely unnoticed in the literature to date. This paper shows that Maximus uses medicine (especially its scientific basis and historical development), the physician (e.g. his skill, provision and sensitivity towards the patient), the body (its physiology and workings) and notions of health and disease with considerable diversity and creativity, in ways that make his examples stand out in relation to earlier (Platonic) or contemporary applications of the medical parallel. It argues that the use of the medical imagery in the pedagogical context in which Maximus' Orations were performed facilitated not just clarity but also concept formation and the shaping of a moral outlook as well as the familiarisation with the proper literary references and verbal and conceptual topoi for admission into the group of the educated elite. Another main thesis is that medical imagery valorises Maximus' philosophical status and his claims to Imperial-period acculturation, thus functioning as a trademark for the rhetorical philosophy he wished to promote.

The school as a reproducer of inequalities: The education of political elites in Mexico

La ampliación de la brecha de desigualdad en educación está relacionada con los cambios impulsados desde finales del siglo XX en el modelo político y económico de México, que ha incidido en detrimento de la educación pública en sus diferentes niveles. Paralelamente, la consolidación de una elite política que mayoritariamente se ha formado en escuelas privadas, es un factor que se suma para garantizar la reproducción de las desigualdades a través de la escuela, hecho que es interpretado desde la perspectiva de la teoría de la reproducción, acuñada por Pierre Bourdieu. En ese tenor, en el presente artículo se realiza una confrontación entre la concepción que alude al ideal normativo de la escuela como agente igualador e impulsor de movilidad social y la literatura citada. Las evidencias estadísticas y empíricas recabadas a través del análisis de resultados de logro académico en alumnos que culminan la educación básica en México, así como del perfil escolar y generacional de las elites políticas en el país, representadas aquí por los 32 gobernadores en funciones en 2022 y por los legisladores recién electos de seis congresos estatales, permiten inferir la estrecha relación entre privatización educativa y formación de elites, sugiriendo que el poder legitimador del sistema escolar contribuye a multiplicar las desigualdades sociales.

The Illusion of Merit in Political Leadership Selection in China

AbstractIn China, government at all levels relies on the specially selected graduates (SSG) scheme to recruit elite university students as future political leaders. This article examines the mechanism of the SSG scheme and the relationship between elite university education and political selection in China. We show that elite education is increasingly stratified, such that graduates from top elite universities have significant selection advantages in the SSG competition and are more likely to be offered incentives and preferences. We argue that taking elite university education as a hard eligibility criterion reinforces the homophily effects in selection of future political elites and strengthens the political influence of top elite universities on China's politics. Further, because poor and lower-class students have little chance of entering elite universities, the SSG does not provide an effective route of upward mobility for non-elite classes. Merit-based political recruitment as a channel of upward mobility for non-elite classes is largely an illusion.

‘It comes with more baggage than prestige’: deferred culpability and disavowal among elite boys’ school alumni

ABSTRACT Research investigating elite schools has highlighted how students within these learning environments embody and naturalise their privilege through discourses of merit, hard work, and innate talent and skill. However, relatively little is known about how privilege, and its associated discourses, moves with students beyond the school gate and into adulthood. In this paper we present accounts from elite boys’ school alumni to interrogate how they mediate representations of Self as morally ‘good and sincere’. The active disavowal of the elite education experience, and deferral of culpability from the cultural practices of these institutions feature in these accounts. In particular, the paper explores the strategies used to reconcile aspects of the elite boys’ school experience. We argue that these practices of disavowal and deferred culpability provide a degree of personal and professional mobility, from which the cultivation of a positive sense of self as a ‘good’ man emerges.

Inequality at the top. The gender earnings gap among the Italian educational elite

Inequality at the top. The gender earnings gap among the Italian educational elite

EDUCATION AND CAREER GUIDANCE PLATFORM- A CASE STUDY IN BANGALORE

In the quick-changing and modern world, platforms for education and career guidance are essential. These platforms are crucial for Information empowerment, Education and career guidance platforms give people access to thorough and current information about a wide range of educational and employment opportunities. This study focuses on understanding individual interests, skills, and values and thereby helping people to reflect on their competency and prepare them for the future by providing them with the required knowledge and skills. The research is based on secondary data, gathered from published papers. The Elite Education and career guidance aim to bring a platform to each and every individual career seeker and young adult, where they have the opportunity to explore different types of careers and jobs. The website will contain assessment tool preparation, videos highlighting professionals giving their insights about the job, information on universities and colleges, and test material, along with career counselling and a job search boot camp. Keywords: Education platform, Career, employment, Counselling, Business model

USING FORESIGHT RESEARCH TO IDENTIFY PRIORITY AREAS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the significance of foresight research in identifying priority areas for higher education development over the next 15-20 years. Developed countries such as the USA, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany employ the Foresight methodology for long-term forecasting at the national level. This methodology has proven to be the most effective tool for selecting priority areas for the development of science and technology. Foresight research is versatile and can be used to model problems in various fields, including medicine, education, natural sciences, technology, and more. Foresight forecasting and modelling can be used to determine the directions of university education development, funding sources for higher education, and demand for skilled personnel in different sectors of the economy.
 Scientific and prognostic support is vital in determining priority areas of scientific research and development for the coming years. By doing so, it is possible to determine the dominant scientific theories and branches of science that will shape the education of the future. Furthermore, the perspectives of the educational process participants must be taken into account when reforming education. The results of foresight forecasts on higher education improvements show the following trends: elite education, development of educational online platforms, lifelong learning, transparency of the university system, and gamification. Longterm forecasting in higher education enables the implementation of strategic educational management and science-based university development. Foresight studies help to predict the scientific and technical potential of a higher school, determine the optimal ratio between research and development in the field of education, and forecast the effect of obtaining and applying scientific and technical activities' results.
 The creation of new means of supporting learning technologies and their promotion in the educational process for the next 15-20 years and the determination of priority areas of scientific research and development depends on foresight studies of higher education development. Established forecasts indicate the strength of the scientific and technical potential and ensure the transition of higher education to an innovative new path of development. Further development and use of foresight studies are needed to determine the forecasts of higher education development.

Education as an international export

A growing portion of international schools are franchised branches of schools originally founded in other countries. The first of such schools opened in 1996 and there are now almost 100 globally. Expansionist schools are primarily elite, English private schools, with concentrations of their franchises developing in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and East Asia over the past quarter of a century—particularly in mainland China over the past decade. This study explores how such schools adapt the language and focus of their marketing and, in doing so, sustain their privilege across various contexts. A qualitative textual analysis is conducted of the websites of 11 schools run by Dulwich College and Harrow School, the first brands to expand overseas and with the most extensive networks of schools today. A lens of international schools as enclosures of privilege is used to demonstrate how schools adapt themselves and their framing. The study finds the promotional focus of the schools depends not just on whether they are the founding school or a franchise, but also on their relative ages, and on their varying locations within specific sociocultural contexts. An emergent hybrid model, catering to both local and international curricula, blends the local with the global and complicates the conventional notion of the international school. Finally, the study suggests that further research is focused on the franchising of elite education, particularly as the focal point of expansion begins to shift away from the mainland Chinese boom of the past decade.

Professional service firms and the manufacturing of the corporate nobility

AbstractGlobal professional service firms (GPSFs) are key actors in contemporary capitalism. They (co-) produce and disseminate new business practices, linking firms, sectors, and countries, integrating them into a global system. We examine a second, less studied function of these firms: underpinning capitalism’s status hierarchies. We ask whether these firms have emerged as producers of a new corporate nobility—as an extension of elite universities, and as a stepping stone in the selection and promotion of top executives. Focusing on the US, we ask: do global professional service firms merely amplify the credentials of elite universities, or can they compensate for an absence of an elite education in the careers of US top managers? and do professional service firms equip future top managers with specific expertise or merely with symbolic capital? Based on a sample of 2,610 top executive managers from leading American firms in 2005 and 2018, we study the role law, consulting, or audit firms played in their careers. Using multinomial regression analyses, we find that the career function of GPSFs varies: consulting firms amplify existing status and enhance the symbolic capital of alumni, aiding their ascent to the most prestigious jobs in US top firms. In contrast, top managers leverage audit firm roles to compensate for a non-elite background, yet then tend to be channelled into narrow, specialist roles in top management. We relate these results to Bourdieu’s state nobility analysis and propose an augmented typology of these firms at the heart of contemporary capitalism.

METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF TEACHING PHILOSOPHY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE FORMATION OF NEW THINKING

The ideological function of philosophy is to determine the value orientations, the life orientation of each person, his understanding of the essence of phenomena and the formation of a sense of belonging to events in society. The onto-epistemological and anthropological orientation of philosophy contributes to the formation of the methodological culture of the future specialist. Therefore, philosophy as one of the compulsory subjects of study is included in the curriculum of higher education, because the main function of philosophy is aimed at the formation of a worldview position and critical thinking in every citizen. Therefore, the main goal of teaching philosophy is aimed at the development of an elite culture through an elite education. In understanding the objective reality, philosophical knowledge is based on the ratio of rational and irrational and forms critical thinking.

George Mackenzie of Cromarty's Synopsis Apocalyptica (1708): A New Analysis

This article offers the first detailed analysis of George Mackenzie of Cromarty's most explicitly theological work, the 1708 Synopsis Apocalyptica. It includes critical engagement with the text, consideration of its polemical aims and targets, and comparison to its major influences. It contends that the Synopsis is crucial to understanding Mackenzie's ideas and motivations, revealing for the first time, the religious, eschatological connections between Mackenzie's unionism, monarchism and opposition to deism, atheism and Judaism. The Synopsis betrays more than previously unnoticed Judeophobia on Mackenzie's part; it illustrates that a distinct form of anti-Jewish bigotry which cast Jews as dangerous, cruel oppressors of Christians was present in the British Isles throughout the long seventeenth century. The article therefore cautions against the assumption that the dawn of the eighteenth century was necessarily characterised by increased religious toleration amongst educated elites.