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COMPARATIVE EDUCATION- Week 13
Introduction
There is a long literature in the area of sociology of education. Why does education matter?
• Most common profession: educator.
• Expansion of the Education System.
• Major Theoretical Approaches
• Major Cross-national Inequalities
• Institutional Characteristics of Educational Systems
• Social Class Inequalities
• Gender Inequalities.
• It absorbs about ¼ of our lives. PhD, etc.
• It structures as largest occupation.
• It affects life chances: it shapes occupation, class position, political engagement,
employment.
• It contributes to the formation of national identities (and to the emergence of post-
national European identity).
• It contributes to the formation of the moral order in societies. Critical for cultural stability
and social order. Transfers certain ideas, promote equality of opportunities.
Education fulfils two core functions in every modern society that cointegrates:
1. The homogenization of knowledge (ensures the acquirement of minimum standards
and skills, techniques, dispositions, values… from one generation to another to function in society).
2. The differentiation of students (separate them by interest and capacity: grant more
privileges based on their achievements, this legitimates (economic) for society ). It classifies people and sorts them into different levels of status., having long influence on the society.
All education systems transmit knowledge and produce social differentiation.
In order to assess how education matters for the maintenance of society, sociologists look for two educational outcomes:
1. Educational Achievement (total knowledge, competences, skills acquired). Mueller´s
primary education. Absolute net knowledge of skills that people extract from their exposure to education.
2. Educational attainment (Educational qualifications and highest level of education
completed). Mueller´s secondary education.
They are imperfectly correlated since attainment usually leads to achievement, but there are people who have had large attainment, but do not have that large knowledge. They tend to differ.
The expansion of the education system
• The rise of education levels is a relatively recent revolution
• In the past, education was limited to elites
• Literacy was a monopoly of religious organizations
• Families socialized children and education on-job training
• Establishing a universal education required centralization and a rationalized system
• Could only be achieved through state action and when made compulsory.
• 19th century: Compulsory primary education. Compulsory education is an outcome of
state centralisation, use of violence, and imposition of the State over the whole country. They have to have the resources to make the education mandatory and this could only it with the centralisation of the state. Only through state action. Home schooling prohibited.
• 20th century: Vocational and secondary education expanded
• Post-WWII: Tertiary education expanded.
• Compulsory, primary education for a given age group was only first steps
• Massive expansion of all education levels
• Average education years have increased all across the globe.
• Between 1950 and 2010 It has increased in all 146 countries considered by Barro-
Lee
• Completion rates have increased across all educational levels
• Dramatic decline in proportions of citizens with low education
People who have finished education has been stabilised or increase in education. Tjhere has been a consensus in the allocation of massive collective resources allocation.
In the post war period, the federal state in the federal republic of Germany started to realise the importance of education, so they incentivised to reduce the course, increase the number of positions, increase the opportunities of Germans with in the 1960 and 70 which gave them adv over previous cohorts.
Context favourable for them to stay longer in education than the previous generation. Not an age cohort: mostly a cohort effect.
Cohort: being young in a particular period and context.
THEORIES OF EDUCATION EXPANSION
HUMAN CAPITAL THEORY (Gary Becker: gender specialisation theory, against feminist theories) :
Education enhances productivity and consequently income. Education is a form of investment. Decision made in comparison to other yields & forgone income and leisure.
-> Macro-level implications: ↑ av. educ levels -> international competitiveness -> ↑ econ growth.
This theory claims that personal commitment towards education is an investment in yourself. Education has a high value in the labour market as it enhances productivity and therefore, normally, income. There is an economic reward for this investment, even taking into account the loss of income. Countries that invest more in education are going to be more productive, more internationally competitive and therefore have a higher economic growth.
Developed in the 1960s.
Formal education is a form of personal investment : if people are invested to formal education is because it is personally and economically worthwhile. On average, education confers young citizens to acquire scarce skills and knowledge that increases their productivity so they are highly valued in the labour market. It provides the enterprise with benefits. The most important thing is that education is a personal investment because the costs of undergoing the expansion of education are normally lower than the advantages that these skills tend to provide. The opportunity costs of studying are not large enough nowadays.
On average, people with higher education tend to higher level of income than to people with secondary education. This does not mean that everyone that go through higher education have higher income.
SIGNALLING THEORY (Soresen)
Education is not advantageous because it produces better skills for the labour market but because it shows a great disposition of the individuals to overcome challenges, proves personal attitudes such as endurance, dedication, determination, self-control… and this is what is rewarded.
Education indicates a signal of unaccountable and unobservable dispositions, attitudes, and
capacities. Education is a proxy for ‘unobservables’. It signals determination, learning capacity,
diligence.
Education increases as individuals try to provide a hard material demonstration of personal virtues. Indication of their abilities and personality
MODERNISATION THEORY (Weber 1920; Treiman 1970)
Bureaucratization increases demand of formal degrees. Rationalization increases the demand of high qualification. Education is seen as a way of differentiating yourself from the rest.
Bureaucratisation is a core feature of modern societies, so skills of it will be needed. Degrees are in this sense hard indicators of expertise that allows the comparison of candidates.
Rationalisation: Increasing adjustments from means to goals. Survival in a field is very difficult. In law, now more difficult, the same with economy, etc., because the theories and ideas expand.
Job-competition model (Collins): Credentialism. Not in the exam.
Strategic-differentiation process to perpetuate status position
Education ensures ‘social closure’ (e.g. public administration)
Institutionalism (Meyer). Not in the exam.
Attaining high levels of formal education is a taken-for-granted social norm in global culture. It’s independent from productivity. If people invest in education, is simply because it is a taken-for- granted social norm: having a high level of education in modern society means a higher status.
If there is expansion is an outcome of race rides. Race of upper-class individuals that compete with middle and lower classes, so they can maintain inequalities. More competitive, so that changes the demand of enterprises which overqualified for middle
Social closure: strategy of reducing competition. Mechanisms of entering to post jobs. It is not about knowledge, tools or skills someone has, but about degrees, because they account for your knowledge. That closes certain jobs. People with masters reduce competition to other that do not have them. E.g. PhD university, master high school teachers.
Convergence in educational attainment of people living in developing countries. The bigger the spread, the lower the consensus: standard deviation.
Evidence that politicians they have to invest in formal education because that increases the chances of synthesis of texts, etc. educational achievement.
Institutional Characteristics of Educational Systems
Institutional setup (provider and regulation) shapes education investments and outcomes (Müller and Kogan). Contemporary educational systems emerge from power struggles and cultural preferences, not mainly rational planning.
Childcare and pre-school:
• Clear expansion in recent decades. Result of awareness of early schooling is positive
for educational attainment because it fosters community ability, immunisations and abilities not to get illnesses, because they are in contact with a lot of virus, they learn how to interact with other people.
• There is a growing consensus that early schooling fosters cognition, health,
socialization, communication skills.
• It contributes to reducing later educational inequalities.
• Average 0-2 34%, enrolment levels highest in Scandinavia, France and Southern
Europe.
• Depends mainly on the supply of public provision.
Primary education:
• Substantial uniformity in enrolment rates and the curricula. Practically all children at
6-12 age are enrolled.
• Focus on native language, reading and writing, numeracy and nature.
• Differentiation starts in regard to tracking. ( Tracking : separation of pupils by ability or
subject). Organisational rules that tell how institutions operate.
Secondary education:
• Oriented to prepare students for (a) higher education or (b) the labour market.
• It usually lasts 9 years. It took long time to expand it.
• Tracking occurs at 10-12, 13-14 or 16. Consequences: the age of tracking indicates
what is the ability for individuals to drop out. The later the tracking, they have more possibility of acquiring certain ideas. Babies lower economic status have lower skills. Later tracking, lower economic background impact.
• Differentiation affects (a) incentives to attend university, (b) size of vocational training
programs.
• German-speaking and neighbour countries are the earliest in tracking. Latest in
Scandinavia, E-E and Southern Europe.
Pros: adapted to pupils’ ability, reduce dropping-out;
cons: stigmatization, less cohesion.
• Vocational Training tracks less demanding and oriented towards practical occupational
skills. Dominant programs throughout Europe.
If the tracking is done before, since the high class has more dispositions and knowledge acquired by their parents (because they have given them more intellectual stimulation than parents form low classes), the high class students will not have enough time to share this knowledge because they will be separated from the low class, so the socioeconomic inequality by classes will persist: low classes will have more probability of continuing to be in low class, and so will high class. However, if the track is done after, then there will be enough time to be a feedback in class of this knowledge and so the inequalities will be seen reduced. When you are in low class, you have a shortfall in these dispositions.
Class inequalities
Educational attainment and achievement are distributed unequally in all affluent democracies. This is important because it challenges the official principle of ‘equality of opportunity’. Equality of opportunity: principle by which everyone has the same chance to reach a highly sought goal.
There are two types of disparities (Boudon 1970). Influence of background:
• Primary (within-stage performance). Inequality within education levels across people
with different backgrounds. People with better background are more likely to get higher grades.
• Secondary (between-stages transitions). How do well students do in education is
related to their personal background (parents´ job). People with good background are more likely to get the transition to higher stages: 2nd^ to 3 rd. from 3 rd^ to master, to PhD.
The magnitude of the effect is very big. Two times more likely to go to university if your paretns went to university: 51.3 vs 29.
Social background influences education achievement and attainment.
There is strong evidence that parental background affects both primary and secondary disparities.
“ Educational attainment is strongly enhanced by growing up in a family with parents who were highly educated ” (Müller and Kogan).
“ Children whose father has a higher educational degree have much better odds of going to college in the countries under study than to other children ” (Mau and Verwiede).
Causes of upper-middle class educational advantage:
• Different opportunity cost of schooling. The income contribution of a young graduate is
higher than that of a young graduate of a very wealthy family. The proportional income that a young person in a rich family is gains when finishing the degree is very small
compared tp one of a low-income family. So, the opportunity cost is higher for low income families: the money that is being lost is higher because they represent another type of proportion..
• Better material conditions for learning at home.
• Higher intellectual stimulation at home: ‘Scholastic dispositions’ instilled in offspring
(curiosity, creativity, valorisation of cultural/scientific landmarks). Parents are suing the vocabulary of their jobs, translated to the babies as soon at they are born. They are talked about politics, law, etc. Scholastic dispositions’ instilled in offspring. Obligated to get good grades, etc. because parents know how the educational system works.
• Expected profitability of degree varies by class (due to variations in social capital)
• ‘Fitness’ of social values with those of instructors. Lower feed in low classes. Educators
do not see themselves reflected in their students. more attitudes with high and middle classes is going to increase the empathy by the teachers who re going to increase their grades.
• Parental decisions.
Hungary: class matters more
Still not well documented why are inequalities larger in some countries than others:
Factors that increase the role of SES (Müller and Kogan 2010: 255):
• Average age of entry into formal educ system. the before the entry, the weaker is going
to be the influence of the economic background. If the entry is after, they lose the development they would have gained in school those 5-6 years they were at home.
• Early tracking (Marks 2005). The more years in the track, more opportunities to
interiorise the knowledge that instructors tend to translate to them. They will converge to those attitudes of middle-class and high-class. If the rack is before, not enough time to benefit from outputs from teachers.
• Extension of private sector education – org autonomy, incentive for public schools. The
bigger the private sector, the lower the class differences. Because these are going to act autonomously and will have more flexibility to act as they want, and will adapt better to their cliets, the students.
Contrary to Mau and Verwiebe’s claim, gender inequalities are not a relic of the past.
Gender inequalities in educational attainment have declined faster than class inequalities in attainment. Why?
Class divide: persistent resources ≠ across families
Gender disparities in educational attainment decline due to:
• Legal forms. They can leave their partners and start their household with their dalaries,
with incentives to invest in their education.
• Technological advances (e.g. contraception).
• Change in gender roles: ↓ women’s commitment to housewifery
• Increase in marriage instability
Still, sex-segreggated roles remain highly persistent
Gender disparities:
• Women’s commitment to housewifery
• Higher labour force participation
• Increase in marriage instability
• Risk of partnership break-up
Still, sex-segreggated roles remain highly persistent.
*Men overrepresented in engineering and science: these jobs have higher salaries, more secured and better opportunities of promotion. This is a critical the reduction of occupational segregation. If women doo not have science jobs, they wont obtain the same salaries that these jobs offer.
How can we account for the fact that the gender effect have declined mor than class effect Is still persisten? The gender is based on culture, which can be changed, but the class inequalities, based on the conomy, cannot be changed, because they are inherent in capitalism, and to eliminate class inequality, capitalism has to be eliminated. Gender can be treated equally
tiher in capitalism or communism because it depends on the culture, not the economic order. Page 17 reading.
More income, more stimulated environment, more likely to go to university. Social class influences the educational attainment because it is inherent in capitalism. You cannot eliminate class inequality with capitalism. The fact is that these roles of classes, is inherent to the economic system in which we are living, capitalism: difference between families.
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