Abstract
Conventional political wisdom has it that educational expansion helps to reduce socioeconomic inequalities of access to education by increasing equality of educational opportunity. The counterarguments of Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) and Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI), in contrast, contend that educational inequalities tend to persist despite expansion because those from more advantaged social class backgrounds are better placed to take up the new educational opportunities that expansion affords (MMI) and to secure for themselves qualitatively better kinds of education at any given level (EMI). This paper sets out to test the predictions of the MMI and EMI hypotheses against empirical data for the case of Britain where higher education expanded dramatically during the 1960s and again during the early 1990s. The results show that quantitative inequalities between social classes in the odds of higher education enrolment proved remarkably persistent for much of the period between 1960 and 1995, and began to decline only during the early 1990s, after the enrolment rate for the most advantaged social class had reached saturation point. Throughout this same 35 year period, qualitative inequalities between social classes in the odds of enrolment on more traditional and higher status degree programmes and at ‘Old’ universities remained fundamentally unchanged. In short, social class inequalities in British higher education have been both maximally and effectively maintained.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
By a similar logic, the discontinuous nature of expansion means that it would not be preferable to use a direct measure of expansion (i.e. the enrolment rate) in place of a continuous measure of (hypothetical) enrolment year. This is because any estimate of the association between the enrolment rate and inequality would inevitably confound the association between these two variables during periods of expansion with their association during periods of non-expansion. These different elements of the association could be separated by interacting the enrolment rate with a dummy variable distinguishing expansion years from non-expansion ones. However, because it would in fact be necessary to make this interaction a three-way one with socioeconomic origin, the results of such an approach would inevitably be more difficult to interpret.
Interaction effects were estimated in Stata in the conventional manner as marginal effects using the standard logit command, as well by calculating the cross-derivative using the inteff command developed in Ai and Norton (2003) and Norton et al. (2004). The results generated by the two methods were found to be consistent with one another, and both sets of results are reported in Table 2.
References
Ai, C., & Norton, E. C. (2003). Interaction terms in logit and probit models. Economic Letters, 80, 123–129.
Archer, L., Hutchings, M., & Ross, A. (2003). Higher education and social class: Issues of exclusion and inclusion. London: Routledge.
Arum, R., Gamoran, A., & Shavit, Y. (2007). More inclusion than diversion: Expansion, differentiation, and market structure in higher education. In Y. Shavit, R. Arum, A. Gamoran, & G. Menahem (Eds.), Stratification in higher education: A comparative study. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bell, D. (1973). The coming of post-industrial society. New York: Basic Books Inc.
Blanden, J., & Machin, S. (2004). Inequality in the expansion of higher education. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Special Issue on Education, 51, 230–249.
Callender, C. (1997). Full and part-time students in higher education: Their experiences and expectations. Report two of the national committee of inquiry into higher education. London: HMSO.
Cheung, S. Y., & Egerton, M. (2007). Great Britain: Higher education expansion and reform–changing educational inequalities. In Y. Shavit, R. Arum, A. Gamoran, & G. Menahem (Eds.), Stratification in higher education: A comparative study (pp. 195–219). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
DES. (1972). Education statistics for the United Kingdom 1970. London: HMSO.
DES. (1991). Education and training for the 21st century. London: HMSO.
DfEE. (1998). Higher education for the 21st century. London: HMSO.
DfES. (1991). Higher education: A new framework. London: HMSO.
DfES. (2003). The future of higher education. London: HMSO.
DIUS. (2009). Participation rates in higher education: Academic years 1999/2000–2007/2008 (Provisional). Statistical First Release 02/2009. London: National Statistics and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.
Erikson, R., & Goldthorpe, J. H. (1992). The constant flux: A study of class mobility in industrial societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Erikson, R., & Jonsson, J. O. (1996). Can education be equalized? The Swedish case in comparative perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Featherman, D. L., & Hauser, R. M. (1978). Opportunity and change. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Halsey, A. H. (2000). Further and higher education. In A. H. Halsey & J. Webb (Eds.), Twentieth century British social trends. London: Macmillan.
Halsey, A. H., Heath, A., & Ridge, J. M. (1980). Origins and destinations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
HESA. (1997). Students in higher education institutions 1995/96. Cheltenham: HESA.
Hout, M. (2006). Maximally maintained inequality and essentially [sic] maintained inequality: Crossnational comparisons. Sociological Theory and Methods, 21(2), 237–252.
Hout, M. (2007). Maximally maintained inequality revisited: Irish educational mobility in comparative perspective. In B. Hilliard & M. N. G. Phadraig (Eds.), Changing Ireland in international comparison. Dublin: The Liffey Press.
Iannelli, C. (2008). Expansion and social selection in education in England and Scotland. Oxford Review of Education, 34(2), 179–202.
Lucas, S. R. (2001). Effectively maintained inequality: Education transitions, track mobility, and social background effects. American Journal of Sociology, 106, 1642–1690.
Lucas, S. R. (2009). Stratification theory, socioeconomic background, and educational attainment: A formal analysis. Rationality and Society, 21(4), 459–511.
Lynn, P. (Ed.). (2006). Quality profile: British household panel survey. Version 2.0. Waves 1 to 13: 1991–2003. Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Essex.
NCIHE. (1963). Report of the national committee of inquiry into higher education. London: HMSO.
NCIHE. (1997). Higher education in the learning society (The ‘Dearing Report’). London: HMSO.
Norton, E. C., Wang, H., & Ai, C. (2004). Computing interaction effects and standard errors in logit and probit models. The Stata Journal, 4(2), 154–167.
OECD. (2008). Tertiary education for the knowledge society. Volume 1. Paris: OECD.
Parsons, T. (1970). Equality and inequality in modern society, or social stratification revisited. In E. O. Lauman (Ed.), Social stratification: Research and theory for the 1970s. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Raftery, A. E., & Hout, M. (1993). Maximally maintained inequality: Expansion, reform, and opportunity in Irish education, 1921–75. Sociology of Education, 66, 41–62.
Shavit, Y., Arum, R., Gamoran, A., & Menahem, G. (Eds.). (2007). Stratification in higher education: A comparative study. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Shavit, Y., & Blossfeld, H.-P. (1993). Persistent inequality: Changing educational attainment in thirteen countries. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Treiman, D. J. (1970). Industrialization and social stratification. In E. O. Lauman (Ed.), Social stratification: Research and theory for the 1970s. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
UGC. (1973). Statistics of education 1970, Volume 6, Universities. London: HMSO.
UUK. (2007). Higher education pay and prices index: The first 50 years. London: Universities UK.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the British Academy under their Postdoctoral Research Fellowship scheme and was undertaken at the Sociology Department and Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. For feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, the author is grateful to the members of the Differentiation in Higher Education and EDUC sub-groups of the EQUALSOC network; to the participants of the ISA RC28 conference in August 2009; to colleagues Anthony Heath, John Goldthorpe, Malcolm Parkes, Yossi Shavit, Maria Sobolewska, and Anna Zimdars; to the Editors of this special issue, Marita Jacob and David Reimer; and to an anonymous peer reviewer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boliver, V. Expansion, differentiation, and the persistence of social class inequalities in British higher education. High Educ 61, 229–242 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9374-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9374-y