Educational Institutions and Their Influence on Educational Opportunity.
A Typology and Empirical Test
1. Introduction
Educational systems are one of the main mechanisms through which social inequality is
generated and reproduced. Numerous studies from across the globe and over time
demonstrate that differing educational systems produce different levels of student
enrolment and achievement (e.g. Shavit and Blossfeld 1993, Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development 2001; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development and UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2002; Baker and LeTendre 2005). This
paper makes the point that it is important that attention be paid to the contexts in which
these outcomes were produced, since the institutional arrangements of educational systems
are highly relevant for social stratification processes in societies (cf. Meyer 1977;
Allmendinger 1989; Kerckhoff 1995; Mare 2001 ).
Since nations have long-standing traditions in their respective educational institutions that
remain relevant even in times of globalization (Mayer 2001) and cannot easily be compared
with each other, it is difficult to establish the strength of or even quantify the educational
system’s influence on a society’s social stratification. German unification and the new
introduction of different school systems instead of a formerly uniform school regime offers
a unique opportunity to study the results of differing school institutions on educational
opportunities within a society, practically like a lab situation.
In this paper, I show that educational institutions have an enormous influence on
educational opportunity and thus for social stratification in a society as a whole (cf. Turner
1960). In order to show this, I introduce a typology to categorize educational systems. I
then demonstrate the relevance of this typology by examining the participation of 16-19
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