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European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on July 16, 2008
European Sociological Review 2009 25(2):233-250; doi:10.1093/esr/jcn039
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Why are Working-class Children Diverted from Universities?—An Empirical Assessment of the Diversion Thesis

Rolf Becker and Anna E. Hecken

Rolf Becker (to whom correspondence should be addressed), Department of Education and Culture, General Secretary, CH-8510 Frauenfeld, Switzerland.
Anna E. Hecken, Department of Education and Culture, General Secretary, CH-8510 Frauenfeld, Switzerland. Email: anna.hecken{at}tg.ch

Correspondence: Email: rolf.becker{at}edu.unibe.ch

In spite of educational expansion, the decline of inequality of educational opportunity in schools and the institutional reforms in vocational training and university education, access to university education still remains remarkably unequal across social classes. According to the ‘diversion thesis’ suggested by Müller and Pollak, which was extended by Hillmert and Jacob, working-class children are distracted from the direct path to university by non-academic educational institutions which affect individuals’ educational choices and provide attractive of education and training alternatives in non-academic areas. To investigate why such a diversion occurs, the mechanisms of socially selective educational choices have to be analyzed from the perspective of rational action theory. In order to test this theoretical approach, data of school leavers that have attained the ‘Abitur’ (high school degree) were collected in East Germany's federal state of Saxony. The main mechanisms responsible for the fact that working-class children are very likely to favour vocational training over education at university are the subjective evaluation of prior educational performance, the probability of success at university, and the subjectively expected costs. In particular, working-class children's educational choices are most influenced by negative estimates of prospective success in university education, which causes them to refrain from university education.

Manuscript received: November 1, 2007.


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D. Reimer and R. Pollak
Educational Expansion and Its Consequences for Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Access to Higher Education in West Germany
Eur. Sociol. Rev., June 11, 2009; (2009) jcp029v1.
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