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European Sociological Review Advance Access published online on June 11, 2009
European Sociological Review, doi:10.1093/esr/jcp029
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Educational Expansion and Its Consequences for Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Access to Higher Education in West Germany

David Reimer and Reinhard Pollak

Correspondence: David Reimer (to whom correspondence should be addressed), Danish School of Education, Århus University, Tuborgvej 164, 2400 København NV, Denmark. Email: dare{at}dpu.dk

Correspondence: Reinhard Pollak, Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin, Germany. Email: pollak{at}wzb.eu

For scholars of social stratification one of the key questions regarding educational expansion is whether it diminishes or magnifies existing inequalities in educational attainment. The effect of expansion on educational inequality in tertiary education is of particular importance, as tertiary education has become increasingly relevant for labour market prospects and life course opportunities. Our article studies the access to tertiary education of students with different social origins in light of educational expansion in Germany. First, we examine inequalities in access to four vertical alternatives of postsecondary education by means of multinomial regression with national data from four school-leaver surveys from 1983, 1990, 1994, and 1999. Second, for those students who enrol at a tertiary institution, effects of social origin on horizontal choices of fields of study are analysed. Results show that unequal opportunities to access postsecondary and tertiary institutions remain constant at a high level. Likewise, social background effects have not changed over time for the choice of field of study. Thus, students from different social backgrounds did not change their educational strategies irrespective of the ongoing expansion of secondary and tertiary education.

Manuscript received: May 1, 2008.


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