Education and social mobility

Abstract

The last 30 years have seen a steady quantitative development in Swiss education, first of vocational education and later of general education at upper secondary and higher level. At first glance, this seems to indicate that the call for ‘equal start’ opportunities has been increasingly answered. Against the backdrop of this apparent democratization of access to education, we highlight several problem areas.

First, we investigate to what extent educational qualifications continue to determine social standing, illustrating the links between level of education on the one hand, and material circumstances, professional-cum-hierarchical status as well as social, cultural and political participation on the other. In the second part, the question is raised to what extent the (in some cases highly selective) entry conditions to specific – and above all higher – avenues of education relativize equal start opportunities, thereby reproducing social inequality. Are there specific social groups which are privileged or underprivileged, and can these differences be explained in terms of the classic approaches of social and regional origin, nationality or gender? Finally we investigate, to what extent further training and adult education are strategies to compensate the selection mechanisms in initial education.