Differentiation in Higher Education and Social Inequality: Have the Mechanisms of Social Inequality Changed with the Expansion of Vocational Education?

Despite growing educational participation less privileged groups are still underrepresented at universities. Several studies indicate that patterns of social inequality have changed in the course of educational expansion. While these changes have been widely discussed from a theoretical point of view, empirical evidence for the described pattern of changing mechanisms is lacking. With respect to the transition to higher education this article focuses on the question whether increasing educational participation is associated with a diversion of less privileged groups into less prestigious colleges of applied sciences (Fachhochschulen). Results indicate that with the expansion of vocational pathways to higher education children of less privileged groups more often attain upper secondary education. These changes have consequences on subsequent educational opportunities in the transition to higher education. For this reason social differences in the decision to enter on academic studies at a university have increased in the past thirty years. However, the reason for these growing differences cannot be attributed to processes of diversion, distinction, or heterogenization of ability; rather, they can rather be found in biographical differences and an increasing cost-sensitivity on the part of women from less privileged groups.