Stratification in Higher Education and Its Relationship with Social Inequality: A Comparative Study of 11 European Countries

The main goal is to explore institutional stratification within higher education in a comparative perspective, and its relationship with social inequality. In the first part, the theoretical framework is developed connecting theories on inequality in education and labour market, and adapting them to the higher education context. In the second part, data from the REFLEX survey on recent tertiary graduates in 11 European countries are used to assess whether social origin affects the type of tertiary education attained. Consistently with the hypotheses, parental education strongly affects the probability of graduation in a long programme, but not the transition to a PhD course. In most countries, parental education is positively related with graduation in a top institution and a prestigious field of study. The gross effect of parental education is reduced, but still significant, when controlling for previous school achievement. At the end, it is shown that vertical and horizontal gross inequalities are stronger in those countries with a higher proportion of tertiary graduates (a proxy for competition among graduates in the labour market) and where the institutional differentiation is more relevant for graduates' occupational outcomes.