From elite university to mass higher education - Educational expansion, equality of opportunity and returns to university education

The transition research framework combines two selection mechanisms, one non-discriminatory, based on equality criteria for transition from home to education, the other discriminatory, based on suitability criteria for transition from education to labour market. With the expansive, egalitarian Nordic higher education policy as its starting point, and drawing on Bourdieuan-Collinsian ideas and Finnish census data, the article examines changes in inequality of educational opportunity and labour market returns to university graduates over the course of three decades. Two elite university generations (born in 1946 and 1966) and one mass higher education age group (born in 1976) are compared by gender and family background. Differences in participation in university education, as measured by odds ratios, have narrowed in three generations by a sequence: 19.1-10.8-8.2, being still eightfold in favour of students from academic families. The differences in relative returns to university graduates (academic versus non-academic background) were minimal for those born in 1946 (1.01), whereas for the '1966 generation' they were threefold (3.17) in favour of graduates from academic homes. Our simulations predict high returns for the 1966 generation at the mature career stage.