Educational Inequality and the Expansion of UK Higher Education

(2004) - Jo Blanden, Stephen Machin

Journal: Scottish Journal of Political Economy
Link:: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0036-9292.2004.00304.x
DOI:: 10.1111/j.0036-9292.2004.00304.x
Links::
Tags:: #paper #Attainment #SocialClass #Education #Inequality #UK #SocialHistory
Cite Key:: [@blandenEducationalInequalityExpansion2004]

Abstract

In this paper we explore changes over time in higher education (HE) participation and attainment between people from richer and poorer family backgrounds during a time period when the UK higher education system expanded at a rapid rate. We use longitudinal data from three time periods to study temporal shifts in HE participation and attainment across parental income groups for children going to university in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The key finding is a highly policy relevant one, namely that HE expansion has not been equally distributed across people from richer and poorer backgrounds. Rather, it has disproportionately benefited children from relatively rich families. Despite the fact that many more children from higher income backgrounds participated in HE before the recent expansion of the system, the expansion acted to widen participation gaps between rich and poor children. This finding is robust to different measures of education participation and inequality. It also emerges from nonparametric estimations and from a more detailed econometric model allowing for the sequential nature of education choices with potentially different income associations at different stages of the education sequence.

Notes

“We use longitudinal data from three time periods to study temporal shifts in HE participation and attainment across parental income groups for children going to university in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s” (Blanden and Machin, 2004)

“HE expansion has not been equally distributed across people from richer and poorer backgrounds. Rather, it has disproportionately benefited children from relatively rich families.” (Blanden and Machin, 2004)

“The UK Higher Education (HE) System has expanded massively in recent decades, with student numbers rising from 400,000 in the 1960s to 2,000,000 at the turn of the new century (Greenaway and Haynes, 2003)” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 1)

“We first outline results demonstrating that family income displays a closer association with degree attainment in more recent time periods.” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 2)

“The factors that lie behind the growth of higher education participation in the UK are complex. A discussion is given in Kogan and Hanney (2000, Chapter 3). In part, the rise in participation was demand-led as students responded to the changes in the economy and the shift towards service industry jobs. Widening wage differentials between graduates and non-graduates, especially in the 1980s (Machin 1996, 1999, 2003) likely played a role here and it seems likely that HE participation may have been linked to perceived changes in economic incentives, at least amongst some groups” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 4)

“Glennerster (2001) reports Social Trends data on higher education participation and parental social class for the UK in the 1990s, showing a sharp relative increase in participation by those from higher social classes” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 7)

“In a related, and very sizable, sociology literature on cross-generation correlations between individual and parent outcomes (e.g. Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1992) it is very common to consider links between social class and education (or to consider the persistence of social class across generations). We believe it more important to concentrate on income as this makes the metric much clearer, particularly as over decades the composition of social class groupings has significantly changed with coincident shifts in occupational structure.” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 7) What? This is something important I need to address in my thesis, WHY choose class over income?

“n 1978 all the cohort members” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 8)

“9 previous educational institutions were contacted to provide information about their exam results. This gives us very good information about A level (or Higher grade for Scotland) achievement. The NCDS cohort is also surveyed at age 23 from which we are able to discover their history of post-school full-time education and whether they have obtained a degree or not.” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 9)

“In contrast to the NCDS, the BCS had a rather unsatisfactory postal survey at age 26 and then was fully surveyed at age 30. It is from the age 30 data that we take the education data. As well as asking individuals about their current education level and labour market status this survey also obtains a full labour market history since age 16 and records the dates that all qualifications were obtained. This enables us to learn about age left school, A levels obtained and degree achievement by age 23.” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 9) Important

“However to observe individuals from age 16 to 23, they must be present for 8 years of the panel, which, given the number of waves of data currently available, limits us to looking at only four waves worth of 16 year-olds.” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 10)

“This means that the strengthening of education-income relations through time has important implications for intergenerational inequality. Solon (2003) demonstrates that an increased relationship between parental income and education will lead to an increase in intergenerational immobility” (Blanden and Machin, 2004, p. 21)