# Education and Social Mobility

Sociology I · Contemporary Social Processes · https://tryals.app/learn/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility

## Expansion Without Equalisation

**Michael Young** coined **meritocracy** in *The Rise of the Meritocracy* (1958) as a satire. He warned that allocating status by ability creates a smug elite and a blamed underclass.

Does educational expansion equalise life chances? **Raymond Boudon** separated social origin into two distinct effects:

| Effect | Mechanism | Where it acts |
|---|---|---|
| **Primary** | Origin shapes academic attainment via early environment | Before the choice point |
| **Secondary** | Origin shapes the choice to stay on at equal grades | At the choice point |

Other theorists offer rival mechanisms:

* **Bourdieu and Passeron**: schools reward **cultural capital** acquired at home.
* **Basil Bernstein**: inequality works through socialised language codes.
* **Paul Willis**: working-class lads resist school culture, reproducing their class position.

## Comparative Patterns

Two models describe how inequality persists despite expansion:

* **Maximally maintained inequality** (Raftery and Hout): origin gaps persist until advantaged classes saturate that level.
* **Effectively maintained inequality** (Lucas): after saturation, advantage shifts to qualitative differences, such as elite institutions.

Shavit and Blossfeld found stable origin gaps across thirteen countries. Later research found real equalisation in several European nations.

Spain illustrates rapid change. Early school leaving among 18 to 24 year olds dropped from **31 per cent in 2008** to **14 per cent in 2023** (Eurostat). This was a major decline in the European Union, though still above the EU benchmark near 10.

> **Common pitfall:** confusing higher participation with equal opportunity. Expanding places reduces relative gaps only if origin effects at transitions fall.

## Practice questions

9 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Michael Young coined the word meritocracy in 1958 and objected for decades to the way politicians used it. Why did he regard a fully meritocratic society as a dystopia rather than an ideal?

A. Allocating rank by measured ability leaves the successful entitled and the rest with no defence
B. Standardised testing ignores working-class linguistic codes, causing artificial underperformance
C. Educational expansion saturates the labour market, driving credential inflation and lower wages
D. Inherited privilege ensured a more humane social order through the elite's duty of noblesse oblige

**Answer:** A. Allocating rank by measured ability leaves the successful entitled and the rest with no defence

**Why:** Young’s target was the legitimation, not the selection. An aristocracy knows its position is arbitrary and can be argued with; a meritocratic elite believes its position is earned, which removes the grounds for objection and strips the unsuccessful of any account of themselves except failure. That is the dystopia the book describes and the reading almost every political use of the word discards.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/michael-young-coined-the-word-meritocracy-in-1958-and-objected-for

### 2. Which claims about Boudon’s primary and secondary effects of social origin are correct?

A. The two require different policy responses, since one acts before the decision and one at it
B. Secondary effects disappear once attainment differences are removed
C. Primary effects operate through the attainment a pupil has achieved by the choice point
D. Secondary effects appear as different decisions taken by pupils with the same attainment

**Answer:** A. The two require different policy responses, since one acts before the decision and one at it; C. Primary effects operate through the attainment a pupil has achieved by the choice point; D. Secondary effects appear as different decisions taken by pupils with the same attainment

**Why:** The whole force of the distinction is that secondary effects are what remains once attainment is held constant. Equalising grades therefore addresses only the first, which is why systems that closed attainment gaps still found class differences in staying on, the choice itself carries the origin effect.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/which-claims-about-boudons-primary-and-secondary-effects-of-social

### 3. Arrange the steps by which expansion of a level of education can leave relative chances unchanged.

**Answer:**

1. Places at a level of education are expanded substantially
2. Advantaged families take up the new places first and most fully
3. Participation rises across all origins but the gap in rates persists
4. The advantaged group approaches saturation and its take-up cannot rise further
5. Advantage shifts to the quality and selectivity of the qualification obtained

**Why:** Read as a sequence, the two generalisations become one story with two acts. Expansion is absorbed unequally until saturation forces a change of tactic, and the advantage then reappears one level up in the hierarchy of institutions and fields. Nothing in the sequence requires anybody to intend the outcome.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/arrange-the-steps-by-which-expansion-of-a-level-of-education-can

### 4. Educational expansion increases absolute participation across all social classes, yet relative class advantages often persist. What accounts for this apparent paradox under Lucas's model of effectively maintained inequality?

A. Disadvantaged students drop out earlier due to primary origin effects
B. Advantaged classes saturate every level of schooling simultaneously
C. Advantaged classes shift focus to qualitative institutional divides
D. Educational systems lower standards to accommodate broader cohorts

**Answer:** C. Advantaged classes shift focus to qualitative institutional divides

**Why:** Lucas showed that once upper classes saturate a tier of education, inequality pivots from quantity to prestige and track differentiation. Persisting gaps reflect stratified pathways, not absolute exclusion or universal primary effects.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/educational-expansion-increases-absolute-participation-across-all

### 5. In which year did Michael Young publish The Rise of the Meritocracy, the satire that coined the word?

**Answer:** 1958

**Why:** **1958.** The date matters for reading it: Young was writing during the debate over selective secondary schooling in Britain, and the eleven-plus examination is the machinery his imagined society perfects. The satire was aimed at a policy in progress, not at a distant possibility.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/in-which-year-did-michael-young-publish-the-rise-of-the-meritocracy

### 6. Sort each intervention by whether it addresses primary or secondary effects of social origin.

**Answer:**

- Addresses primary effects: Free early years provision to reduce attainment gaps before school, Additional tuition targeted at pupils falling behind in literacy, Nutrition and health programmes in the earliest school years
- Addresses secondary effects: Guidance and outreach aimed at pupils who qualify but do not apply, Automatic progression unless a pupil actively opts out

**Why:** The last item is the strongest instrument in the second column and the least used. Making continuation the default rather than an application reverses who has to act, and the evidence from several systems is that defaults move the pupils that information campaigns do not, because the secondary effect operates through risk and cost, which a leaflet does not change.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/sort-each-intervention-by-whether-it-addresses-primary-or-secondary

### 7. Shavit and Blossfeld’s conclusion that educational expansion left origin effects broadly intact has been qualified by later work finding real equalisation in several European countries.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False as written**, because the sentence is stated as though the qualification were absent. The original 1993 finding was persistence across thirteen countries; Breen and colleagues in 2009 found genuine equalisation in several European cases over the twentieth century. The defensible position is persistence with real exceptions, and the exceptions are not optional.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/shavit-and-blossfelds-conclusion-that-educational-expansion-left

### 8. A country doubles the share of its young people entering university and finds the odds ratio between class origins almost unchanged. How can both facts be true at once?

A. Secondary effects fell at transition points, but primary effects in prior academic attainment strengthened enough to offset this.
B. Odds ratios measure absolute attainment rather than relative advantage, so remain steady when enrolment expands uniformly.
C. Rates rose across all origins whilst relative gaps persisted, as expansion adds places without altering relative advantage.
D. Upper classes had already saturated entry, forcing newly created places to be allocated strictly on measured cognitive merit.

**Answer:** C. Rates rose across all origins whilst relative gaps persisted, as expansion adds places without altering relative advantage.

**Why:** This is the education version of the mobility myth. More places mean more people from every origin arrive, so absolute participation rises everywhere; the odds ratio moves only if the origin effect at that transition weakens. Where advantaged families take up the new places first, the ratio can hold almost exactly steady while the headline participation figure doubles.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/a-country-doubles-the-share-of-its-young-people-entering-university

### 9. Estimate Spain’s early school leaving rate in 2023, as a percentage of 18 to 24 year olds.

**Answer:** 14 (within ±3)

**Why:** **Around 14 per cent**, against roughly 31 in 2008 and an EU average under 10. The decline is real and partly cyclical: the collapse of construction employment after 2008 removed the jobs that had made leaving school early rational, which is a reminder that education statistics move with labour markets and not only with education policy.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/education-and-social-mobility/estimate-spains-early-school-leaving-rate-in-2023-as-a-percentage