ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on the structural features of educational systems and how they may affect the process of social stratification. He uses a comparative perspective to point up the peculiar features of the American educational system and how those features may be related to stratification processes. The author turns to some structural features of the labor forces of industrial societies, again with an emphasis on how the American labor force structures differ from those in other industrial societies. He speculates a bit about ways in which these features of educational and labor force structures may be related to each other and how their varied associations across societies may help to produce variations in stratification processes and in the trajectories cohorts follow in different societies. Overall, there is a very loose coupling between American educational and labor force institutions, although it may be possible to identify linkages between the very general educational credentials and fairly gross occupational categories.
