ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the major theoretical touchstones of Anglo-American sociological debates on the drivers of educational expansion: structural-functionalism, Marxism, status-competition, world culture, Archer’s morphogenetic approach, Green’s state-theory approach, and Dore’s theory of credential inflation. It seeks to provide a roadmap for thinking theoretically through the empirical chapters that follow, as well raise the question of to what extent accounts developed based on European and American history can accurately capture the processes at work in East Asia. It concludes by raising one possibility for original theoretical elaboration: Koto Yusuke’s theory of externally driven modernity derived from the distinct East Asian experience.
