ABSTRACT
Since the Second World War, a marked expansion and differentiation of secondary and tertiary education has taken place in modern societies. The purpose of this contribution is to describe the process of educational expansion across cohorts and over the life course in a cross-national comparative perspective and for West Germany in particular. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), this chapter first demonstrates that changes in the transition probabilities to the secondary and tertiary education levels vary tremendously across the 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Using the Republic of South Korea as an example, we then conclude that there is a relationship between the pace of educational expansion and the inequality of educational opportunity. Finally, using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we examine the association between social origin resources and the growing institutional differentiation at the tertiary level for West Germany. We find no social origin differences for the transition probability to attain a university of applied sciences degree. In turn, we show that there are substantial and persisting social origin differences at the transition to obtain a traditional university degree across cohorts. Thus, the university of applied sciences reduces inequality of educational opportunity at the tertiary level. However, it might also be interpreted as an institution diverting students from disadvantaged backgrounds to less prestigious tertiary attainments.
