The Process of Educational Attainment

Abstract

This chapter examines the classic topic of social background and education within a comparative framework. Three overriding substantive concerns govern our analysis. The first is the issue of the equality of educational opportunities. The idea of ‘educational credentialism’ in Japan implies that opportunities for education are in general open to all members of the society, and that individuals are competing on an equal basis to achieve higher levels of education. Education therefore holds the key to social mobility to the extent that it affects the attainment of socioeconomic status. Traditional status attainment research in the United States also focused on the mobility function of education. Treiman and Terrell (1975, p. 577), for example, found that ‘in both countries [the United States and Great Britain] education is largely independent of social origins and thus serves mainly as a channel of social mobility’.