Higher Education, Social Mobility and Inequality

Since World War II, there have been significant changes in the structure of the higher education system in developed countries, with some countries developing a two-tiered education system, standard and elitist. Elitist educational institutions differ from the standard institutions in two main characteristics: they have a high budget and tight admission requirements. In this study, my goal is to construct and develop indices of the elitism of the higher education system, based on the above characteristics (budget and admission requirements). Once constructed, the indices will be calculated for several countries, and the connection between them and measures of social mobility and inequality will be examined.