Degrees of ‘eliteness’ in higher education systems : a comparison between Germany and France

Abstract

Education systems worldwide differ in their degree of eliteness. They range from being non-elitist with dominant patterns of horizontal differentiation (e.g., Germany) to being strongly elitist and having established elite education sectors (e.g., France). Quantitatively, it remains relatively unclear how the eliteness of education systems can be assessed and evaluated. We identify several theoretical mechanisms that are assumed to increase or decrease vertical differentiation between education institutions. For the analyses, we use two large secondary datasets of student beginners’ higher education choices in Germany and France and test different measures of inequality and concentration (Gini index, Duncan’s D, inverse Pareto coefficient, percentile ratios) to describe the degree of eliteness. We estimated the shares of students from higher status groups (high achievers, upper-tier service class academic milieu) in higher education institutions and fields of study and compared their distribution. Our findings indicate that analyses of percentiles, percentile ratios and inverse Pareto coefficient confirm an expected stronger concentration of high achieving students in the top of the distribution of higher education institutions and fields of study in France than in Germany. In comparison to students’ achievement, social origin proved to be less important for country-specific differences in concentration.