engleski

The resilience of findings on social inequalities in access to higher education in Croatia

This paper provides a panoramic view of research findings on social inequalities in access to higher education in Croatia since the 1960s, guided by the question of what has changed in the findings. On the one hand, it seeks to disseminate the most recent findings on social inequalities in access to higher education in Croatia. On the other, it provides a comparison of recent findings with findings on HE access from Croatia’s socialist past. We were surprised to find that despite significant societal and educational changes over the observed five decades, general findings on social inequalities in access to higher education in Croatia from the 1960s till today are remarkably similar. The paper maps several possible explanations for why we might be observing diachronically resilient findings, including cultural deficit theory (e.g. Popović, 1968), Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977), theory of trajectory maintenance (Hanley and McKeever, 1997), relative risk aversion theory (Van de Werfhorst and Hofstede, 2007), maximally maintained inequality theory (Raferty and Hout, 1993) and effectively maintained inequality theory (Lucas, 2001). We argue that a Bourdieuean approach, with its focus on ‘field’ dynamics, illuminates the remarkable persistence of social inequalities in access to higher education in a way that the other perspectives, with their focus mainly on the individual, fail to grasp.

higher education access; social inequalities; students; Croatia; Bourdieu

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