Human capital theorists perceive of educational expansion as beneficial to individuals, corporations and national economies, while social closure theorists have claimed that inflation of credential requirements maintains traditional status inequalities. In this paper I argue that status inequalities are not only maintained by credential inflation,…

Using the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey, this article examines the roles of parental human capital and social capital in the pursuit of university education among immigrant youth in Canada. We find segmented patterns across the largest minority groups in Canada, with the Chinese and the south Asians, such as Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis,…