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ERIC Number: EJ1356919
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Dec
Pages: 30
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0952-8733
EISSN: EISSN-1740-3863
A Social Ladder or a Glass Floor? The Role of Higher Education in Intergenerational Social Mobility: Empirical Evidence from South Korea
Lee, Sangwoo
Higher Education Policy, v35 n4 p969-998 Dec 2022
Though various measures of mobility rate for colleges, e.g. bottom-to-top mobility rate, status maintenance rate, and middle-class mobility rate, have been introduced, they have rarely been reviewed together to see the whole picture of intergenerational mobility, particularly in non-Western societies. This paper fills this gap and characterises mobility rates for 17 different college tiers in South Korea using the Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey for 37,552 graduates from 2007 to 2010. It documents two main results. First, mobility rates are higher for males than for females in all three measures, indicating colleges in South Korea are less effective as a social ladder for females. Second, many selective colleges are more likely to play a role as a glass floor than a social ladder due to their lower low-income access, and 'selective public' colleges are the engines of upward social mobility for students from the bottom three quintiles. Though people believe education is the single greatest hope to achieve upward social mobility, these findings cast doubt on the idea that college attendance alone can promote social mobility. This paper does not necessarily identify causal relationships that can be manipulated to improve mobility rates; however, it documents various patterns of interest to policymakers.
Palgrave Macmillan. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail:customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: http://www.palgrave.com/us/social-science/education
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: South Korea
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A