Social Class Inequalities and Access to Higher Education in Argentina and Brazil during an Expansion Stage of the Educational System

Abstract

The gross enrolment rate in higher education has grown strongly in Latin America since the 1990s. To what extent was this expansion accompanied by greater democratization in educational opportunities? This article examines the changes in the educational opportunities of access to higher education regarding to young people's social class origin in Argentina and Brazil between the mid-1990s and the present. The hypothesis is that the expansion of the higher education system would not have been enough to reduce the influence of class origin on the educational level achieved. Data come from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) of Argentina and the Household National Survey (PNAD) of Brazil. Sequential logit multivariate models were implemented for different years, both considering all young people (unconditional models) and only those who completed high school (conditional models). The article shows that class origin preserves a strong effect on the probability of accessing higher education in both countries and that, conditional models are applied, the democratization of access has been neither sustained nor strong.