Growing Gaps

Abstract

As inequality grows rapidly both in post-industrial societies and in the high-growth economies of the developing world, its centrality and ubiquity among problems of interest to social scientists is becoming only more apparent. And among all of inequality's causes and manifestations, access to education is key to understanding and combating it, both for improving a person's individual life chances and for increasing countries' national wealth. This book examines closely the relationship between inequality and education. Indeed as many countries grow economically, it is unclear whether this growth leads directly to increased opportunity or more ferocious competition and thus more severe inequality. In many growing economies there has been a staggering growth of private higher education as demand for opportunity has outpaced supply, and families who must fund this human capital accumulation are only burdened with more and more debt. Outlining the world-wide race for educational advantage, this book takes a comparative approach, describing not only various nations' systems of education, but weaving them together in a larger network of stratification. Covering almost every continent, this book provides an overarching examination of who is actually able to benefit from economic growth and who, because of the educational demands it brings about, it shuts out.