Does the Expansion of Higher Education Increase the Equality of Educational Opportunities? Evidence from Italy

Abstract

Abstract. This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education (HE) in increasing the equality of tertiary education opportunities. We examine Italy's experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted HE institutions to offer a wider range of degrees and to open new sites in neighbouring provinces. Our analysis focuses on non-mature full-time students and suggests that HE expansion might have had only limited effects in terms of reducing existing individual . He wishes to thank both institutions for providing him with excellent research facilities. The visit to ECASS was financially supported by the Access to Research Infrastructure action under the European Community's 'Improving Human Potential Programme', which is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Giuliana Matteocci and Alessio Ancaiani from the Ministry for Education for providing us with data on the evolution of the Italian university system and for valuable assistance with its use. We are also grateful to an anonymous referee and to Luigi Cannari, Piero Casadio, Massimo Omiccioli, Carmine Porello, Andrea Presbitero, Alfonso Rosolia, Paolo Sestito, and conference and seminar participants at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of Essex, Colchester), the European University Institute (Florence), the University of Milan (Milan), the Marche Polytechnic University (Ancona), the Bank of Italy (Rome), the joint seminar ISFOL-University 'La Sapienza' (Rome), IZA (Bonn), the inequality in HE achievement as it had a significantly positive impact only on the probability of university enrolment but not on that of obtaining a university degree.

The effect of family background, university quality and educational mismatch on wage: an analysis using a young cohort of Italian graduates

“…4. Among others, see Bratti, Checchi, and de Blasio (2008) and Naticchioni, Ricci, and Rustichelli (2010). These works relate wage inequality to skill-bias changes finding mixed results.…”

Equality of opportunities in Spanish higher education

“…They find that the lower pupil-teacher ratio is positively correlated with higher educational attainment, but that the overall improvement of parental education has had an even stronger impact on attainment. Beside that, Bratti et al (2008) find that the rapid expansion of higher education supply in the 1990s may have only produced a limited increase in equality of opportunity in terms of completion of tertiary education and partly explain why tertiary educational attainment in Italy is still strongly related to parents' education. Finally, Antoninis and Tsakloglou (2001), Psacharopoulos and Tassoulas (2004), Psacharopoulos and Papakonstantinou (2005) study the impact of socioeconomic background on educational attainment, focusing on the Greek case.…”

Can distance education increase educational equality? Evidence from the expansion of Chinese higher education

“…The first group, which includes most studies, looks at individuals from different backgrounds (including family income, occupation and education of their parents) and the changes in their educational opportunities with the expansion of higher education (for example, Blossfeld and Shavit 1993;Kane 1994;Blanden and Machin 2004;Yogev 2007;Bratti, Checchi and De Blasio 2008;Lopez 2009;Reimer and Pollak 2010;Haim and Shavit 2012). The second group analyzes changes at a regional level (Burt and Park 2009;Oppedisano 2011).…”