Access to Higher Education and the Reproduction of Inequalities in Córdoba, Argentina

GUTIÉRREZ ALICIA; GIOVINE, MANUEL

Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia

Il Moulino

Lugar: Bologna; Año: 2017 vol. LVII p. 379 - 414

0486-0349

In the last few years it has been noted in the countries of Latin America an increase in the supply of and demand for higher education. Although this growth has not been given the same gradient in all states of the region, for some countries growth has been a great intensity. This phenomenon responds no only to an increase in demand for higher education, but also to a set of public policies that accompanied the process, with guidelines aimed at the democratization of higher education in some countries.Argentina was set up as one of the paradigms of inclusive higher education, through measures such as eliminating the entrance exams to university careers, or the allocation of funds for the creation of institutions of higher non-university level by the state at different levels. Site of the first public university and the first private university in the country and the reform of 1918, the city of Córdoba in Argentina, is a paradigmatic study case of the higher level: it has been historically characterized by the formation of professionals of the inside of Argentina and neighboring countries like Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, and recently also Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia and Costa Rica.This article analyzes the process of expanding access to higher level studies and their differential effects depending on the position they occupied by the families of Córdoba in the social space, in the period between 2003 and 2011. Showing a dimension of family social reproduction, light on the permanence of other factors also determine unequal access to higher education is cast: the income level, the cultural capital accumulated by the families of origin, the proximity of educational institutions, etc.Indeed, our results show that the measures taken by the State favored access to the upper level of certain sectors of the middle class, matching in this regard to upper-class families. However, this does not imply a reduction in educational inequality, to the extent that the dominated classes of social space (lower classes and sectors of the middle classes) still have minimal access to higher education system. At the same time, those sectors who starred growth in access, do not show a similar increase in the end of the level, resulting in a decrease in graduation. Finally, it is shown that the process of hight school "democratization" of the upper level has had an impact on the strategies of distinction of the upper classes, whose families choose to continue their studies post-graduate universities and colleges professional formation, in a greater proportion.All this creates an educational market that demands more years of schooling to maintain the position in the social space and is characterized more by complexifying mechanisms of inequality than to diminish educational inequality.