Social mobility unlinked to education?

First up, a quick link back to this post, about research finding that the social sciences are facing some skills issues in the future. The report is now out, and can be found here.

Research from the Centre of Educational Sociology at Edinburgh University suggests that education policy alone contributes little to social mobility, and that wealth redistribution is much more effective.

The researchers, Dr Cristina Iannelli and Professor Lindsay Paterson, examined Scottish social survey data from 1910 onwards, and found that since the abolition of selective schools in Scotland in the 1970s, there has been no impact from educational reform on upward social mobility.

Dr. Iannelli said,

Upward mobility has been common for at least five decades, and the parents of people born since the 1960s have themselves benefited from it to such an extent that there is less room for their children to move further up.

This leads to questions about the introduction of variable tuition fees in Scotland. Dr. Iannelli is concerned about the consequences if the most popular universities bring in higher fees.

The best labour market rewards might then go to graduates from the highest status universities populated by the most middle-class students. In such circumstances, social inequality would at best remain unchanged, and could start to worsen for the first time in at least half a century

Not a good scenario at all, and obviously relevant to the rest of the UK.

Technorati tags: top-up fees,politics,higher education,Scotland