Structuring access to higher education: The role of differentiation and privatization

Building on cross-national stratification research that examines how institutional arrangements affect stratification processes, I explore how two characteristics of higher education systems, differentiation and privatization, shape access to postsecondary opportunities. Using hierarchical linear models and relying on variation in educational systems across states in the U.S., I demonstrate that differentiation and privatization structure access to higher education, albeit at times in previously unanticipated ways. Differentiation, which denotes the presence of community colleges, has a democratizing effect: it increases overall enrollment in postsecondary institutions as well as decreases the gap in enrollment between students from different social strata. Moreover, contrary to the diversion hypothesis, differentiation does not disproportionately divert students from less privileged family backgrounds from 4-year institutions. Differentiation does, nevertheless, divert another group of students: those with lower test scores. The results also indicate that privatization has little effect on overall access to higher education, although it influences migration of students, facilitating out-of-state enrollment.