Trends in Educational Fluidity after the Fall of Socialism in the Czech Republic

The aim of this paper is to identify the trends in educational fluidity after the fall of socialism in 1989 in the Czech Republic. The data are based on 27 sample surveys carried out from 1990 to 2009, including information on the child’s and his father’s education. The trends in educational fluidity are analysed both in view of the years and with respect to the birth cohorts, i.e. on the grounds of two effects: unequal educational odds (according to the socio-economic origin) and the “differentiation” effect. Unequal educational odds are related to the expansion of the Czech education system while the differentiation effect is given by social homogeneity of educational groups. The findings show that despite expansion of educational opportunities the fluidity in education has not been increasing in Czech society. The period between 1990 and 2005 saw even a decline in educational odds depending on the respondents’ educational origin. Only from 2006, this tendency started to fall. In our view, the development of educational fluidity was caused primarily by socio-political transition of Czech society rather than by cohort replacement.

1. Blau, P. M., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure. New York, London, Sydney: John Wiley & Sons.

2. Breen, R. (Ed.). (2004). Social mobility in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossRef

3. Breen, R., & Jonsson, J. O. (2000). Analyzing educational careers: A multinominal transition model. American Sociological Review, 65(5), 754−772. CrossRef

4. Breen, R., & Jonsson, J. O. (2005). Inequality of opportunity in comparative perspective: Recent research on educational attainment and social mobility. Annual Review of Sociology, 31, 223−243. CrossRef

5. Erikson, R., & Goldthorpe, J. H. (1992). The constant flux. A study of class mobility in industrial societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

6. Glenn, N. D. (1977). Cohort analysis. London: Sage.

7. Glenn, N. D. (2005). Cohort analysis (2nd ed.). London: Sage. CrossRef

8. Hanley, E. (2001). Centrally administered mobility reconsidered: The political dimension of educational stratification in state-socialist Czechoslovakia. Sociology of Education, 74(1), 25−43. CrossRef

9. Hanley, E., & McKeever, E. M. (1997). The persistence of educational inequalities in state-socialist Hungary: Trajectory maintenance versus counterselection. Sociology of Education, 70(1), 1−18. CrossRef

10. Hauser, R. M., Tsai, S. L. & Sewell, W. H. (1983). A model of stratification with response error in social and psychological variables. Sociology of Education, 56(1), 20−46. CrossRef

11. Katrňák, T., & Simonová, N. (2011). Intergenerační vzdělanostní fluidita a její vývoj v České republice v letech 1989 až 2009 [Intergenerational educational fluidity and its trends in the Czech Republic between 1990 and 2009]. Sociologický časopis, 47(2), 207−242.

12. Katrňák, T., Simonová, N., & Fónadová, L. (2016). From quantitative to qualitative differences: Testing MMI and EMI in the Czech secondary school system in the first decade of the 21st century. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 46(B), 157−171. CrossRef

13. Koucký, J., Bartušek, A., & Kovařovic, J. (2010). Who gets a degree? Access to tertiary education in Europe 1950−2009. Prague: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education.

14. Lucas, S. R. (2001). Effectively maintained inequality: Education transitions, track mobility, and social background effects. American Journal of Sociology, 106(6), 1642−1690. CrossRef

15. Mare, R. D. (1980). Social background and school continuation decisions. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 75(370), 295−305. CrossRef

16. Mare, R. D. (1981). Change and stability in educational stratification. American Sociological Review 46(1), 72−87. CrossRef

17. Matějů, P. (1993). Who won and who lost in a socialist redistribution in Czechoslovakia? In Y. Shavit & H. P. Blossfeld (Eds.), Persistent inequality. Changing educational attainment in thirteen countries (pp. 251−271). Boulder, CO, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press.

18. Matějů, P., Řeháková, B., & Simonová, N. (2007). The Czech Republic: Structural growth of inequality in access to higher education. In Y. Shavit, R. Arum, & A. Gamoran (Eds.), Stratification in higher education: A comparative study (pp. 374−399). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

19. OECD. (2014). Education at a glance 2014: OECD indicators. OECD Publishing. CrossRef

20. Powers, D. A., & Xie, Y. (2000). Statistical methods for categorical data analysis. London: Academic Press.

21. Raftery, A. E., & Hout, M. (1993). Maximally maintained inequality: Expansion, reform, and opportunity in Irish education, 1921−75. Sociology of Education, 66(1), 41−62. CrossRef

22. Simonová, N. (2011). Vzdělanostní nerovnosti v české společnosti. Vývoj od počátku 20. století do současnosti [Educational inequalities in Czech society. Development from the early 20th century to the present day]. Praha: Slon.

23. Ryder, N. B. (1965). The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American Sociological Review, 30(6), 843−861. CrossRef

24. Simonová, N. (2003). The evolution of educational inequalities in the Czech Republic after 1989. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(4), 469−483. CrossRef

25. Simonová, N., & Soukup, P. (2009). Reproduction of educational inequality in the Czech Republic after the Velvet revolution in the European context. In R. Becker & A. Hadjar (Eds.) Expected and Unexpected Consequences of the Educational Expansion in Europe and USA (pp. 133−151), Stuttgart, Wien, Bern: Haupt.

26. Vallet, L. A. (2004). Change in intergenerational class mobility in France from the 1970s to the 1990s and its explanation: An analysis following the CASMIN approach. In R. Breen (Ed.), Social Mobility in Europe (pp. 115−149). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossRef

27. Wong, R., & Sin-Kwok. (1998). Multidimensional influences of family environment in education. The case of socialist Czechoslovakia. Sociology of Education, 71(1), 1−22. CrossRef

28. Xie, Y. (1992). The log-multiplicative layer effect model for comparing mobility tables. American Sociological Review, 57(3), 380−395. CrossRef