Social reproduction strategies and mass participation in higher education: The case of Cyprus

This paper discusses strategies for social reproduction in systems of mass participation in higher education. It makes the argument that in systems where participation is almost universal middle class families employ more refined strategies to secure advantages for their offspring.  It focuses in the case of Cyprus, a country that in the past decade saw an unprecedented expansion of its higher education system.  Even though, official statistics present a picture of relative openness in higher education, in the sense that it shows an increasing number of students (male and female) progressing to higher education, these figures do not shed light into the way young individuals and their families make their choices for their future and the social forms in which these are embedded. While more lower class students enter university, inequalities arise from the unequal horizons for choice making. Middle class students and their families engage in choice-making at higher education with broader options while lower classes have restricted horizons often stemming from mechanisms of self-selection and self-exclusion. These eventually produce stratification in the educational system due to factors that are not always educationally related. The paper will present the findings of a survey on parents and students and will look into their aspirations to enter higher education in specific fields of study. It will assess the extent to which the educational system operates as a “sorting machine” i.e. a mechanism of social selection something that is not widely recognized and appreciated as these processes do not always operate in an overt manner.