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Serving the New Class: The Dynamics of Educational Transitions for Romanian Adults Born Before 1985 During Communism and Afterwards

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An Erratum to this article was published on 04 July 2014

Abstract

The present article aims to investigate the dynamics of access to the upper secondary and tertiary levels of the educational career of several cohorts of Romanian adults born before 1985 by analyzing the expansion of educational levels and the dynamics of the inequalities in probabilities of access to these levels in Romania by applying the logistic response model to explain the variations in probabilities of realizing the transition to the vocational and the baccalaureate level in the upper secondary and to the higher education in the case of almost 5,000 Romanian citizens surveyed in 2010. The main result of the study is that, contrary to what is suggested by gross enrollment figures, throughout de decades of communism net access to education improved only in case of the vocational upper secondary school while the academic track just kept in pace with the evolution of the distribution of instruction of parents. In other words, the data provides strong support for the thesis of the ‘new class’, that states that the class of persons holding secondary level degrees, not Communist Party members especially, demanded a dramatic expansion of the academic high schools in order to preserve their educational status throughout the generation of their children and explain thus the expansion of academic track of the upper secondary in absolute figures although without improvements of access opportunities.

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Notes

  1. Hatos (2012).

  2. “Acronym of the research project Social stratification and class structure in Romania,” financed by PNII, Financing contract nr. 92131/01.10. 2008. Project director: Lazăr Vlăsceanu.

  3. A description of the Local Human development Index is provided by Dumitru Sandu on his web page (Sandu n.d.).

  4. The survey contains generations with complete educational routes, including academic studies, up to the cohort of those who reached the age of 18 between 2003 and 2004. It was actually the period witnessing the fastest expansion in higher education.

  5. It is also worth reflecting on the impact that the mass level frustration caused by the impossibility of upward mobility had on the sudden collapse of the communist regimes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultatea de Științe Socio-Umane, Universitatea din Oradea, str. Universității nr. 5, Oradea, Romania

    Adrian Hatos

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  1. Adrian Hatos
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Correspondence to Adrian Hatos.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18.

Table 10 Logistic regression model fit of blockmodels for transitions to vocational schools
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Table 11 Logistic regression parameters for simple effects model of transition to vocational education (no interactions)
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Table 12 Logistic regression parameters for transition to vocational education (full model, all interactions)
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Table 13 Logistic regression model fit of blockmodels for transitions to high schools
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Table 14 Logistic regression parameters for simple effects model of transition to high schools (no interactions)
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Table 15 Logistic regression parameters for transition to high school (full model, all interactions)
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Table 16 Logistic regression model fit of blockmodels for transitions to higher education
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Table 17 Logistic regression parameters for simple effects model of transition to higher education (no interactions)
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Table 18 Logistic regression parameters for transition to higher education (full model, all interactions)
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Hatos, A. Serving the New Class: The Dynamics of Educational Transitions for Romanian Adults Born Before 1985 During Communism and Afterwards. Soc Indic Res 119, 1699–1729 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0567-5

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