Elite education as channel for recruiting power groups: international experiences

Elite education as channel for recruiting power groups:
international experiences


Tev D.B.

Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia denis_tev@mail.ru

ID of the Article: 5744


For citation:

Tev D.B. Elite education as channel for recruiting power groups: international experiences. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2015. No 9. P. 102-110




Abstract

In most of the leading countries of the West there is a small group of educational institutions that systemically play a decisive role in selecting and recruiting of power groups, especially economic and administrative elites. With a fairly high degree of social closure, elite education system promotes intergenerational reproduction of privileged and ruling groups of society. Moreover, significance of its reproductive role grows as direct inheritance of power positions becomes impossible, and university diploma turn into a necessary condition for entering elites. This is particularly evident in economic sphere in cases of ownership relations transformation. Furthermore, the system of elite education significantly contributes to the intra-elite integration: in the course of training in a set of schools and universities future members of the elite learn shared values and norms of behavior, forge friendships etc.


Keywords
elite; education; recruitment; reproduction; intra-elite integration
Content No 9, 2015