Educational stratification and understandings of meritocracy: a comparative perspective

This PhD thesis examines the relationship between processes of educational stratification and understandings of meritocracy in Germany and Romania. The first empirical chapter explores the different patterns of educational stratification in European countries, adding the post-socialist countries from Central and Eastern Europe to the analysis of educational “regimes”. Comparing 25 European countries, this study distinguishes three clusters of countries which are classified into either sponsored, tournament, or contest models of stratification. For the next two empirical chapters in the thesis, I chose to focus on Germany, which resembles a sponsored stratification system, and Romania, which fits the model of a tournament stratification system. The second empirical chapter employs a mixed methods design to look at how far people in Germany and Romania perceive their countries as education-based meritocracies. First, I evaluate the perceived fairness of educational opportunities at a population level using data from Round 9 of the European Social Survey that asks participants to rate the fairness of opportunities for themselves and other people in their countries. I then conduct semi-structured interviews with elite students from Germany and Romania to explore how they conceptualise educational privilege. While Romanian participants identify more explicit manifestations of educational privilege related to both economic and cultural capital, German participants identify more implicit ways in which privilege operates, mostly through cultural capital. In the third empirical chapter, I compare the ways in which elite students from Germany and Romania understand educational success and failure. I find that the image of the successful pupil in both countries is connected with the processes of educational selection that participants had to navigate. In Romania, where pupils have to navigate standardised exams to get into high schools, the image of the most successful pupil is the self-driven individual who can sustain her motivation. In Germany, where pupils are selected into either Gymnasiums or vocational tracks at an early age based on their academic potential, the image of the most successful pupil is the effortless achiever. Overall, this thesis unravels the associations between different logics of educational stratification, the perceived fairness of educational opportunities, and understandings of merit.