Higher education in Post-soviet welfare regimes: Three worlds of transition

• In Event: Structural changes in higher education

Proposal

Introduction
Last decades expansion of higher education has been a worldwide enthusiasm. Post-secondary education is viewed as a fundamental social service just as secondary one, supported by the government across the globe during the second half of the twentieth century as a part of national social policies. Previously underprivileged groups gained more access to HE, but inequality persists, as it passed from secondary to post-secondary level in high-participation systems. The challenge of ensuring equity of access to higher education is one that affects all countries alike but often differently at the same time. It is more or less conventional how inequality in education evolves in developed countries: it is persistent over time in spite of all-level education expansion (Raftery and Hout 1993; Hout 2006, 2007, Lucas, 2009), it gradually decreases, and it varies in different types of welfare states. Developing and transforming countries are much more differentiated in the context of access dynamics and equity effects. In this paper, we are focusing on post-transitional welfare countries namely the ones of post-Soviet transformation that provide an interesting case of unprecedented expansion of access and higher rates of inequality simultaneously. While we may discuss the factors of access scope for particular countries, we lack comparative arguments to describe the differences in the outcomes of access expansion; assumptions that proved to be true for developed countries might be ambiguous for states undergoing transformation (Silova, 2015; Jackson, 2017; Fenger, 2007).
Aims of the research
This paper firstly aims to comprehensively analyze the assemblage of institutional settings, policy transformations and structure of access to higher education based on case studies of Russia, Estonia and Georgia. All three countries showed positive dynamics in GER (15-24 years old population), although they are distinct in the sense of educational policy effects from the perspective of inequality of access. Enrolment increased in the public higher education sector and favorable regulations for private higher education were a governmental response to increased demand of the labor market and society. The spread of higher education advanced boundary of inclusion into higher education although these post-Soviet states differ in access structure for different social groups. The second key aspiration of the study is to understand why countries that have common Soviet legacy and patterns of higher education provision, and the same model of market transformation as well as similar undergo expansion of HE ended up with differentiated access structure, or representation of different socio-economic groups and equity of access.
Research framework
As a starting point for our comparison, we choose the welfare state regimes framework (Espring-Andersen 1990). As now in high participation systems HE has become a public, or a social good, this typology of countries allows us to study mechanisms of HE provision according to logics, universal for each welfare regime way of social good provision (Allmendinger and Leibfried 2003; Antikainen 2006; Room 2002). Some empirical studies show a correlation between welfare state mode and educational equity (Peter et al. 2010; Olsen, G.M. 2002; Pierson 2002), as education is a part of a very interrelated public sector.
Welfare state regimes differ in two principal components: 1) the level of de-commodification, i.e. the degree to which market forces determine a person’s livelihood (e.g. employment, alimentation, educational level) maintenance; 2) stratification, or the level of social relations’ structuring among welfare systems. Conservative regimes tend to preserve of traditional social status differentials. The effects of redistributing the goods is minimal, although these regimes are associated with significant levels of social expenditure. In case of liberal welfare states, a free market allows individuals to realize their potential, regardless their social status, and equality of opportunity is dominating in the social discourse. The social-democratic regimes promote equality of access to the highest standards of goods and are based on the principles of universalism and de-commodification of social rights and opportunities.
Data and methodology. In our research we rely on quantitative data from international comparative sources such as the OECD, Word Bank, Global Health Expenditure Database, as well as on data withdrawn from national statistical bureaus. We use national legislations in public services provision ass the main source of quantitative information. Our case study methodology relies on an extension of the welfare states framework. Thus, we operationalize higher education decommodification through social expenditure on HE, eligibility rules, relative value of social provision, or the balance between social expenditure for a person’s HE and her individual returns. Stratification is analyzed through institutional differentiation, tracking system, enrolment rates, privatization of HE sector and poor relief. We also take into account monetary and non-monetary targeted policies and the general context of social goods provision in the countries of interest. The variable of interest are the proportions of HE students with different socio-economic background.
Expected results
The paper contributes to the discussion by adopting welfare framework to higher education system and empirical analyses of how access is structured through conjoining stratification and decommodification patterns education systems. We develop an extended welfare regimes framework in order to match each country higher education policy (institutional landscape, differentiation, stratification and targeted policies) with Espring-Andersen typology. We find that higher education policy in each country corresponds to distinct welfare regimes: Georgia tends to choose the liberal course, Estonia follows the socio-democratic way and Russia operates within the conservative logic. Thus, higher education in Georgia is minimally decommodified and highly stratified, with lately occurring tracking and individualistic residual market failure recovery for disadvantaged groups. Both individual costs and benefits are high. In Russia higher education is highly decommodified and stratified, thus preserving and reproducing the existing social inequality. Individual costs of achieving higher education are rather low, but individual benefits highly depend on the selectivity of received education. Estonian policy provides minimally commodified and stratified higher education and provides post-secondary educational opportunities for all social groups.

Authors

• Sergei Malinovskii, Higher School of Economics

• Ekaterina Shibanova, National research university Higher School of Economics