What enables the few working-class people who enter higher education to achieve against the odds? This book offers answers by comparing social contexts, educational institutions and policies in Austria and England to demonstrate a surprising number of similarities behind those who succeed using Bourdieu's concept of habitus.

"Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Moving Up without Losing Your Way looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility--the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity--faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society"--Dust jacket.

This book seeks answers to a fundamental question: How can we help children born into poverty transcend their disadvantages and enter the middle class as adults? And in particular, what role can our schools play? Education for Upward Mobility provides fresh perspectives and concrete ideas for policymakers at every level of government; for leaders and policy analysts in education reform organizations in the states and in Washington; for philanthropists and membership associations; and for local superintendents and school board members. It combines the latest research evidence on relevant topics with in-depth explorations of promising practices on the ground, in real places, achieving real successes.

Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility—especially in the developing world. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves-which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines—typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern. Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?

What's the point of a university education in a world without enough jobs?

Building upon extensive research into modern British society, this book traces out trends in social mobility and their relation to educational inequalities, with surprising results. Contrary to what is widely supposed, Bukodi and Goldthorpe's findings show there has been no overall decline in social mobility – though downward mobility is tending to rise and upward mobility to fall - and Britain is not a distinctively low mobility society. However, the inequalities of mobility chances among individuals, in relation to their social origins, have not been reduced and remain in some respects extreme. Exposing the widespread misconceptions that prevail in political and policy circles, this book shows that educational policy alone cannot break the link between inequality of condition and inequality of opportunity. It will appeal to students, researchers, policy makers, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding social inequality, social mobility and education.