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Educational Revolution Essay

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Educational Revolution Some sociologists even speak of an 'educational revolution'. Driven by a combination of increasing demand for a highly skilled and professional workforce and a growing supply of educational institutions, teachers, etc., educational participation and educational attainment grew spectacularly from one generation to another. Secondary school education quickly became the minimal standard of qualification for almost all youngsters. And from the seventies on higher education participation started to increase as well. This process hasn't reached its limits yet. Many governments have formulated …show more content…

The struggle for access to higher education had its roots in the awareness that equal opportunity to social mobility was to be matched by equitable access to higher education. Indeed, education became the most important channel of social mobility - and lack of education became thus the recipe for social exclusion. In many countries a social movement was born, a coalition of trade unions, students' organisations, political parties and others, to 'democratise' higher education, i.e. to improve equitable access, opportunity and success. In Belgium this movement was particularly impressive and successful. It accomplished to establish a system of grants for students from low-income families, social support services for students in the institutions, low fees, etc. The expansion of these forms of social policy in higher education is still going on, also in this country. There certainly is room for satisfaction for what has been accomplished (comparatively low fees, student grants, etc), but there absolutely is also need for further development and improvement of such policies. That's also what I'm working on, even in such budgetary hard times.

I fear that the political enthusiasm for social policies in higher education somehow is fading away. More and more politicians question the idea that state funded social policies in higher

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