Access to higher education and the reproduction of inequalities in Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

The growth of higher education offering in Latin America is the result of both, a rise in student demand and the development of public policies favouring the democratization of universities, as is the case of Argentina, an example of educational inclusion. Córdoba, site of the country's first public university and of the first privately-administered university to receive an official State authorization, serves as a paradigmatic case study. In this article, we analyse the process of widening access to higher education in Latin America and Argentina since the end of the Twentieth century, to explain how this process took place in Córdoba. Within this framework, we present the effects these processes have on educational inequality in general, and on the reproduction of influential families' cultural capital in particular. Based on the analysis of these processes, we show one dimension of social reproduction and the mechanisms that underpin the connection between power and inequality.