S tudies have documented the persistent effect of socioeconomic status in producing dif- ferences in access to postsecondary education since the turn of the twentieth century in the United States. For cohorts born before 1950, family background exerts a significant effect on college attendance (Mare 1980). Postsecondary education has expanded in recent decades, how- ever. Between 1955 and 2005, total fall enroll- ment in degree-granting institutions rose from 2.6 to 17.5 million, and the college enrollment rate of high school graduates increased from around 45 to 70 percent during the same peri- od (NCES 2008). To accommodate this growth, the number of institutions more than doubled (reaching 4,300 by 2006) and existing institu- tions expanded. From a modernization/industrialization per- spective, such a massive expansion of higher education should narrow class gaps in college attainment by fostering high rates of educa- tional upward mobility (Kerr et al. 1960; Parsons 1970; Treiman 1970). Underprivileged high school graduates should disproportion- ately benefit from this expansion, as new avenues of upward mobility should open to them. Some scholars cast doubts on this opti- mistic view (e.g., Jencks and Riesman 1968:154), predicting persistent class inequal- ity in higher education amid a massive expan- sion: “It is clear that universal higher education and the academic revolution will not contribute to the emergence of an egalitarian, classless society in the same relatively clear-cut way that they contribute to the emergence of a non-sec- tarian, ethnically homogenized, nationally organized, and in some ways sexually undiffer- entiated one.” Indeed, a plethora of studies continues to document class-based gaps in college atten- dance. To reconcile these findings with the rise The Evolution of Class Inequality in Higher Education: Competition, Exclusion, and Adaptation Sigal Alon Tel-Aviv University This study develops a comprehensive theoretical framework regarding the evolution of the class divide in postsecondary education. I conceptualize three prototypes of class inequality—effectively maintained, declining, and expanding—and associate their emergence with the level of competition in college admissions. I also unearth the twin mechanisms, exclusion and adaptation, that link class hierarchy to a highly stratified postsecondary system in an allegedly meritocratic environment. Intra- and inter-cohort comparisons reveal that while the class divide regarding enrollment and access to selective postsecondary schooling is ubiquitous, it declines when competition for slots in higher education is low and expands during periods of high competition. In such a regime of effectively expanding inequality (EEI), a greater emphasis on a certain selection criterion (like test scores) in admission decisions—required to sort the influx of applicants—is bolstered by class-based polarization vis-à-vis this particular criterion. This vicious cycle of exclusion and adaptation intensifies and expedites the escalation of class inequality. The results show that adaptation is more effective than exclusion in expanding class inequality in U.S. higher education. AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2009, VOL. 74 (October:731–755) Please direct correspondence to Sigal Alon, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel (salon1@post.tau.ac.il). at Tel Aviv University on September 12, 2010 asr.sagepub.com Downloaded from