Ethno-Religious Differences in Israeli Higher Education: Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions Yariv Feniger, 1, * Oded Mcdossi 2 and Hanna Ayalon 3 1 Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, 2 School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Israel and 3 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University, Israel *Corresponding author. Email: fenigery@bgu.ac.il. Submitted March 2013; revised November 2014; accepted November 2014 Abstract The worldwide expansion and diversification of higher education systems has sparked growing interest in the stratification of students according to higher education institution and field of study. This article focuses on Israel, where higher education has experienced significant expansion and diversification dur- ing the past two decades. Using generalized ordered logistic regression models, the study analyses verti- cal and horizontal ethno-religious inequality. The findings indicate that Ashkenazim, the privileged Jewish group, remain the most advantaged regarding enrollment in higher education, but their advantage over other veteran Jewish groups is mainly owing to areas of specialization in high school and achievement on the tests that serve as admission criteria to the higher education institutions. Among the enrollees, con- trolling for high school history reveals that the disadvantaged Jewish groups, Mizrachim and new immi- grants, have higher odds than Ashkenazim of enrolling in lucrative programmes. Muslim, Druze, and Christian Arabs are disadvantaged regarding both the vertical (access) and horizontal (fields of study) di- mensions, regardless of high school history and previous achievements. Introduction There is growing interest among sociologists of educa- tion in the effects of the worldwide expansion and diver- sification of higher education systems on the enrollment of members of disadvantaged groups. This line of re- search has tended to focus on parental socio-economic status. Such research has indicated that the expansion of higher education systems has led to a rise in the enroll- ment rates of economically disadvantaged groups, thus reducing to some extent the vertical dimension of the enrollment gap (i.e., access to higher education). Yet the expansion has also produced stratification within higher education by granting prominence to the horizontal dimension of inequality: privileged social groups take advantage of the differentiation within higher education to preserve their labour market advantages (e.g., Ambler and Neathery, 1999; Shavit, Arum and Gamoran, 2007; Gerber and Cheung, 2008; Boliver, 2011). The literature on racial, ethnic, and religious inequal- ity in higher education is more limited, especially regarding horizontal stratification. This study contrib- utes to this literature in two main ways. First, we simul- taneously examine the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of stratification from an ethno-religious per- spective, and are thus able to detect and discuss differ- ences and similarities in patterns of inequality in each of these dimensions. Second, we offer a solution to a com- mon problem in the research on horizontal inequality in higher education, namely, the definition of the depend- ent variable. Differentiation in higher education has two V C The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com European Sociological Review, 2015, Vol. 31, No. 4, 383–396 doi: 10.1093/esr/jcu092 Advance Access Publication Date: 22 December 2014 Original Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/31/4/383/493723 by guest on 20 April 2021