The Global Development of Coverage and Generosity in Public Education

Project A05 investigates the global development of coverage and generosity of state education in the secondary school sector and the vocational training sector. In this project, we understand coverage as the extension of public education to many groups of people, which differ according to gender, religion, citizenship and migration or ethnic origin. Generosity of educational services refers to the financing, regulation and duration of state education programs for the respective subgroups, duration being strongly tied to age and life course phase in this policy field.

The following research questions are the focus of the second project phase:

Which social groups can be distinguished in terms of coverage and generosity in the various state education systems? How do state investments in the education system change and which social groups benefit more and which benefit less? How are these distinctions implemented and justified? In addition to the comprehensive collection of data on coverage and generosity, we are particularly interested in whether there are opportunities for the empowerment of women through education, to what extent social groups are excluded from national educational opportunities on the basis of their nationality, in particular migrants and ethnic minorities, and whether the digitalization of education through distance learning, not only since the Covid-19 pandemic, offers integration opportunities for students or also carries risks of exclusion.

Building on the results of the first phase of the project, we distinguish state education systems according to different cultural spheres. Their effects on coverage and generosity will be examined in interaction with global historical transformations.

Project A05 has three goals: First, it will continue expanding the existing structure of our comprehensive database on education systems. The diffusion analyses conducted in the first phase will be extended by using data on coverage and generosity, as well as multilevel analyses of global data from the World Value Survey. Second, we will expand the study of the 30 IOs active in education to include standardized and qualitative document analyses regarding coverage and generosity for specific groups. Third, using a nested design, we conduct in-depth case studies on the influence of global transformation processes on the national education policy of Senegal, Ghana, Malaysia and Cambodia.