School-university transition: human capital vs social inequality

In the article, the author analyzes the social impact of the institutional transformation of the transition from secondary to higher education (the introduction of the Unified State Exam), taking place against the backdrop of an increasing stratification of educational organizations and programs of secondary and higher education. This leads to the reproduction of former and the manifestation of new forms of social inequality and territorial and settlement restrictions in access to higher education, which differs in terms of the quality and future economic benefits in the labor market. The data of statistics and sociological surveys show that two types of educational trajectories have developed. Graduation from high school, the use of the USE and enrollment in full-time education, especially in selective universities, is typical mainly for people from upper and middle strata. Completion of the 9th grade, intermediate studies in secondary vocational education and admission (bypassing the USE) to correspondence courses are much more common for representatives of families with reduced economic and sociocultural resources. Differences in the material and sociocultural status of the families of students and young people, which significantly determine the chances of access to a stratified higher school, are multiplying by interregional and settlement heterogeneity. As a result, the motivation and opportunities for obtaining higher education (valued by the labor market) among young people from low-resource families, small settlements, and remote territories are declining, and their push into the vocational education sector has been intensifying in recent years. All this leads to the deformation of the social function of higher education as an institution, the purpose of which is to form (based on natural abilities and cognition) the intellectual potential of society, capable of responding to various social challenges, including those urgent ones that have arisen before our country.