Sociological Analysis of Educational Inequality and Access Opportunities to Higher Education

In this study, we tried to analyze of the role of various factors in creating and reproducing educational inequality and opportunities to access higher education and provide a basis for reviewing the policies and plans of the education system.

According to the objectives, this research is applied and considering research questions has been done by descriptive-analytical method. Library resource and documentary methods were used to identify the contexts and factors of creating and reproducing educational inequality. To add the richness of analytical findings, we used the National Organization of Educational Testing’ data and analyze them with comparing means and Mann–Whitney U tests.

The findings show that the demand for higher education is increasing in the world. In developed countries it is a function of the demand for educated labor but in Iran, the expansion of higher education is demand-oriented and is not based on economic and social needs.

Policy-making to address inequality should be based on removing barriers in the local community. Ensuring the social inclusion of all groups, reducing the gap between educational institutions and disciplines, improving the quality of all educational institutions to an acceptable level and equal access for all are among these items. Higher education can lead to income redistribution when the benefits of a job related to college education are not limited to family and social benefits. At the same time, it is very important to consider the role of individual variables in reforming the developed policies and redistributing the facilities, both in the privileged and non-privileged areas.