Håvard Helland

This article examines how social disparities in dropout rates vary by educational field. Previous studies have shown that first‐generation students, in general, have lower higher education completion rates than their fellow students. Less is known, however, about how such disparities vary between educational fields. We distinguish between general and field specific cultural capital and find that general cultural capital mainly operates through academic preparedness in upper secondary school, and after controlling for upper secondary school grade point average (GPA), students with parents with higher education degrees in a different field than themselves do not complete their degrees more often than first‐generation students. More field‐specific advantages of having a parent with a similar education are nonetheless visible in many fields also when we compare students with equal grades. Our analyses of Norwegian register data on the entire student population ( N ≈ 400,000) show that the social inequalities are largest in fields that are both soft and pure , like humanities and social science, and that in soft and applied educational fields, like teaching and social work, the social differences are small and insignificant after controlling for GPA from upper secondary school. In fields classified as hard , it is only the students with parents with a similar education who complete their initial degree more often than first‐generation students. We suggest that status group formation, field‐specific cultural capital and micro‐class reproduction may all contribute to explaining these patterns.

This article focuses on the social structuring of social capital, understood as resources embedded in social networks. The analysis integrates key theoretical–methodological insights from two distinct approaches concerned with social capital and inequality: the position‐generator approach associated with Nan Lin and the spatial approach associated with Pierre Bourdieu. Empirically, we exploit the possibilities of survey data containing detailed information about the social ties of a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population ( N = 4007). By means of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), we construct a space of social ties, a spatial representation of systematic similarities and differences between individuals' social ties to a set of 33 occupational positions. In this space, social capital is structured according to two primary dimensions: (i) the level of social ties, in terms of individuals' number of contacts; and (ii), the quality of social ties, in terms of a division between being connected to others in high‐status positions and others in low‐status positions. By means of Ascending Hierarchical Cluster analysis, five clusters are identified within the space of social ties: a homogenous working‐class cluster, a well‐connected working‐class cluster, a cluster of high‐status ties, a homogenous high‐status cluster and a low‐volume cluster. Moreover, the analysis clearly indicates that the structure of social capital is connected to respondents' class positions, their volumes of cultural and economic capital and their class origin. The analysis thus draws attention to the role of social capital in processes of social closure, regarding both resource monopolization and class formation.