^aThe Gershon H Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, POB 39040, Tel Aviv, Israel. E-mail: ayalon@post.tau.ac.il

^*The paper is based on a study conducted by the authors for the Israeli Ministry of Education. We thank Limor Gerbat, Moshe Lavi and Timna Ziv for their research assistance. Authors' names are listed in alphabetical order to denote their equal contribution. Correspondence to Hanna Ayalon.

Abstract

The diversification of higher education systems into 'first tier' and 'second tier' institutions raises the issue of who gets to study where. The diversity approach suggests that the institutional enrollment of students will be mainly influenced by their social origins, whereas the stratification approach underscores the role of academic ability in the process of matching students and institutions. We hypothesize that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive and that their applicability is context-bound, depending on the characteristics of the second-tier institutions. The hypothesis was tested through a survey of a sample of about 4,500 Israeli freshmen enrolled in first- and second-tier institutions in the Israeli expanded and diversified higher education system. Multinomial logistic regressions of institutional enrollment revealed the role of the hierarchy of the second-tier institutions in shaping institutional enrollment and in preserving the advantages of privileged groups.