*2.3. Educational Policy, Social Stratification, and Educational Uplift*

Nations' policies on education and economic development routinely make assumptions about social structure and the capacity of families to acquire cultural capital for college. In Europe, higher education offers postsecondary pathways for the working class that are no longer evident in the US. These divergent policy pathways may rest on different assumptions about social class as nations progress from empires to the breakdown of the neoliberal consensus. The shift to using debt as the low-cost mechanism for expanding access raises issues about cultural and social class differences across nations.
