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Bulgaria's educational and economic landscapes are marked by substantial regional disparities that are interlaced with ethnic inequalities in school-to-work transitions. Young adults from Roma and Turkish origins particularly suffer from disadvantages with respect to education and labour market participation. We ask how ethnicity affects labour market entry in Bulgaria once educational resources of different ethnic groups are accounted for, and how regional contexts impact ethnic disparities in employment insecurities. Building on comparative school-to-work transition (STWT) concepts and on the labour queueing approach, we assume that ethnic disparities in the STWTs of youths in Bulgaria depend on the degree of urbanisation and the strength and structure of the regional economy. The study draws on data from the Bulgarian School Leaver Survey 2014 of 2103 young adults who had left education in the five years preceding the survey. Descriptive analysis and multilevel logistic regression models were applied to analyse STWT patterns with a special focus on education, regional contexts, and ethnicity. The results highlight that STWT risks differ considerably across the Bulgarian regions. The strength of the local economy thereby moderates ethnic disparities. Young people from Roma and Turkish origins are much less disadvantaged to transition towards employment compared to ethnic Bulgarians the stronger the local economy gets. Our study has several policy implications. In addition to the development of public and private employment opportunities for disadvantaged young people, special attention should also be paid to the development of quality vocational education at the national and regional level.

The article's aim is twofold: to outline the specificity of the embeddedness approach and to explore the embeddedness of graduates' education-job mismatch and the formation of lifelong learning policies. The study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data, obtained from the Bulgarian Universities Ranking System, and from interviews with experts and young adults engaged in a lifelong learning programme. The analysis uses multilevel modelling. It also relies on mapping lifelong learning policies in Bulgaria through a thematic content analysis. The article argues that the misbalances for highly educated people on the labour market mirror structural problems in the economy and the educational system. The argument is reflected in the historical and structural embeddedness of graduates' education-job mismatches and the lifelong learning policies applied to overcome this. The results show that the extent of vertical education-job mismatch depends on the different profiles of higher education institutions and professional fields; they also demonstrate different ways in which the embeddedness approach could help shed new light on, and critically assess, lifelong learning policies. The findings reveal a differentiation between national and local levels of lifelong learning policy towards graduates and that regional policies are actively embedded in local contexts.

This article aims to explore how the situation of unemployment and -- more generally -- early job insecurity affects young people's scope for exercising agency with regard to decisions about continuing and improving their education. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of the capability approach, the article develops the concept of patterns of agency regarding continuing education. This concept refers to the mediating processes (interactions with others) whereby young people may convert available resources into new prospects for strengthening their capability to attain education as well as broadening their real choices with regard to education. Relying on information from a wide range of life-course interviews with young people born between 1990 and 1995 from seven European countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom), the present study applies the concept of patterns of agency regarding continuing education to the case of young people who have experienced early job insecurity. The analysis reveals the existence of two broad groupings of agency: enabled agency (patterns of realised interactions with institutions and individuals) and stumbled agency (patterns of non-realised interactions with institutions and individuals). The elaborated patterns provide a basis for fruitful future comparative analyses from different perspectives.

This article explores how the horizontal differentiation of upper secondary education affects students' transitions after graduation. It builds upon the institutional perspective on education and draws on data from a nationally representative survey. The analysis shows a considerable variation in graduates' patterns of transition according to the type of secondary education and that the type of secondary education program moderates the effect of the academic achievement and of students' socioeconomic background on students' patterns of transition.

This paper aims at studying the dynamics of inequalities in access to higher education (HE) both in a historical and a comparative perspective. It uses Bulgaria as a case study and places it among five other countries such as Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The adopted approach differentiates between equity in HE and inequalities in access to HE, and stresses the qualitative side of inequalities. The analysis is based on data from the European Social Survey (2006-2010), complemented by data from EUROSTUDENT III (2007). It is argued that, despite the expansion of HE before and especially after 1989, Bulgaria is among the countries where inequality in access to HE caused by socio-economic disadvantages is most salient. In general, our findings lend support to the effectively maintained inequalities hypothesis. The capability approach is applied in the analysis of these changes inasmuch as it provides a social justice framework for conceptualizing and evaluating inequalities, including taking into account their qualitative side.

This article discusses admissions policies to higher education during the Communist regime in Bulgaria (1946-89). It argues that under the conditions of the Bulgarian Communist regime, admissions policies were not only a component of the higher education system--viewed as an institution--but part and parcel of the process through which power was exercised and maintained. Their most basic goal was social engineering through the deliberate transformation of the intelligentsia's social profile. Discrimination and privileges were the main mechanisms at work. The article outlines the results of social engineering with regard to the expansion of higher education, the evolution of the student body, and the policies' moral effects on Bulgarian society. A short discussion of the Bulgarian case in comparative perspective is also included.

The purpose of this article is fourfold: firstly, to present a theoretically grounded understanding of individual subjective well-being; secondly, to explore the relationship between individual subjective well-being and important factors at the individual and macro levels; thirdly, to examine the embeddedness of individual subjective wellbeing in different socio-economic contexts; and fourthly, to empirically test whether the opportunity structures in which people live moderate the influence of individual characteristics on subjective well-being. The article uses data from the European Social Survey, wave 2012, and focuses on four Balkan countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo and Slovenia) in a wider comparative European perspective. Using linear regression models, the study shows that individual subjective well-being is positively associated with achieved individual characteristics such as employment status and acquired level of education. The analysis also reveals that all Balkan countries except Bulgaria have higher mean values of subjective well-being than the rest of the 22 European countries, and that individual subjective well-being is embedded in different social contexts. The results suggest that, although happiness and life satisfaction are very important dimensions of individual subjective well-being, it should not be reduced to them, and that individual subjective well-being as a positive functioning is a complex phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to explore the social embeddedness of the labour market misbalances for highly educated people, using Bulgaria as a case study. It argues that the labour market misbalances for highly educated people mirror structural problems in the economy and the educational system. These misbalances represent a way for fighting against unemployment, but this comes at a certain "price". The adopted theoretical approach to graduate employability highlights its two sides, the individual's and the socio-structural aspects. The analysis is based on data from the Bulgarian Universities Ranking System and the National Social Security Institute and uses descriptive statistics and multilevel modelling. The study reveals that the level of vertical education-job mismatch depends on profiles of higher education institutions and professional fields. It also differs significantly by gender, year of graduation and educational degree. The article shows that under conditions of its massification and diversification, higher education increasingly functions as a positional and heterogeneous good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School-to-work transitions are embedded in the institutional structures of educational systems. In particular, vocational education has been linked to greater horizontal gender segregation in employment. Similarly, research on higher education has uncovered how stratification at the tertiary level can promote gender segregation in the labour market. This paper investigates how gender typical employment is conditioned by the institutional features of the educational system in Bulgaria. Despite the post-socialist transformations of Bulgaria's educational system and its labour market, horizontal gender segregation has remained rather moderate from an international perspective. We use data from a 2012 nationally representative survey. We find that the educational system shapes the gendered occupational trajectories for men but it does not hold the same explanatory power for women. Neither vocational nor higher education has a significant effect for women. In contrast, men with vocational education are more likely to work in male-typed occupations and, in line with the literature, higher education steers men toward gender mixed and a-typical occupations. Our study points to the importance of educational institutional factors in shaping gender (a)-typical career paths. The Bulgarian case, in particular, offers insights into the mechanisms that can potentially decrease horizontal gender segregation in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper analyzes the variety of discourses on social inequalities in postcommunist Bulgaria. The focus is on academic discourse, but political and everyday interpretations are presented as well. Politicians generally avoid talking about social differences and prefer instead the dichotomy of "elite" versus "the people," whose interests the politicians vow to protect. In popular consciousness, the main division is between "the rich" (mafia, politicians, ex-nomenklatura) and "the honest poor." In sociology, three main research trajectories have emerged: from class-based to status-based stratification; from one-dimensional to multidimensional stratification; and from a Marxist class model to a social network model. Perhaps the most important characteristic of Bulgarian society is its high level of poverty, according both to income indicators and self-perception. In this context of a pervasive sense of poverty, status differences lose their significance. This in turn prevents the establishment of group or class solidarity, as everyone feels she or he is competing with all others. Starting in 2013, a new trend can be observed: of social protests organized by those who say they feel powerless and manipulated by corrupt elites. As they try to initiate new types of economic negotiations with the government, sociologists have a responsibility both to study this new movement and to push the problems it raises into public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to ascertain whether there are regional gender differences in vocational education in Bulgaria at the upper secondary level and to shed more light on the main factors for the (non-)emergence of these differences. The research has drawn on data from the National Statistical Institute and the Centre for Information in Education in Bulgaria as well as a nationally representative school-leavers survey (2014); it has applied descriptive statistics and multilevel modelling for the data analysis. Overall, the present study demonstrates that the regional dimension is indispensable for understanding the development of vocational education and gender differentiation in education. The analysis provides evidence that the mechanism by which the education system contributes to regional gender segregation in vocational education is its opportunity structures at the regional level, which are related to vocational education offers. In addition, we found a positive association between industrial development and the share of women in engineering at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the main results from the first ranking system of Bulgarian higher education institutions. It adopts two perspectives: 1) from the point of view of higher education - What are the basic achievements, problems and perspectives of Bulgarian higher education as seen through the prism of the ranking system? 2) from the point of view of the ranking system - What are the strengths and weaknesses of the ranking systems and how it can be further developed and improved? The paper argues that ranking systems of higher education institutions are an inevitable result of massification, commercialization and growing competition in higher education. The analysis highlights the critical arguments against the first ranking system of Bulgarian higher education institutions and suggests some possibilities for its future development. On the basis of the results from the ranking system the paper outlines the main problems of the Bulgarian higher education. It discusses massification of Bulgarian higher education in the light of recent trends in other European countries and European educational policies. It is argued that Bulgarian higher education is in need of elaboration of strategic vision and new normative framework. It also needs changes, such as: establishment of new governance model and new model of financing of higher education; strengthening the relationship between teaching and research; development of the capacity of higher education institutions for innovative and strategic thinking; diversifying the system of higher education; development of strategic partnerships between higher education institutions and between them and non-academic partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the European policy concerning access to higher education. It is argued that in this respect the London CommuniquC from May 2007 is of crucial importance. It not only defines the social dimension of higher education as a priority but also sets the very ambitious goal of ensuring a social diversity among students, which reflects the social characteristics of a country's population. The analysis focuses on the two main examples of introducing social dimension of higher education: a) the "social engineering" during totalitarian socialism in Bulgaria and b) the policy of affirmative action in the US and some other countries. During the whole period of "socialist and communist" development, 1944- 1989, higher education had been one of the main factors for modeling society in the direction of reaching a homogeneous society. The variety of means which were used is analyzed: quota system, privileges for different social groups, lowering of the admission criteria for some groups, special support for some social groups, etc. In discussing the affirmative action practices the main arguments in favor and against them are outlined. The paper argues that the issue of access to higher education occupies a central place in every higher education system and that the admission policies are its crucial component. The importance of admission policies stems out of the fact that they are simultaneously and strongly linked to two major university values- social justice and quality of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years. The study analyses a biannual corpus of 2800 news articles in Britain (the Daily Telegraph) and 5800 in Bulgaria (Rabotnichesko Delo), and shows divergent and convergent trends. Britain carries considerably more science news than Bulgaria all through the period, while the coverage shows parallel swings: increasing intensity during the 1950s, a turning point in the early 1960s, declining into the 1970s, and rising again in the 1980s and 1990s. Media coverage in both countries shows similar swings in public appeal. The trends in the medicalization of science news, the reporting of controversy and the evaluation of science diverge in the two contexts. The paper concludes with speculative explanations of these results. Similarities and differences in these long-term trends point to common factors and specific differences at work on either side of the (former) 'Iron Curtain'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]