COMMENTARY: INEQUALITY AND SCHOOLING AS AN INSTITUTION

As guest editors, we welcomed the opportunity to help compile a volume that reflects current trends in cross-national analyses of educational stratification. Our interest in macro-comparative stratification research stems from a shared dissatisfaction with the extensive amount of research on schooling and social stratification exclusively on American education. Of course, studying what is close at hand is less complicated (and less fraught with data limitations), and investigations of a single nation or society often provide the basis for more or less universal generalizations.