Governance of Access to the Advanced Academic Track in Two Cantons of Switzerland - On the Politics and Policies of Selecting the "Right" Students and Achieving the "Right" Quota

Abstract

In Switzerland, selection procedures for access to the academic track are regularly debated. Questions have been raised as to whether educational policy ensures fair and equal access. The paper directs its attention to the scarcely researched place where the governance mechanisms and instruments for selecting students are negotiated and decided upon: the legislating parliament. The aim of the contribution is to study how politicians have evaluated, criticised, or defended governance mechanisms and instruments, which policies and reforms they have called for or rejected, and how they have justified them. The paper does so by comparing the procedural requests, discussions, and decisions in the parliaments of two cantons that differ in terms of their population and labour market structure. The analyses adopt the methodological standpoint and apply the key concepts of the sociology of conventions (Boltanski and Thévenot) - in particular the idea of critical moments as well as conventions of worth and the differentiation between an improvement- and rejection-oriented critique. The results show how policies are enacted "on the ground" and in different ways by actors in political situations by referring to conventions that are formatted by social factors, dispositifs, moral beliefs, expectations, and rules.