In the early 1970s, fewer than one in three Australian children remained at school until the end of year 12. Today, more than 80 per cent do (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2013). The UK and United States have also increased their retention rates, though not so spectacularly.1 The politicians tell us that this is evidence of intellectual maturity, a stronger base for the knowledge economy, that people of all backgrounds are seeing the value of staying in formal education for longer. There is genuine family pride communicated in the narratives of academic achievement that measure intergenerational progress. The father, who left school at 15 to be apprenticed in a trade, can be proud if his son or daughter completes an engineering degree. Such stories are the stock-in-trade of the newer universities, particularly those who draw their students from low socio-economic backgrounds and minority communities. They describe the project of social mobility, the realization of aspiration. But more particularly, they serve to reconcile a generation, who viewed the white-collar bureaucrat and the credentialed expert with suspicion and hostility, with the civilizing project of higher education.

But behind the good-news narratives of educational achievement is a wider sociological context: simply put, people persevere with formal education because there is no real alternative. There are just not enough jobs to soak up the number of school leavers who would prefer to work full time than to study.