interesting - I hadn't thought about #4 before, but that does make sense. Are there any education systems in Europe or Asia that are more toward the individuated/self-selected model that one might expect to result in a more dynamic career/opportunity-path?
It's more individual now than it used to be. But people are definitely a lot more tied up in their educational path in Sweden than in, say, the UK.
Either you mean something different to what I think you do, or you know next to nothing about the education system (and it's impact on life chances) here. Things aren't as rigid as they were before the phasing out of selective state education, but then that would be difficult.
Edit: does that sound overly hostile? It isn't supposed to; I'm stupidly tired at the moment so don't quite know how certain things come across. Persona experience over this issue has left me quite bitter as well, which may not help.
The education system here - taken as a whole and not just the state sector - locks people into certain career paths as much as anywhere else. Much of the pressure and the streaming is not done through official channels, but can't be underestimated. Official claims to the contrary are lies.
I think we might be talking about different things here. I go to a business school and I know people who work as bankers in London. People from British universities working with them often have not done economics or finance or anything remotely close to that, but stuff like history or literature. In that sense you're less locked in to a given career path in the UK than in Sweden.
You might be talking about the fact that all those people working as bankers in London have probably graduated from Oxbridge and other such places and that's probably true. I'm well aware of the rigid class structure in Britain and how linked it is to education.
