Who Goes to College? Features of Institutional Tracking in Japanese Higher Education

Features of institutional tracking play a key role in shaping an individualfs access to and advancement through higher education in Japan. This paper brings institutional tracking features to the foreground and examines the process by which individuals advance from middle school to high school, and ultimately to college. The analysis also accounts for social origin effects, thereby allowing us to re-examine claims of meritocracy in conjunction with institutional tracking effects. I find support for a tournament-like mobility of individuals in the system of higher education in Japan, where those who move down donft move up again. My research also finds strong evidence that social origin matters, and that institutional tracking affects men and women in different ways.