The Perceived Quality, Fairness of and Corruption in Education in Europe

Although education is arguably one of the most central institutions in contemporary European societies, only recently scholars have started to study opinions that relate to the perceived legitimacy of education among the public at large. This paper contributes to this emerging literature. Based on data from the most recent wave of the European Quality of Life Survey (N = 23,073; 30 countries) we assess what individual- and country-level factors predict citizens’ satisfaction with educational quality and the perceived fairness of/corruption in education. At the individual level, we find that indicators of one’s material vs. educational position are inversely related to the perceived quality, fairness, and corruption of the education system. At the macro level, it turns out that in countries that perform better on PISA tests the perceived educational quality is higher and the perceived corruption lower. In the conclusion we elaborate on the implications of our findings.