Did Educational Expansion Trigger the Development of an Education Society? Chances and Risks of a New Model of Society

This article focuses on the question of whether educational expansion leads to a new type of society, the education society. Taking into consideration the combined elements of three models of society (the post-industrial society, the knowledge society and the information society) – the chances and risks of an educational society will be elicited and, subsequently, confronted with an empirical validation. It turned out that modern societies are not education societies. Only a society which reflects upon the difficulty of the unfair distribution of opportunities through the differential access to knowledge and institutional obstacles of the educational system can become an actual education society.