The key role attributed to elite higher education institutions as gatekeepers for access to elite positions has given way to a growing consensus on their autonomy to set up their own conditions for admission (Douglass 2005). However, although these institutions have all developed autonomous criteria that reflect internal struggles between administrators and teachers and competitive external pressures from similar organizations, these criteria are also conditioned by their relationships with feeder secondary schools and with different types of clients (Karabel 2005). These relationships have undergone considerable changes from the beginning of the 20th century but are also subject to important cross-national variation according to the structure of educational systems and to the distribution of power among status groups in society (Letendre et al., 2006). Drawing on a comparative perspective on the selection practices of elite educational institutions in France, the UK and the US, the first part of this presentation will focus on the degree of "bonding" between elite colleges and some types of secondary schools and on the relative importance of "chartering" and "bartering", that is of the specific curriculum of secondary schools and of the links they have developed with elite colleges in this process (Persell and Cookson 1985, Karen 1990). The second part will analyse how these institutional linkages are either reinforced, restructured or radically altered by established social elites and by newcomers through parental choice and intervention in schools (Bourdieu and Passeron 1964, Power et al. 2003) In conclusion, the presentation will address the questions of how different modes of institutional and social closure in elite education interact with changes in each educational system and with the growing or diminishing importance of economic, cultural and social capital and how they maintain or reinforce inequalities between social and ethnic groups (van Zanten, 2009).

This presentation will be based on an on-going research project on changes in elite education and training in France. Using original empirical data, both statistic and qualitative (interviews and observations) concerning the admission process, the institutional linkages and the social composition of several elite institutions in France, it will analyse the dominant features of social and institutional closure in elite institutions in the French context (Draelants & van Zanten, 2009). These features will also be compared with the dominant features of elite institutions in the UK and the US drawing on a large literature review of research studies on this topic in the last two countries and on some original empirical material.

The purpose of this presentation is twofold. The first is to document in detail specific national and institutional configurations concerning selection procedures, institutional linkages and group strategies and their impact on educational and social inequalities. The second is to develop a more comprehensive theoretical perspective on social and institutional closure based on "institutional educational capital" (Parkin 1974, Bourdieu 1989).