An explanation of the change that has taken place in the aims and purposes of educational policy of industralized societies as the relationship between the education and the occupation systems has changed over the course of the transformation of elite education into a mass phenomenon is the objective of this paper. Analysis and discussion is based on the thesis that in the course of this transformation process social inequality has seen its legitimization challenged and that the demand that "overqualification" be avoided and the qualification processes be geared to the assumed requirements of the occupational system reflects the conscious or unconscious desire to give social inequality once again the legitimization that had been shaken by the expansion of higher education. A summary of the political debate on the expansion of education is followed by an assessment of the way changes in the relationship between the education and the occupation systems are received in the literature. Attention is given to the ideas that expansion leads to overqualification and that it promotes neither equality of opportunity nor any reduction in social inequality. Current developments are then examined as evidence of a fundamental change in the way qualification and status distribution interact. An additional chapter is devoted to an examination of current trends and tendencies in selection processes in education. The final chapter is a discussion of policy proposals that have been developed with the aim of coping with the problems that have arisen under the conditions now governing selection as a result of mass higher education. West German literature on the subject is given particular attention; developments in the U.S. and Japan are discussed; and material on England and a number of other European countries are employed as well. (JT)