Widening participation in higher education: Analysis using linked administrative data

(2013) - Haroon Chowdry, Claire Crawford, Lorraine Dearden, Alissa Goodman, Anna Vignoles

Journal: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
Link::
DOI:: 10.1111/j.1467-985X.2012.01043.x
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Tags:: #paper #Attainment #SocialClass
Cite Key:: [@Chowdry2013]

Abstract

The paper makes use of newly linked administrative education data from England to understand better the determinants of participation in higher education (HE) among individuals from low socio-economic backgrounds. The data are unique in being able to follow the population of two cohorts of pupils in England—those who might have entered HE between 2004–2005 and 2006–2007—from age 11 to age 20 years. The findings suggest that, although large differences in HE participation rates and participation rates at high status universities by socio-economic background remain, these differences are substantially reduced once prior achievement is included. Moreover, these findings hold for both state and private school pupils. This result suggests that poor achievement in secondary schools is more important in explaining lower HE participation rates among pupils from low socio-economic backgrounds than barriers arising at the point of entry to HE. These findings are consistent with the need for earlier policy intervention to raise HE participation rates among pupils from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Notes

“s. The findings suggest that, although large differences in HE participation rates and participation rates at high status universities by socio-economic background remain, these differences are substantially reduced once prior achievement is included.” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 431)

“poor achievement in secondary schools is more important in explaining lower HE participation rates among pupils from low socio-economic backgrounds than barriers arising at the point of entry to HE.” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 431)

“The achievements of pupils in the same school, including whether or not they participate in HE, are likely to have some similarities owing to the influence of schools, peers and teachers within schools. We thus adopt a two-level nested structure with pupils at level 1 grouped within schools at level 2” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 432)

“the observation that the socio-economic difference in participation in HE and achievement worsened in the UK during the 1980s and early 1990s (Blanden and Machin, 2004; Galindo-Rueda et al., 2004; Glennerster, 2001; Machin and Vignoles, 2004), although it appears to have narrowed since then (Raffe et al., 2006)” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 433)

“The evidence for the UK is equally mixed. Gayle et al. (2002) found that differences in participation in HE across different socio-economic groups remained significant, even after allowing for educational achievement in secondary school, suggesting that choices at 18 years of age (and potentially credit constraints) play a role in explaining the inequalities in participation in HE that we observe” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 434)

“The second issue for consideration, however, is the fact that we have a binary outcome variable. To incorporate fixed effects in a binary response model one might estimate a fixed effect logit model. However, the fixed effect logit model would not converge because there are nearly 4000 school fixed effects to estimate” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 443)

“We estimate our models sequentially, separately for males and females.” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 443)

“Throughout the paper, we use the term ‘impact’ to describe the statistical association between SES and the probability of attending university at age 19 or 20 years. We would obviously like to uncover the causal effects of SES on participation in HE; however, in the absence of any experiment or quasi-experiment, it is possible that SES may be endogenous” (Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 447)

“This paper has shown that pupils from lower SES backgrounds are much less likely to participate in HE than pupils from higher SES backgrounds are. However, our findings suggest that this socio-economic difference in university participation does not emerge at the point of entry to HE.”(Chowdry et al., 2013, p. 454)