Who actually goes to university?

(2007) - Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez, Fernando Galindo-Rueda, Anna Vignoles

Journal: Empirical Economics
Link:: https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-006-0090-5
DOI:: 10.1007/s00181-006-0090-5
Links::
Tags:: #paper #SocialClass
Cite Key:: [@marcenaro-gutierrezWhoActuallyGoes2007]

Abstract

Access to higher education (HE) is a major policy issue in England and Wales. There is concern that children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are far less likely to get a degree. We analyse the changing association between socio-economic background and the likelihood of going to university, using data from the Youth Cohort Study (YCS), spanning the period 1994–2000. We find evidence of substantial social class inequality in HE participation but conclude that this is largely due to education inequalities that emerge earlier in the education system. Conditional on GCSE and A level performance, we find no additional role for socio-economic background or parental education in determining pupils’ likelihood of going to university.

Notes

“We find evidence of substantial social class inequality in HE participation but conclude that this is largely due to education inequalities that emerge earlier in the education system. Conditional on GCSE and A level performance, we find no additional role for socio-economic background or parental education in determining pupils’ likelihood of going to university.” (Marcenaro-Gutierrez et al., 2007, p. 333)

“Galindo-Rueda et al. (2004) found some widening of the gap in HE participation between students from lower and higher socio-economic backgrounds in the period immediately after the introduction of tuition fees in 1998” (Marcenaro-Gutierrez et al., 2007, p. 335)

“There is a highly significant relationship between a pupil’s socio-economic background and the likelihood of she/he participating in HE. However, we found no evidence of any marginal effect from socio-economic background for a given level of age 16/18 achievement. Thus there is certainly socio-economic inequality in HE but this phenomenon is largely as a result of inequalities and decisions made earlier in the education system, i.e., before the age of 16/18” (Marcenaro-Gutierrez et al., 2007, p. 351)