Abstract
In this paper we investigate social selectivity in access to higher education in Germany and, unlike most previous studies, explicitly devote attention to semi-tertiary institutions such as the so-called universities of cooperative education. Drawing on rational choice models of educational decisions we seek to understand which factors influence upper secondary graduates from different social backgrounds in their choices of diverse tertiary institutions in Germany. We find that scholastic performance, expected job security, study duration, monetary costs and preferences for study content considerably contribute to the creation of socially selective choice patterns of post-secondary careers. The characteristics of semi-tertiary institutions—such as universities of cooperative education that combine firm-based training with tertiary education—constitute a potential alternative that could reduce inequities in access to higher learning.
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Notes
In the case of universities of cooperative education this is usually a private firm, in the case of universities of administration this is the state/public administration.
First, a population weight that was delivered by the data providers accounts for sampling distortions in marginal distributions; second, a panel weight adjusts for selective dropouts between the first wave and our analytical sample; and third, a dataset weight for all analyses that are based on the pooled dataset is applied in order to assign equal weight to observations coming from different datasets. For the analyses we combined the three weights into a single composite weighting factor.
In case this information was missing, it has been replaced by mother’s class.
The working class has not been divided according to parental education since only less than 5 per cent in this category possess a higher education degree.
For about one per cent of the cases, information on grades was missing. In this case, values have been imputed by a regression-based imputation procedure.
The exact wording was: “Please indicate how relevant the following reasons and motives were for the choice of your post-secondary career path”.
About 6–7% of the respondents have missing data on at least one motive item. These missing data have been imputed by a regression-based imputation procedure.
This figure is smaller than the 20% that are usually reported by official statistics since we exclude students that receive their Abitur after vocational training, which is a very common pathway into universities of applied sciences.
At this point, we want to abstain from a more technical description of the method. Interested readers are referred to Fairlie (2005).
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Schindler, S., Reimer, D. Differentiation and social selectivity in German higher education. High Educ 61, 261–275 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9376-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9376-9