Ausgangspunkt des Buches ist das für Deutschland konstatierte Problem geringer Studierendenquoten bei gleichzeitig ausgeprägter sozialer Ungleichheit im Studium. Das Buch untersucht dabei individuelle und institutionelle Hürden bei der Umsetzung von Studienaspirationen und fragt, ob es selbst auf diesem "kurzen Stück" ins Studium soziale Herkunftsunterschiede gibt. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stehen theoretisch wie quantitativ empirisch verschiedene Phasen der Aspirationsumsetzung – Intention, Bewerbung, Zulassung, Studienaufnahme – sowie die direkte und indirekte Rolle von Gatekeepingprozessen an deutschen Hochschulen.; The book examines individual and institutional barriers that high school graduates with college aspirations face and asks whether there are social background differences even within this highly selective group. It focuses theoretically as well as empirically on different phases – intentions, applications, admissions, enrolment – and allows a first glance on the direct and indirect influence of gatekeeping processes of German universities.
This article examines under which conditions high school students' college aspirations (unconstrained wishes) translate into (constrained) college intentions. Drawing on the Wisconsin model of status attainment and sociological rational choice theory, it is argued that - while educational aspirations are mainly the result of socialization processes within families and schools - educational intentions are constrained by institutional opportunities and barriers emerging from the higher education system, which might influence students from different social backgrounds in different ways. The focus lies on four institutional characteristics of German higher education institutions - namely geographical distance, reputation, selection procedures and the information provided by colleges. Methodologically, I draw on a factorial survey on application intentions for college programs that is integrated in a survey of Berlin high school students who indicated an aspiration to attend college one year before graduating. The findings suggest that distance from home is an especially strong constraint on college application intentions. The effects of the institutional dimensions, however, rarely differ for students from different social backgrounds. Nevertheless, social background differences can be observed regarding the overall strength of application intentions indicating that socially advantaged students feel generally less constrained by the institutional characteristics presented to them. The implications of these findings are discussed.
On the basis of theories of cultural reproduction and rational choice, we examine whether access to study-abroad opportunities is socially selective and whether this pattern changed during educational expansion. We test our hypotheses for Germany by combining student survey data and administrative data on higher education entry rates. We find that studying abroad was socially selective during the entire observation period. Selectivity increased between 1991 and 2003 and hardly changed thereafter. Unexpectedly, the expansion of higher education does not explain this development. We also find that students from a high social background are more likely to choose exclusive types of stays abroad, that is, prolonged stays and stays funded through study-abroad scholarships. Regarding access to scholarships, social inequality increased as studying abroad became less exclusive. High-background students thus seem to replace their prior practices with more exclusive study-abroad practices.
Abstract Research has shown that admission to prestigious higher education programs varies by students' socio-economic status (SES). Access to these programs is characterized by high competition and often rather complex admission procedures. Thus, access may depend not only on students' performance and decisions to apply but also on their application patterns: Where and how they apply, which may vary by social background due to differences in educational achievement, aspirations, and constraints. Using applications to highly prestigious medical programs in Germany, we examine whether admission chances are socially selective even among the positively selected group of applicants, and whether this is due to SES differences in application patterns or performance. Based on complete application register data, we identify application patterns through cluster analysis. We then used the resulting cluster model to predict cluster membership in the 2018 applicant cohort, for which we collected survey data with information on applicants' SES, preferences, and motivations. We find that application patterns vary primarily by applicants' performance (grades and test scores) and SES-specific geographic constraints. However, our multivariate analyses on admission chances show that application patterns do not mediate SES differences in admission chances. Instead, these differences are entirely due to SES differences in applicants' performance.
Der vorliegende Datensatz "Auswahlverfahren an deutschen Hochschulen" wurde im Rahmen des Projektes "Berliner-Studienberechtigten-Panel (Best Up)" erstellt. Es wurden ausführliche Informationen zu Wettbewerbssituation und Auswahlverfahren an deutschen (insbesondere Berliner) Hochschulen für die Wintersemester 2013/14 - 2015/16 zusammengetragen und systematisiert. Als Quellen dienten frei zugängliche Dokumente auf den Internetseiten der Hochschulen sowie der Stiftung für Hochschulzulassung.
Akademikerkinder gehen häufiger während des Studiums ins Ausland. Ihr Vorsprung hat zwischen 1997 und 2006 sogar zugenommen. Die Weichen werden in der Schulzeit gestellt: Schüler mit Auslandserfahrung studieren später öfter international.
In: Discussion Papers / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Forschungsschwerpunkt Bildung, Arbeit und Lebenschancen, Abteilung Ausbildung und Arbeitsmarkt, Band SP I 2011-503
This discussion paper deals with the social selectivity of internationally mobile German students prior to and after the Bologna Process thereby linking two mobility dimensions that a very rarely brought together - social and spatial mobility. Tackling this issue on multiple levels, I ask how student mobility is understood within key Bologna documents (declarations and communiqués) and how this is related to the social selectivity of international mobility among university students in Germany before and after the begin of the Bologna process (1998/99). At the European level, I examine the Bologna model of mobility as it is presented within central documents of the Bologna Process using a theory-guided qualitative content analysis. Sociological Neo-Institutionalism serves as theoretical and analytical framework to investigate institutional facilitators and barriers to the diffusion of the mobility model to the national and individual levels. Afterwards, I contextualize the German higher education system and describe the specific reception and translation of the Bologna model of mobility by German actors in higher education. At the individual level, Bourdieu's theory of educational reproduction is applied to the case of international student mobility to explain the socially stratified mobility behavior of German students with regard to the decision to go abroad, the country of destination and the duration of a study-related stay abroad. Further, I analyze the impact of the Bologna Process using survey data provided by the German National Association of Student Affairs (Deutsches Studentenwerk) of two cohorts: pre-Bologna (1997) and post-Bologna (2006). The main findings suggest that the social background of students is especially important when it comes to the decision to go abroad. However, if students have broken through the first obstacle and decided to go abroad, the influence of the social origin on the country of destination and the duration of mobile periods declines. The correlation between social origin and international mobility has, thus far, not weakened over the course of the Bologna Process. Rather, it has increased over time, indicating an incomplete diffusion in Germany of the relatively vague contents of the Bologna model of mobility from the European to the individual level. This result suggests that the Bologna process goals of enhanced spatial and social mobility have not (yet) been achieved. (author's abstract)
Research consistently reports pronounced earnings differences between men and women, even among the highly educated. This article investigates whether students' responsiveness to information on income returns relates to gender differences in major choices, which might contribute to the persistent gender wage gap. We use field-experimental panel data on students in Berlin (Germany), starting one year before high school graduation. Our intervention comprised information on major-specific returns to college and was provided to students in randomly selected schools. By comparing the major-specific application decisions of "treated" and "untreated" high school seniors, we examine whether, and why, male and female students respond differently to this information. As potential mechanisms behind a gender-specific treatment effect, we analyze the role of gender stereotypes and roles associated with certain job attributes. We find that providing income information on college majors only influences the major choices of male (not female) students with college intention: treated male students on average applied to majors associated with higher mean income. Further analyses suggest that this gender difference in the treatment effect cannot be explained by differential distributions or effects of preferred job attributes.
Information deficits are considered an important source of why students from less-privileged families do not enroll in college, even when they are college-eligible and intend to go to college. In this paper, we examine whether correct and detailed information on the costs of and returns to higher education increases the likelihood of college applications of less-privileged high school graduates who expressed college intentions in their junior high school year. We employ an experimental design with a randomly assigned 25-minute information treatment about funding opportunities for, and returns to, higher education given at Berlin schools awarding university entrance qualifications. Our analyses show that our information treatment indeed substantially increases the likelihood of treated less-privileged students to apply to college. Our study indicates that our low-cost provision of financial information not only increased their college knowledge but also substantially changed their college application behavior, despite other existing barriers, like economic constraints.
Akademikerkinder verbringen häufiger Studienzeit im Ausland als Mitstudierende ohne akademisch gebildete Eltern. Dieser Unterschied wurde in den 1990er Jahren größer, seitdem stagniert er auf hohem Niveau. Studierende aus akademischem Elternhaus bekommen häufiger Auslandsstipendien; dieser Unterschied hat zwischen 1991 und 2012 zugenommen.
Hochschulen nutzen verschiedene Möglichkeiten, um den Zugang zum Studium zu begrenzen - über örtliche oder bundesweite Zulassungsbeschränkungen hinaus. Auch in viele formal zulassungsfreie Studiengänge können sich Studienberechtigte nicht "einfach einschreiben". Bewerber*innen sind mit Eignungsfeststellungsverfahren konfrontiert, deren Logik und Anwendung nur selten thematisiert werden.
Die bundesweit zulassungsbeschränkten Studiengänge Humanmedizin, Pharmazie, Tiermedizin und Zahnmedizin gehören zu den selektivsten Studiengängen Deutschlands. Die Studienplatzvergabe wurde wiederholt öffentlich diskutiert und reformiert. Welche leistungsbezogenen und soziodemographischen Merkmale machen eine Zulassung wahrscheinlicher? Welche Strategien wenden Bewerber*innen an? Wie wirken sich Zulassung oder Ablehnung auf Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen und Zielverfolgung aus? Die vorliegenden Daten erlauben es, diese und weitere Fragen zu beantworten. In drei Befragungswellen verfolgen die Daten Bewerber*innen des Wintersemesters 2018/19 und deren weitere (Bildungs-)Wege innerhalb und außerhalb der genannten Studiengänge. Neben der detaillierten Erfassung des Bewerbungsverhaltens und des soziodemographischen/-ökonomischen und leistungsbezogenen Bewerber*innenprofils, enthalten die Daten u.a. Informationen zu Informiertheit, Unterstützung, Präferenzen, Ungleichheits- und Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen, Lebenszielen und Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen.
