Social background and university access. Qualifications and degree program choice
Torrents Vilà, Dani (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Grup de Recerca Educació i Treball)
Troiano i Gomà, Helena (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Grup de Recerca Educació i Treball)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Grup de Recerca Educació i Treball

Fecha:	2015
Resumen:	In this communication we explore the relationship between access marks, social background and university degree programs chosen by students. We consider the importance of the decision made taking into account the Desires, Beliefs and Opportunities model proposed by Headström. The main hypothesis would be that social background has an influence on every three of these factors; may this be through primary effects (children from different social background performing differently at school) or through secondary ones (distorted perception of self-performance, different cost/benefit assessment, etc. ) (Boudon). Thus, accessing university through the choice of a particular degree program might be related to the social class of the student, but also conditioned by her access marks. We could expect that potential students from a lower class will need higher marks to dare to choose a more expensive degree. We analyse data from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, 76 degrees and 5000 students, for 2012, just when fees raised a 66% on average (Sacristan & França). Preliminary results show that there aren't big differences among students with lower access marks, whatever may be their social background. Yet we find some important divergent decisions among those students having higher marks: those from higher social backgrounds access much more than the average to especially expensive degree programs, such as Science, Medical and Biosciences; while students from lower social backgrounds choose much more often cheaper degree programs, such as Business, Nursing or one among the whole range of Education. But the question of the operating mechanisms remains unanswered: is this due to different ways of managing risk? Is it related to the expected returns from different degree programs? Is the clue in the different value attributed to long-term o short-term life projects? We claim for the necessary work on qualitative data in order to address these questions.
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Contribució a congrés
Materia:	Degree choice ; University acces ; Social background ; Primary effects
Publicado en:	Conferencia Ibérica de Sociología de la Educación. Lisboa, Portugal, 1a : 2015

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Documentos de investigación > Documentos de los grupos de investigación de la UAB > Centros y grupos de investigación (producción científica) > Ciencias sociales y jurídicas > Grupo de Investigación Educación y Trabajo (GRET)
Contribuciones a jornadas y congresos > Presentaciones