Information barriers and social stratification in higher education: evidence from a field experiment

Abstract

Our contribution assesses the role of information barriers for patterns of participation in Higher Education (HE) and the related social inequalities. For this purpose, we developed a large-scale clustered randomised experiment involving over 9,000 high school seniors from 62 Italian schools. We designed a counseling intervention to correct student misperceptions of the profitability of HE, that is, the costs, economic returns and chances of success of investments in different tertiary programs. We employed a longitudinal survey to test whether treated students' educational trajectories evolved differently relative to a control group. We find that, overall, treated students enrolled less often in less remunerative fields of study in favour of postsecondary vocational programmes. Most importantly, this effect varied substantially by parental social class and level of education. The shift towards vocational programmes was mainly due to the offspring of low-educated parents; in contrast, children of tertiary graduates increased their participation in more rewarding university fields. Similarly, the redistribution from weak fields to vocational programmes mainly involved the children of the petty bourgeoisie and the working class, while upper class students invested in more rewarding university fields. We argue that the status-maintenance model proposed by Breen and Goldthorpe can explain these socially differentiated treatment effects. Overall, our results challenge the claim that student misperceptions contribute to horizontal inequalities in access to HE.

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“…In Chile, where students consulted web pages on returns to higher education, there was also no impact on enrollment rates (Hastings, personalized information about costs and loan options, had even a negative effect on the enrollment behaviors of low-income admitted students, although this effect was not statistically significant (Rosinger, 2016). Even a more intensive intervention which provided personalized information on the costs, benefits and chances of success in higher education through three meetings did not improve access of disadvantaged students in Italy (Abbiati, Argentin, Barone, & Schizzerotto, 2017).…”

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“…Over and above the actual costs of education, children and their families make educational decisions based on their subjective evaluation of costs and benefits (Breen and Goldthorpe 1997). These perceptions can differ by social class due to available information or class-specific constraints and preferences for status maintenance (Abbiati et al 2018;Grodsky and Jones 2007). Such differences in the evaluation of costs and benefits might play a more important role in institutional contexts where the enrolment decision involves significant financial risk.…”

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“…A large-scale clustered randomized experiment (Abbiati et al 2018) involving over 9,000 high school seniors from 62 Italian schools shows that overall, treated students (who were provided personalized information on the costs, benefits and chances of success in HE through three meetings) enrolled less often in less remunerative fields of study in favour of postsecondary vocational programs (the latter was mainly due to the offspring of low-educated parents). The study shows that children of HE graduates increased their participation in more rewarding university fields.…”