Socio-economic differences in university outcomes in the UK: drop-out, degree completion and degree class

Abstract

There are large socio-economic gaps in higher education participation. But returns to education in the UK derive largely from the attainment of qualifications rather than years of study, and additionally vary by institution, subject and degree class for graduates. This paper provides new evidence on what happens to young people from different backgrounds once they arrive at university, exploring socio-economic differences in drop-out, degree completion and degree class. We find that the large raw differences in university outcomes between individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds can largely be explained by the fact that they arrive at university with very different levels of human capital. Comparing individuals on the same course makes relatively little difference to the remaining socio-economic gaps in university outcomes, with those from higher socio-economic backgrounds still 3.4 percentage points less likely to drop-out, 5.3 percentage points more likely to graduate and 3.7 percentage points more likely to graduate with a first or 2:1 than those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. These findings are in stark contrast to similar analysis by school characteristics (e.g. Crawford, 2014), which shows that, amongst students with the same grades on entry to university, those from worse-performing schools are less likely to dropout, more likely to complete their degree and more likely to obtain a first or 2.1 than those from better-performing schools. This suggests that it is more challenging for universities interested in using contextual data to inform their admissions policies to predict those with high potential based on socio-economic background than based on school characteristics.

Graduate returns, degree class premia and higher education expansion in the UK

“…3 If potential university applicants perceive there to be a wide variation in graduate earnings according to academic performance, then this might deter applications -especially among individuals less confident of their capacity to perform well at university. In this context, we note evidence (Smith and Naylor, 2001;Crawford, 2014) that university performance differs by social class of family background. Arcidiacono et al (2010) provide evidence for the US that while signalling in an employer learning/statistical discrimination (EL-SD) approach might be relevant for understanding returns to high school graduates, it is less applicable for college graduates as employers have considerable information about the latter, for whom the grade point average together with transcripts and other information, such as standardised test scores, reveal rather than merely signal ability.…”

Will the Use of Contextual Indicators Make UK Higher Education Admissions Fairer?

“…One study looked at the effects of coming from a school with a high percentage of free school meal recipients, which was found to be positively associated with degree performance after taking prior attainment into account [77]. Seven studies focused on students from poorer performing schools.…”

The contribution of intersectionality to quantitative research into educational inequalities

“…Some progress has been made in this direction, but further work is needed. Also, it is likely that gender, social background and ethnicity interact in predicting additional outcomes that have not been covered in this article, but may be equally important; for example, early years development (Walker et al., ), and university completion (Crawford, ).…”