The social-origin gap in university graduation by gender and immigrant status: a cohort analysis for Switzerland

Abstract

A large literature shows that families with more resources are able to provide better learning environments and make more ambitious educational choices for their children. At the end of compulsory education, the result is a social-origin gap in school-track attendance and learning outcomes. Our paper analyses whether this gap further widens thereafter for children with comparable school achievement, and whether the gap varies by gender and migrant status. We examine graduation rates from higher education by combining a cohort study from Switzerland with a reweighting method to match students on their school track, grades, reading literacy and place of residence at the end of compulsory school. The one observed feature that sets them apart is their parents’ socio-economic status. When analysing their graduation rates 14 years later at the age of 30, we find a large social-origin gap. The rate of university completion at age 30 is 20 percentage points higher among students from the highest socio-economic status quartile than among students from the lowest quartile, even though their school abilities were comparable at age 16. This gap appears to be somewhat smaller among women than men, and among natives than migrants, but differences are not statistically significant. For men and women, migrants and natives alike, abundant parental resources strongly increase the likelihood of university graduation in Switzerland.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>A unique cohort study allows us to follow youth through education from ages 16 to 30.</li><br /><li>For youth with the same academic achievement at age 16, university graduation differs widely by class origin.</li><br /><li>At 30, the gap in university graduation is over 20 percentage points between the most and least advantaged youth.</li><br /><li>Yet there is no social-origin gap for completion of universities of applied sciences.</li></ul>

Mental health, gender, and higher education attainment

“… 2013 ). Yet multiple prior studies that estimated various analytic models based on the TREE sample or subsamples detected significant regression coefficients with tendencies toward small standard errors (e.g., Burger 2021 , 2023 ; Combet and Oesch 2020 ; Keller et al. 2015 ).…”

Gendered ethnic choice effects at the transition to upper secondary education in Switzerland

“…Disadvantages in the educational attainment of youth with a migrant background are often attributed to primary ethnic effects , i.e., poorer academic performance than their majority peers at school entry and at later stages when controlling for social origin (Meunier, 2011 ; Borgna and Contini, 2014 ; Contini and Azzolini, 2016 ; Veerman and Dronkers, 2016 ; Spörlein and Schlueter, 2018 ; Kristen, 2019 ; Nauck, 2019 ; Becker and Klein, 2021 ). In contrast, however, advantages in educational trajectories— a higher propensity to opt for academic tracks at upper secondary and tertiary level— have also been observed for migrant groups in many countries when controlling for prior achievement and endowment with family resources ( secondary ethnic effects ; see Kilpi-Jakonen 2011 ; Tjaden and Scharenberg 2017 ; Hadjar and Scharf 2018 ; Dollmann and Weißmann 2020 ; Combet and Oesch 2021 ). The secondary ethnic effect refers to the paradoxical finding that, despite the educational disadvantages faced by young people from certain ethnic groups, migrants are more likely to opt for academic tracks than their native classmates, controlling for social class and prior school performance (Kristen et al, 2011 ; Salikutluk, 2016 ).…”

The Structural Shifts in Switzerland’s Economy and Society, 2000–2020

“…A second consequence is that social origin has a particularly strong influence on who obtains a university degree in Switzerland (Becker and Schoch 2018). Young people who achieve the same school grades and PISA test scores at age sixteen are twice as likely to have a university degree by age thirty if their parents belong to the upper middle class rather than the working class (Combet and Oesch 2021). Switzerland is thus one of the European countries where the influence of parental resources on educational pathways and attainment is particularly strong (Pfeffer 2008).…”