Abstract
Using data from a recent survey of Australian secondary students, we find that those from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to aspire to attend university. The same can be said for students who do not speak English at home. We find that students with an ethnic minority background are more likely to perceive higher levels of support from parents. However, we find that all students believe they receive encouragement from their parents to do well at school (rather than discouragement or disinterest), and that there is little difference in the level of importance placed on the views of parents between students from English and non-English speaking background. While interest in university education is strong across all socio-economic groups, particularly for students who do not speak English at home, there is a considerable gap between aspirations and enrolment levels. We suggest that this ‘aspirations gap’ is larger for students from low socio-economic backgrounds. This analysis also supports growing evidence that the postcode methodology for allocating socio-economic status to individuals is unreliable.
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Notes
See Box 1 in the following section for a list of these categories.
The educational outcomes of individuals who reported their aspirations were not directly followed-up. Instead, in this study, the educational outcomes of these students are assumed to be the same as the average of the school they attend.
The Aspirations Online research project was sponsored by the former Equity and Social Justice Branch at Victoria University.
Aspirations Online gave participating students entry to a draw for prizes of electronic goods.
Some students will ultimately complete (or at least commence) a TAFE course with the view of enrolling in a University Degree. However, it is important to note that we are dealing with the student’s aspirations. How they achieve their aspirations is not of concern to this paper.
Such subjects include higher level mathematics, physics and languages.
The analysis was first undertaken using the student’s place of birth. However, it was found that it had no relationship with aspirations. These results are likely due to the low frequency of students from many different countries (62 countries in all).
While we have not attempted to explain this finding in this paper, it warrants further investigation.
No attempt has been made to differentiate between these theories in this paper.
Students in the survey identified themselves as born in 62 different countries, highlighting the multi-cultural nature of the western suburbs of Melbourne. The table presenting this data is necessarily large so has been omitted for the sake of brevity. This information is available from the authors upon request.
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Acknowledgments
The Aspirations Online research project was sponsored by the former Equity and Social Justice Branch at Victoria University. A number of colleagues have worked on aspects of this project. In particular we would like to thank Dr Jo Vu, School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University and Denise Bett, Manager of the former Equity and Social Justice Branch, Victoria University and leader of the Aspirations Online Project Team. We would also like to thank Kate O’Rourke, Kathryn O’Rourke, Katia Honour, and Peter O’Callaghan for their contributions to the Aspirations Project. Finally we wish to thank the anonymous referees for their useful comments. All errors and omissions remain our own.
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Bowden, M.P., Doughney, J. Socio-economic status, cultural diversity and the aspirations of secondary students in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. High Educ 59, 115–129 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9238-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9238-5