Title:
Social Origin and Discontinuities in Higher Education Careers A Comparison between Germany and the US

Abstract:

Previous research as shown that social origin affects educational attainment. In the light of increasing participation in tertiary education, there has recently been growing interest in social selectivity at the tertiary level and how these differences are conditioned by educational institutions.
In this paper we examine a particular feature of educational careers in postsecondary education, namely labor force participation before final graduation comparing Germany and the US. We analyze two different aspects of discontinuities in education: First we look at tertiary graduates asking who – in terms of social origin and other individual characteristics – has achieved the final degree ‘in one go’ and who has interrupted education. Second, we are interested in the decision process of returning to education being in the labor market and examine the influence of social origin on re-enrollment.
To explain the micro processes we build on theories of educational decisions, for comparing differences in social origin effects in Germany and US we use a characterization of each country’s ‘transition regime’ of higher education. We expect that working class children more often interrupt their educational career and that this effect is weaker in the US. At the same time, once in the labor market service class children are expected to be more likely to return to education, in particularly in the US.
Our empirical analyses only partly confirm our hypotheses: Although there are some class differences at first sight, these are small and almost disappear if we take other variables into account. Hence on both – patterns of interrupted educational careers and the decision to return to higher education – parental class has only a marginal influence. Rather, individual characteristics such as gender and ability and institutional factors such as having attended lower tiers of higher education or having achieved a vocational degree are the main variables of influence. Comparing Germany and the US, class differences are slightly stronger in the US, but here “ability” explains most of the class differences in re-enrolment rates.