This study calls for a broadening of the perspective on academic success. While passing exams is an essential objective of higher education, it should not overshadow another important objective which is the development of students' skills, such as becoming curious, autonomous and reflective in the learning process. This study used Academic…

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to examine the compensation effect when young students decide among different tertiary education options. We begin with an analysis of the transition to higher vocational training programmes or university degree programmes. For those choosing the university option, we then analyse the risk (high or low) of…

This article aims to examine alternative explanations of social disadvantage on the university-to-work transition experiences of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students. 'Becoming employable' during the university-to-work transition is reflected in three ways: students' cognition/patterns of thinking (i.e. perceived…

Degree transfer is understood as the increasingly common phenomenon among students of changing university degrees or university, especially after the first or second years of the degree. The profile of students who transfer (3,861students, 8.3% of students) is constructed based on microdata from the University Pre-enrolment Register of Catalonia…

Research on intercultural interactions in higher education focuses on measuring student attitudes and degrees of cosmopolitanism, but there is little theoretically and empirically informed effort to understand 1) the nature of these campus interactions as ordinary, embodied, and routine, and 2) the cultural and social impact of campus…

Little empirical literature assessing the impact of Erasmus study program on graduate career prospects exists. All too often, the empirical evidence available is either bias or indirect. Furthermore, the existing differences among study mobility participants and non-participant peers in terms of ability, socioeconomic background or field of study…

The evidence on why students from lower social origin are persistently underrepresented in higher education (HE) suggests social, educational and economic factors all play a role. We concentrate on the influence of monetary costs/benefits and how these are influenced by social origin. In particular, we consider the effect of a class-based wage…

The positive side of employment during studies is the increase of net investments in human capital. The main objective of this paper is to discover factors influencing the work of students in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro and to compare students' employment in these three Western Balkan countries. Quantitative analysis based on…

This study investigated labour-market orientations of students at a Swedish University with a dual/diverse focus on vocational/academic objectives. The aim was to investigate whether and how levels of students' labour-market orientation vary with social background, change during the study period, and are related to approaches to studying and…

Higher education choice has been a central theme in sociological research in recent decades, especially following the policies for the widening of participation adopted in many countries. Research has shown a relationship between social class and higher education choice, and this is a reason why the expansion of higher education does not reduce…

The article describes a test-blind admission initiative in a Chilean research university aimed at expanding the inclusion of talented, albeit educationally and socially disadvantaged, students. The outcomes of the test-blind admission cohort were compared with those of students admitted via the regular admission procedure to the same academic…

The aim of this article is twofold: to further investigate the type of higher education institution choice using individual-level data on first-year students, and to establish the link between institution choice and the decision whether to leave home. The analysis was performed for Portuguese higher education by means of a bivariate probit model.…

This article explores the use of narrative analysis to provide a methodology for student learning research with a sociocultural orientation. The narrative which is the primary focus of this article is drawn from a study in which a series of individual interviews was conducted with a class of senior engineering students. The interview with a…

Mandatory internships are implemented in higher education curricula in order to ease the labour market integration of graduates. This article evaluates the utility of mandatory internships in Germany by assessing the effect on graduates' transition from higher education to work. The authors examine whether these compulsory programmes provide extra…

The influence of social background, sex and intelligence on the utilization of study assistance in Sweden and the influence of all these variables on degree completion among students in higher education are investigated. The groups studied were two nationally representative samples of individuals born in 1948 and 1953. (Author/MLW)