In this paper we explore perspectives of academically successful students from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds in an Australian university regarding their success. In response to initiatives arising from the Australian Government's 2008 "Review of Australian Higher Education," university cohorts have increasingly…

This work examines the choices of individuals with respect to higher education in the Czech Republic and Canada. Specifically, how do the students' socioeconomic backgrounds influence their study decisions. Data from the Czech edition of "The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions" survey and the "Canadian Survey…

One consequence of the widened participation in higher education (HE) is that the social demarcation line that once existed at the entrance to HE has moved inside the HE system. This study investigates how students experience social friction when demarcation lines are crossed and how such friction develops over time. This was achieved by repeated…

Applying a Bourdieusian perspective, we investigate whether families' institutionalized cultural capital (parental education) and economic capital (family income) are associated with the duration of university studies in Finland. We use register data comprising 10,516 students enrolled in universities between 1999 and 2002 and Tobit modeling. The…

The integration of educational data mining and deep neural networks, along with the adoption of the Apriori algorithm for generating association rules, focuses to resolve the problem of misdirection of students in the university, leading to their failure and dropout. This is reached through the development of an intelligent model that predicts the…

Understanding social disparities in educational attainment requires understanding of students' decision-making throughout their educational career. We focused on students' pathways throughout upper secondary and higher education (HE), identified common types of pathways and studied the role of SES as a determinant of students' pathways.…

This article explores the normative representations of higher education students in seven films and television series from four European countries. Drawing on the concept of the 'independent learner' as an 'ideal construction', I demonstrate how these texts offer complex and at times paradoxical representations of who gets positioned as the…

In recent years, it has been well established that study abroad participation is a socially selective process. Today, scholars generally focus on single social markers, often using cross-sectional data. In this article, we instead adopt an intersectional and longitudinal approach to improve our understanding of the development of social…

Critical thinking, a complex set of cognitive skills, and the ability to communicate one's thoughts are vital in successful studying for new higher education students. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of socioeconomic background and prior academic performance on new students' critical thinking and writing. The participants were 1006…

The Chinese government has implemented a series of special admission policies in recent years to promote higher education equity. One of the key approaches is the 'Rural Students Quota Plan', which requires elite universities to enrol a certain number of rural students from disadvantaged social and economic backgrounds each year. This study…

Despite a robust body of literature about the choice of students' first postsecondary institution, we have little insight regarding transfer from four-year colleges and universities across socioeconomic groups. In this study, we argue that when entry to selective colleges reaches a heightened level of competitiveness, transfer may be employed by…

The paper focuses on the contradictory results on the effect of social background on choice of field of study (field stratification) in expanded higher education systems. We predicted that the contradictory results stem from variations in institutional selectivity and curricular policy. Based on two surveys conducted in 1999 (4146 students) and…

The discrepancies in college enrollment based on a student's socioeconomic background challenges the upward mobility of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Jesuit colleges and universities, guided by Catholic Social Teaching and their own focus on social justice, are uniquely positioned to facilitate the social mobility of the…

International student mobility (ISM) prepares young people for the challenges of global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lower participation rates in mobility schemes and, hence, benefit less from their positive impacts on career progression. Therefore, policymakers aim to make mobility programs more inclusive.…

Sense of belonging is a fundamental human motivation and, in higher education settings, has been associated with students' motivation and academic outcomes. However, less is known about the nuances of how students define belonging within a university context, and how their gendered and socio-economic identity-based experiences inform these…