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The purposes of the equity indicators project are to: report the status of higher education equity in the United States and identify changes over time in measures of equity; identify policies and practices that promote and hinder progress; and illustrate the need for increased support of policies, programs, and practices that not only improve overall attainment in higher education but also create greater equity in higher education opportunity and outcomes. By pulling together available historical statistics, the report aims to understand how to foster the evolution of a dynamic higher educational system that provides equity of opportunity while respecting the diversity of talents and gifts among students. This report draws from multiple sources of existing data to provide, in one place, indicators that describe trends in equity in postsecondary enrollment, choice, and degree attainment, as well as indicators of college affordability. As in previous Indicators reports, the data in the 2019 Indicators show persisting inequality in higher education opportunity based on family income, race/ethnicity, parent education, and geographic location. While there has been an increase in postsecondary attainment since these words were articulated in the late 1940s, new forms of inequity and stratification are evolving, as education becomes one of the chief ways of differentiating wages and salaries and quality of life indicators.

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In the expanded higher education in China, middle-class students are found to have better access to job information than their underprivileged counterparts; they also gain better jobs in the labour market. Researchers have turned to social capital theory to explain this phenomenon, claiming that middle-class students with wider social network and higher status contacts are more likely to acquire better jobs. Instead of following the social capital approach, this study examines the job search discrepancy between two student groups by investigating the role of parents, that is, parental involvement both prior to and during the graduates' job search, and the influence of parents in the job search. Sixty fourth-year students from middle-class and underprivileged social backgrounds in Wuhan were interviewed from 2011 to 2012. Based on these data, middle-class parents are more extensively involved in the job search of their children by offering social ties, constructing middle-class accredited qualities for their children and supervising the job search behaviour of their children. By contrast, underprivileged parents know little about the campus life and job searching experiences of the children. Thus, these parents participate less actively in the job search of their children.

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Recent studies in Australia have found that bachelor's degree participation in vocational institutions in Australia tends to skew towards students from high and middle socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. This outcome runs counter to overall vocational participation which is dominated by students from low and middle SES backgrounds. This paper uses data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) to confirm findings from a mixed-methods study on bachelor courses in vocational institutions by school leaver-aged students. It characterises the student population in such courses and examines evidence on the influence of determinants of bachelor participation in vocational institutions, in relation to measures of family background, wealth and cultural status and school type.

It is found that students entering bachelor programs in vocational education have higher household levels of cultural possession, are more likely to plan to enter university, and have higher self-assessments of academic ability than those undertaking traditional vocational qualification pathways, but lower than those who undertook bachelor qualifications at university.

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It is well-documented that women and racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the economics profession, relative to both the general population and other academic disciplines. Less is known about the socioeconomic diversity of the economics profession. In this paper, we use data on parental education from the Survey of Earned Doctorates to examine the socioeconomic background of US economics [Doctor of Philosophy] PhD recipients, as compared to other disciplines. We find that economics PhD recipients are substantially more likely to have highly educated parents, and less likely to have parents without a college degree, than PhD recipients in other non-economics disciplines. This is true for both US-born PhD recipients and non-US-born PhD recipients, but is particularly stark for the US-born. The gap in socioeconomic diversity between economics and other PhD disciplines has increased over the last five decades, and particularly over the last two decades.

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When young people are not certain, or struggle to make decisions about their future careers, they can feel anxious or concerned. These types of feelings can be a common cause of stress in educational settings. Here we share a brief questionnaire that can help young people to become more aware of their feelings associated with career decision-making. The questionnaire can facilitate productive career conversations between them and others, such as career practitioners, teachers and parents or carers.

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Using survey data from 1028 high school seniors and interview data from 54 participants, this study investigates the status quo regarding equity and access to higher education in China. Findings indicate that students from higher socioeconomic family backgrounds, better high schools, and more urban homes are more likely to be admitted into prestigious colleges. [The authors] conclude that the surface fairness of the Gaokao system that allocates students to different college prestige strata masks an underlying design of deep social inequity. [The authors] finally recommend strategies to reform the admissions process in order to achieve greater fairness in university access in China.

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We study the impact of higher education financing on the academic aspirations of teenagers and of their parents. We exploit a reform which introduced a large increase in the maximum university tuition fees and a more redistributive student loan system, both of which varied across the UK's constituent countries. Using rare survey data on postcompulsory secondary and university education aspirations, we find that teenagers' aspirations are not responsive to large changes in higher education financing. In contrast, the socio-economic gap in parental aspirations for their childrens' education is reduced through the reform, in accordance with the redistributive financing policies set by policy-makers.

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Socioeconomic measures of student participation in higher education are generally based on spatial measures such as postcode or more currently, Statistical Areas Level 1 (SA1). Another approach is to consider students' background in terms of parental occupation, both as a measure of socioeconomic status (SES) and also to provide information on intergenerational effects on participation in higher education. Using this methodology the authors consider here the population who are 18 or 19 years old and still living at home, and use census data to determine their study attendance and parental occupation.

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This thesis is about the effects of social origin and education on young people's transition from school to employment in a situation where unemployment among the educated is high. The study is mainly based on a survey of 3000 respondents, and in-depth interviews. Social origin and education determine the pattern of transition of the young people: their search behaviour, job search methods, job search process and the outcome, occupational attainment. Children of parents with low education have longer unemployment periods, find jobs that are unmatched with their education and consequently, tend to continue searching for alternative jobs while employed. Continued searching for job while employed or unemployed appears to be a result of 'coercion' rather than 'luxury'. This may relate to the fact that the socio-economic status of their parents, measured by education and occupation, provides occupations that were significantly low. The significant effect of the types of help given by parents on children's occupations also suggests that the involvement of parents in job acquisition is important in paving the way for their children's careers. Education also has significant and independent effects on occupation, so education also provides a channel for social mobility. Nevertheless, since parents' education has strong effects on both children's education and occupation, it seems that there is still a strong tendency for socio-economic status transmission from generation to generation, or a vicious circle: poor children get poor education and jobs.

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Whether economic globalisation is associated with a narrowing or a widening of the social class gap between the education and occupation expectations of Sri Lankan youth is examined through a test of four hypotheses. Methodologically, the study employs the estimated parameters from a system of seemingly unrelated equations for testing hypotheses. Youth expectations for education and occupation are higher than those of their parents when young. Social class effects vary among youth and fathers and mothers when young. The occupation expectations of youth show a widening gap between the middle and low social classes. In all other comparisons, the gaps are positive, indicating a widening, but none attains statistical significance. Causal explanations are explored and the implications for future investigations are identified.

Published abstract reprinted from ‘International journal of educational development’, copyright 2008, with permission from Elsevier. Show less