This paper examines how gendered patterns of educational opportunity have shifted across two generations of Ontario Grade 12 students—the survey-based Class of 1973 and the administrative Class of 2014—with a particular focus on the emergence and growth of gender gaps that now favor women. The Class of ’73 study has followed more than 2,500 late Baby Boom students from adolescence into their sixties, documenting how education, work, family, and health trajectories unfolded over nearly fifty years. Its mixed-methods, life-course approach reveals a cohort that entered adulthood at a time when women’s university participation and professional employment were expanding but still constrained by strong gender norms, occupational segregation, and persistent pay gaps.

The new Class of ’14 cohort consists of over 100,000 Grade 12 students in Ontario in 2013–14, most of whom began secondary school in 2009–10 or 2010–11. Using linked administrative data, this cohort will include detailed information on secondary achievement (English/French and Mathematics course performance, program and streaming choices, and timing of high school graduation), alongside gender, immigration-related variables (birthplace and arrival date in Canada), and, where available, parental income drawn from income tax data. Postsecondary trajectories will be constructed through linkages to the national Postsecondary Student Information System, allowing us to follow university and college enrolment and graduation for at least ten years after high school, capturing direct transitions from secondary to postsecondary education.

The central analytic focus of the paper is on how gender gaps in educational pathways and outcomes have not only narrowed but, in many domains, reversed across these generations. For the Class of ’73, early analyses highlighted gendered steering in secondary school programs, male advantage in certain postsecondary fields, and more linear occupational careers for men relative to women, even as women’s educational gains accelerated over the life course. By contrast, preliminary work with students similar to the Class of ’14 indicates that young women now outpace young men on multiple dimensions: they are more likely to pursue academic streams in secondary school, to achieve higher marks in key gateway subjects, to transition directly into university, and to complete degrees within the first decade after high school.

The paper will address two sets of questions. First, how have the mechanisms that generate gender differences in postsecondary participation and completion changed over time, particularly with respect to secondary streaming, achievement, and family socioeconomic background? Second, how do intersecting factors such as immigrant status, region (urban, suburban, rural), and parental income reshape these gender gaps within each cohort and across generations?

The paper will then review two future steps in the project. Firstly, we will examine new variables not yet in the Class of ’14 dataset that can be directly compared to the Class of ’73. Secondly, we will outline our key next question: do the new female advantages in educational attainment translate into comparable gains in labour market positioning, or do they coexist with persistent gendered inequalities in field of study, occupation, and earnings as observed among the Class of ’73 in midlife and later life?

By placing the administrative Class of ’14 in dialogue with the long-running Class of ’73 study, the paper offers a rare, generational perspective on gender and education in a single provincial system that underwent massive expansion, diversification, and policy change over five decades. Methodologically, it illustrates the strengths and limits of combining life-course survey evidence with large-scale administrative data to understand how institutional arrangements and social norms produce and redistribute advantage by gender over time. Substantively, it argues that the rise of female advantage in educational attainment—while a major achievement of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century schooling—does not straightforwardly erase older forms of gender inequality. Instead, it reconfigures where and how gendered advantage and disadvantage appear in the transition from school to work.

In a context marked by disinformation, social fragmentation, geopolitical instability, and increasing scepticism toward expert knowledge, higher education institutions (HEIs) are called to rearticulate their social contract with society. Trust in higher education does not emerge solely from research excellence or rankings; it is built through everyday experiences of inclusion, dialogue, participation, and shared responsibility. Within this framework, fostering students’ sense of belonging and active participation becomes a cornerstone of strengthening trust between higher education and society.

This presentation introduces the UNICOMM Project – University Community Active Participation Project (2022–2025), co-funded by the European Union and implemented by a consortium consisting of the University of Warsaw (coordinator), the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Palacký University Olomouc, and the European Students’ Union. UNICOMM addresses the question: How can HEIs cultivate inclusive communities that enhance student engagement, belonging, and mutual trust in times of uncertainty?

Grounded in research on student engagement and belonging (e.g., Klemenčič, 2015), and informed by a cross-institutional survey and participatory activities, UNICOMM conceptualises engagement broadly as citizenship-related involvement, volunteering, representation, and active contribution to university life. Belonging is understood as perceived insider status, psychological ownership, and organisational identification. The project responds directly to post-pandemic fragmentation and the weakening of relational bonds within academic communities.

The presentation will focus on the final output of the project – the UNICOMM HintBook: Building Stronger Communities in Higher Education (2025) – a practice-oriented framework synthesising lessons learned from workshops, summer academies, peer coaching groups, podcasts, and institutional collaborations. Rather than offering prescriptive checklists, the HintBook proposes ten interrelated “hints” that function as adaptable principles for diverse European contexts. Key themes include:

• Cooperation instead of competition within institutions to foster coherent and inclusive support ecosystems;
• Low-threshold entry points for engagement to widen participation, especially for international and working students;
• Well-being-oriented initiatives that integrate academic and non-academic dimensions of student life;
• The metaphor of the university as an “airbag” – a safe space where students can experiment, lead, and learn from mistakes;
• Flexible formats (hybrid, asynchronous, recognition-based) to accommodate diverse student realities;
• Staff well-being and peer support as prerequisites for sustainable student engagement;
• Inclusive communication practices, particularly in multilingual and multicultural settings;
• Multi-vector learning, positioning students not only as recipients but as co-creators and experts.

Drawing on concrete examples (e.g., masterclasses on community building, student-led workshops, peer coaching networks, volunteering collaborations, and student rights workshops), the presentation demonstrates how structured yet flexible institutional support can foster agency, responsibility, and shared values. A recurring finding of the project is that when students experience genuine partnership, transparency, and recognition, they are more likely to trust institutional processes and to see the university as “their” community.

Importantly, UNICOMM links micro-level practices (coffee breaks, inclusive language, informal exchanges) with macro-level outcomes (institutional legitimacy, democratic participation, and societal trust). By lowering participation barriers and valuing diverse motivations for engagement, HEIs can counteract exclusivity and social bubbles, thus reinforcing their public role. The project shows that trust-building is not achieved through communication strategies alone but through lived experiences of fairness, dialogue, and shared governance.

For Track 1, this contribution highlights how teaching and learning environments can be expanded beyond the classroom into holistic community ecosystems. It addresses the growing role of AI, social media, and misinformation indirectly by strengthening critical belonging: students who feel heard, respected, and involved are more resilient to polarisation and more inclined to engage constructively in societal debates.

The session will combine conceptual framing with transferable tools from the UNICOMM Toolbox and HintBook, inviting participants to reflect on how their own institutions can operationalise trust-building through inclusive student engagement. By presenting UNICOMM as a replicable European model, we aim to contribute to the Forum’s broader discussion on responsible governance, stakeholder inclusion, and transformative change in higher education.

Supporting students throughout their academic trajectory is widely regarded as a core responsibility of higher education institutions. Despite growing diversity in student backgrounds, employment patterns, and life circumstances, many European higher education systems continue to operate under a model in which academic progression is treated predominantly as the responsibility of the individual student [1].

Students who deviate from linear study trajectories are frequently left to navigate challenges on their own – particularly in the later phases of their studies. Institutional support structures are usually concentrated in the first semesters [2], reflecting well-established research on school-to-university transition and first-year retention. However, little attention has been paid to disengagement processes occurring in the late phases of study.

This study reports first findings on an understudied student population: Near-completion students. These students have successfully completed the majority of a bachelor’s curriculum (150 ECTS or more), but have disengaged from university, and are typically inactive over several semesters up to years and even decades. At the same time, they continue to re-enrol each semester, despite incurring a tuition fee.

Because they do not officially drop out, near-completion students usually remain invisible to institutions, despite their high potential for graduation, with only a few courses missing. From an institutional perspective, this raises important questions about how universities can counteract disengagement at late stages of study. Losing these students this close to graduation is certainly a net loss, as both, the concerned students as well as the universities have invested considerable time, effort, and resources for them to reach this point of their studies [3]

The research is done as part of Project 150+, which explicitly aims to understand the situation of near-completion students and develop evidence-based approaches to support them. This study addresses two central research questions: RQ1. What reasons do near-completion students report for their prolonged inactivity? RQ2. Do these reasons differ between study programmes?

Students at five different faculties of a technical university indicated reasons for their prolonged inactivity in a survey. A total of 167 respondents selected multiple responses from a set of reasons derived from the literature, as well as the options “Other reason” and “Degree no longer needed.”

As the selected reasons are nested within participants and thus not statistically independent, generalised estimating equations (GEE; [4) were used to model whether specific reasons were selected more frequently by students from different study programmes.

The results show that some reasons for prolonged near-completion are significantly more prevalent than others, most notably employment. However, the interaction terms between selected reasons and study programme were not statistically significant. This indicates that the reasons underlying prolonged near-completion are not specific to particular study programmes, but are largely shared across faculties at this technical university.

These findings carry important implications for universities seeking to re-engage students late in the student life cycle. Rather than requiring interventions that are tailor-cut to specific study programmes, the results suggest that broad support measures may be effective across different technical study programmes.

By shedding light on reasons for disengagement late in the student lifecycle, this study contributes to discussions on institutional responsibility, and support in higher education. If higher education institutions aim to foster trust and meaningful engagement across the entire student life cycle, support must extend beyond the entry phase and address the realities of non-linear student trajectories.