22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
University, Department, Professors: Levels Of Academic Prestige and Their Relevance for Socially Privileged Students and their Educational Strategies
Gregor Schäfer
FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
Presenting Author: Schäfer, Gregor
This paper reconstructs the relevance and significance of different institutional levels in higher education for educational strategies of socially privileged/upper-class students in a case study in Germany against the backdrop of institutional change in the higher education system.
Whereas in other countries mechanisms of social reproduction in higher education are clearly embedded on the level of universities (e.g. elite universities) due to their pronounced vertical hierarchisation, this is less clear in Germany with its historical egalitarian higher education system. Although domestic policies and developments like the excellence initiative try to introduce stronger vertical stratification to enhance international competitiveness and visibility of German universities, the German higher education system is still considered relatively equal on the university level in comparison with other higher education systems (Deppe et al.2015)
Beyond the literature review on how the current German higher education system changes towards stronger stratification, we also base our empirical study on the theoretical framework of educational strategies, that we defined in our previous work. This draws heavily on Bourdieusian notion of implicit and explicit strategic behaviour and investment of habitus and economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984, 1990). Students from socially privileged background which we define as upper class students, bring a significant different set of capital configurations and habitus to the field of higher education, which usually remains invisible, because of their fit to the logic and rules higher education. However, changes on the macro level like massification and institutional stratification demand reconfigurations and repositioning of privileged students if they want to maintain their advantageous position.
Based on our earlier conceptualisation of educational strategies among upper-class students, we aiming to relate this concept stronger to the institutional changes on the meso level of higher education. We suspect that the horizontal and vertical differentiation on the meso level is mirrored on the micro level of student’s strategy and distinction work. To reconstruct this possible connection is the aim of our empirical inquiry. (For reasons of anonymity, references are omitted.)
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe sample consists of 95 biographical interviews with graduate students from the disciplines of management/business administration, medicine and musicology at full universities. We sampled specifically for different universities within and outside Germany, e.g. excellence status, rankings, prestige. The three disciplines represent different horizontal capital configuration in the context of the introduced theoretical framework of Bourdieusian capital theory, with management highly focused on economic capital and less on cultural capital, whereas in musicology it is the opposite. Medicine in Germany has the highest percentage of students from academic households among all study programmes (Middendorf et al., 2017) and prepares for an occupation with very high symbolic capital in Germany. Before the interview, interviewees were sampled by a short questionnaire that would indicate their social background, asking about their parents’ education, income and job. This was done to ensure an adequate number of interviewees from the higher, middle and lower milieus (Vester, 2003) for the purpose of comparative analysis with a clear focus on the upper milieus (UM) students. The milieus are horizontally differentiated class, but the “line of distinction” (Vester, 2015, p. 149) which separates the upper milieus from the middle milieus (middle class) can also be understand as a class distinction line.
The analysis was realised with the help of the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2014; Nohl, 2010), which proves to be very prolific in explorative studies, as it not limits itself to the content of the interview, but also considers the implicit and habitual dimension of the interview and interviewee. To carve out different forms of educational strategies, potentially along class lines, diverge cases from all over the sample were compared over the issue of educational strategy and distinction, whether openly discussed or transported in the interview as a hidden form of habitus. Based on our initial assumption about social differentiation and distinction this was mainly conducted among vertical and horizontal lines of social stratification of the students (Bourdieu, 1984; Vester, 2003), but also allowed for new insights inductively coming from the material itself. Therefore, we paired the empirical openness of the documentary method with certain theoretical considerations.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe show that upper-class students use different institutional levels of higher education to improve their educational strategies and their relative symbolic position in the field of higher education. This includes utilisation of recent stronger verticalization among universities on the macro level mirrored on the micro level of students' strategies. Another form of this strategy are internationalised study trajectories especially in higher education systems that are strongly stratified. Though this is depending on the discipline, which also goes beyond mere prestige on the institutional level of university. Options for combing subject or studying newly created distinguished programmes are as much important as the reputation and work of the department for students’ symbolic capital strategy. We also show that the most common pattern is the combination of spatial proximity with relative institutional symbolic power for regional upper-class students in demarcation to elite students.
ReferencesBohnsack, Ralf. 2014. “Documentary method.” In The SAGE handbook of qualitative data analysis, edited by Uwe Flick, 217–33. Los Angeles: Sage.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press
.
Deppe, U., Helsper, W., & Kreckel, R. (2015). Germany’s hesitant approach to elite education: Stratification processes in German secondary and higher education. In World Yearbook of Education 2015 (pp. 106-118). Routledge.
Middendorf, Elke, Beate Apolinarski, Karsten Becker, Philipp Bornkessel, Tasso Brandt, Sonja Heißenberg, and Jonas Poskowsky. 2017. Die wirtschaftliche und soziale Lage der Studierenden in Deutschland 2016: 21. Sozialerhebung des Deutschen Studentenwerks. Hannover: Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul-und Wissenschaftsforschung, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.
Nohl, Arnd-Michael. 2010. “Narrative interview and documentary interpretation.” In Qualitative analysis and documentary method in international educational research, edited by Ralf Bohnsack, Nicolle Pfaff, and Wivian Weller, 195–217. Opladen: Barbara Budrich
Vester, Michael. 2003. “Class and culture in Germany.” Sociologia, Problemas e Praticas 42 (2003) 42: 25–64.
Vester, Michael. 2015. “Die Grundmuster der alltäglichen Lebensführung und der Alltagskultur der sozialen Milieus.” In Handbuch Freizeitsoziologie, edited by Renate Freericks and Dieter Brinkmann, 143–87. Wiesbaden: Springer.
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
How Can Leadership Experiences Help Students Transition from Higher Education to the Labour Market? Evidence from Chinese Universities
Sheng Cui, Qiuxiang Wu
Renmin University of China, China, People's Republic of
Presenting Author: Cui, Sheng
Individual workers’ social skills or soft skills, including leadership, communication, and other interpersonal skills, play a pivotal role in labour market outcomes and are valued by employers. Competencies related to leadership are key attributes for employers. Beyond a strong grade point average, leadership roles and participation in extra-curricular activities are important factors in an employer’s decision to hire one candidate over another. Thus, considering the value that leadership experience provides not only for businesses, organisations, and industries, but also for more beneficial labour market outcomes for individuals, such as a faster transition from education to work or higher wages and earnings, higher education makes for an ideal setting for competency development. It also highlights the responsibility of training the professional and community leaders of tomorrow.
The development of college students as leaders has been one of the main purposes of higher education. Universities and colleges set the interest in student leadership as a priority area and add the core concept of leadership and relevant skills for quality education into their criteria. A growing number of leadership programmes have emerged at institutions ranging from one-day workshops to stand-alone programmes and full degree-granting programmes. Students can also participate in extra-curricular activities and groups such as student organisations, campus publications, student governments, fraternity or sororities, intercollegiate or intramural sports, or academic groups/honour societies, and they can also hold formal positions and play a leadership role. Compared with such activities and curriculum programmes, being a positional leader typically brings much more autonomy and authority to students and helps them develop competences (not only leadership) more effectively in real situations. Hence, it is easier for employers and researchers to identify student leadership experiences by checking the roles they have played.
In the context of China, employers in governmental organisations, public institutions, state-owned enterprises, and many private businesses (especially in managerial positions) prefer students with experience in leadership and formal positions. They usually set their preference clear in recruitment advertisements and give priority to student leaders. There are several student organisations in Chinese universities and colleges, which are important elements of campus culture. Being a positional leader in student organisations is the most frequent type of route that college students follow in China. The government has noted the importance of leadership education and asked higher education institutions to provide more support and training for student leaders.
Students, employers, and HEIs have been in consensus for student leadership to have a positive influence on the labour market in the global context. However, few empirical results can clearly tell us how much wage premium student leadership experience can bring to students’ first job, and the hints for the relationship between prior leadership positions and successful employment. While the importance of student leadership experience is a commonly agreed concept, the effectiveness of this experience on individual performance in the labour market is unclear. Thus, based on a Chinese college undergraduate panel survey, our main purpose is to explore the impact of formal leader positions in colleges on individuals’ career prospects by estimating the wage premium of student leader experience. Our secondary purpose is to link the factors that affect being a student leader and the outcomes of this in the labour market and discuss the set of skills to explain the influence of leadership experience. We believe that our analyses of these two points will contribute to students, parents, and HEIs by clarifying the role of serving as a student leader in colleges and helping students transition from higher education to the labour market.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedOur study used data collected from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey (BCSPS) in China, which was organized by the National Survey Research Center (NSRC) at Renmin University of China. BCSPS collected student information on demographic characteristics, family background, and performance in venues such as colleges and the labour market from 15 public universities in Beijing, China. BCSPS adopted the ‘probability proportional to size sampling method’ and a three-stage sampling design including universities, college majors, and students. It conducted longitudinal survey on two cohorts of students enrolled in 2006 (juniors, 2298 samples) and 2008 (freshman, 2473 samples) for five consecutive years. Respondents, with their own consent, were gathered in a fixed location to complete the baseline survey, and they were invited to respond to follow-up questionnaires through telephone and email in the following years. All survey personnel were recruited, trained, and dispatched by professional supervisors at the NSRC. The follow-up rate of this panel data was over 90%, and there was no significant difference in missing samples in variables such as sex, majors, universities, and the like.
We used Stata 14 to process the data in this study. First, we used the multiple logistic regression model to analyse students who became student leaders. Second, the ordinary least squares regression model (OLS) was used to estimate the wage premium of student leader experience. Finally, the difference-in-differences model (DID) was used to measure the change in several competencies before and after serving as a student leader to demonstrate how the skills of a student leader can truly improve.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis study analysed the impact of Chinese college graduate student leaders’ experience on their starting salary. Many factors, such as family background and education experience, affect becoming a student leader. The wage premium of a student leader in a college on starting salaries was approximately 7%. Our findings indicate that being a student leader can enhance students’ learning, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills, which as mediating variables, also explain over half of their wage premium effect. Leader experience can enhance individual leadership-related skills and employability, help students transfer into the labour market, and provide higher returns in the early stages of their career. The channel of capital improvement of leadership experience was a significant factor that positively affects the future earnings of students and the workforce.
It is a challenge for HEIs to go beyond their curriculum of educating students within their specific fields and ensure that enough weight is put on upskilling them with the necessary qualifications and proficiency that would serve them in the workforce. Given this growing expectation, it has become even more vital that students at universities take part in programmes to consolidate their existing leadership skills and to add more to them through critical analysis and meaningful interaction with peers and opinion leaders. Faculty at higher education might think of exerting more emphasis on ameliorating graduate outcomes through extensive student leadership programmes. This will not only enhance the employability of their students and increase their chances of finding suitable jobs with high paying income, but also elevate their institutional recognition.
ReferencesBaird, A.M. and Parayitam, S. (2019), “Employers’ ratings of importance of skills and competencies college graduates need to get hired: evidence from the New England region of USA”, Education + Training, Vol. 61 No. 5, pp. 622-634.
Cress, C.M., Astin, H.S., Zimmerman-Oster, K. and Burkhardt, J.C. (2001), “Developmental outcomes of college students' involvement in leadership activities”, Journal of College Student Development, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 15-27.
de Prada Creo, E., Mareque, M. and Portela-Pino, I. (2020), “The acquisition of teamwork skills in university students through extra-curricular activities”, Education + Training, Vol. 63 No. 2, pp. 165-181.
Fiedler, F. (1996), “Research on leadership selection and training: One view of the future”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 41 No. 2, pp. 241-250.
Kane, C. (2017), “Advancing student leader development through student organization advising and institutional support”, New Directions for Student Leadership, Vol. 2017 No. 155, pp. 59-70.
Kiersch, C. and Peters. J. (2017), “Leadership from the inside out: Student leadership development within authentic leadership and servant leadership frameworks”, Journal of Leadership Education, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 148-168.
Kuhn, P. and Weinberger, C. (2005), “Leadership skills and wages”, Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 395-436.
Lundin, M., Skans, O.N. and Zetterberg, P. (2021), “Leadership experiences, labor market entry, and early career trajectories”, Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 56 No. 2, pp. 480-511.
Ng, P.M., Chan, J.K., Wut, T.M., Lo, M.F. and Szeto, I. (2021), “What makes better career opportunities for young graduates? Examining acquired employability skills in higher education institutions”, Education + Training, Vol. 63 No. 6, pp. 852-871.
Roulin, N. and Bangerter, A. (2013), “Students’ use of extra-curricular activities for positional advantage in competitive job markets”, Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 21-47.
Skalicky, J., Warr P.K., Van der Meer, J., Fuglsang, S., Dawson, P. and Stewart, S. (2020), “A framework for developing and supporting student leadership in higher education”, Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 45 No. 1, pp. 100-116.
Spratt, J.T. and Turrentine, C.G. (2001), “The leader factor: Student leadership as a risk factor for alcohol abuse”, Journal of College Student Development, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 59-67.
Tchibozo, G. (2008), “Extra‐curricular activity and the transition from higher education to work: A survey of graduates in the United Kingdom”, Higher Education Quarterly, Vol. 61 No. 1, pp. 37-56.
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Boost 4 Career – Assessment of a Distance-Based Career Resource Intervention according to Social Class and Work Status
Sílvia Monteiro1, Filipa Seabra2, Sandra Santos1, Leandro Almeida1
1Research Centre on Education, University of Minho, Portugal; 2Laboratory of Distance Education and eLearning, Open University, Portugal
Presenting Author: Monteiro, Sílvia
Higher Education (HE) students are increasingly aware of the changes in the labour market, marked by instability, the rise of new occupations, jobs, and functions, and the restructuring or disappearance of others, driven by digital advances, new social interaction patterns, and organizations’ demands, which highlight the need for new employee profiles (Bakhshi et al., 2017). At the same time, HE students are concerned with their preparation for the challenges ahead, when transitioning to the job market or trying to shift jobs, and have been noticing that technical field-related competencies are no longer sufficient to navigate the world of work and to succeed (Monteiro & Almeida, 2021a; Tomlinson, 2008). This means that HE students are challenged to become active agents of their career from an early stage, in order to be able to explore - the self and the environment –, develop the necessary competencies, and prepare for the university-to-work and further possible transitions (García-Aracil et al., 2021).
The development of career resources, defined as “anything that helps an individual attain his or her career goals” (Hirschi et al., 2018, p. 4,) is, therefore, of the utmost importance, but the access to interventions with this scope is frequently limited by students’ preference for anonymity, difficulty in matching timetables or physical distances or financial costs (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011). There is, therefore, the need for comprehensive and accessible interventions for people regardless of their economic, social, cultural, educational, or personal situation, in order to foster employability (UNESCO, 2019).
The identified needs motivated the construction of the Boost 4 Career (B4C) programme, a distance-based career resource intervention that seeks to promote the enrichment of the career resources of HE students with different individual and socio-cultural characteristics. This programme is framed within Hirschi and colleagues’ Career Resources Model (Hirschi et al., 2018) which proposes the organization of career resources in four main categories, namely: (a) human capital resources, which refer to knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics that are important to meet performance expectations for a given occupation; (b) social capital resources, referring to resources external to the individual in terms of developmental networks, mentors, and available social support; (c) psychological resources, that include different positive psychological traits and states, and; (d) career identity resources, which include the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker and the subjective meanings linked with the work role. Additionally, the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Krathwohl, 2002), and the virtual pedagogical model from Universidade Aberta (Pereira et al., 2007) guided the construction of the B4C programme, considering students’ motivation to personal and professional development and the emphasis on student-centred learning, flexibility, and digital inclusion.
The B4C programme aims to foster the career resources in a remote modality, giving HE students the opportunity to manage their time and space of learning. This free access programme aims to contribute to students’ engagement in career management, mainly among those who come from low-income backgrounds, those who may have professional responsibilities in addition to the academic ones, cultural minorities or older students who may want to improve their competencies (Carlsen et al., 2016).
Within this scope, this study aims to analyse to what extent can career resources be improved through a distance career intervention and whether the expected gains with the programme may vary depending on the students’ features, including social class, and work status (e.g., working students vs non-working students). The implications of this study and future directions for research and intervention will be addressed, considering the growing heterogeneity of student population in the HE institutions.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study is framed in a broader project entitled “(Re)Search for Career: Distance career intervention, employability and social equity in the access to the labour market” (PTDC/CED-EDG/0122/2020), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. This study was approved by the Ethical Committees of both universities engaged in the project (CEISCH 076-2021).
The participants of this study are approximately 300 HE students, from two public Portuguese universities, with heterogeneous features: diverse fields and years of study, working and non-working students, different socioeconomical backgrounds and a wide age range. Data will be collected during the second semester of the academic year of 2022/2023, in an online setting.
The Programme B4C is provided remotely, without any costs. It includes six modules with the following objectives: 0) Pre-test assessment, programme presentation and familiarization with the eLearning platform and with participants and moderator; 1) Promotion of career exploration and job market knowledge; 2) Promotion of occupational expertise, soft skills and continuous learning; 3) Promotion of organizational career support and networking; 4) Promotion of career clarity and career confidence; 5) Post-test assessment and closure of the digital learning portfolio. In each module, students are requested to perform individual and group activities, of three complexity levels, that demand around 60 minutes to complete in total. A moderator is responsible for monitoring students’ activities, providing feedback when necessary to foster their engagement, eliciting constructive discussions, and providing pedagogical and technical support (Kettunen et al., 2020).
For the assessment of the programme B4C, students will complete a sociodemographic questionnaire (sex, age, work status, parental education…) and, they will answer to the Career Resources Questionnaire (Hirschi et al., 2018; adapt. Monteiro & Almeida, 2021b), that assesses HE students’ career resources, and fill in the Career Exploration Survey (Stumpf et al., 1983; adapt. Taveira, 1997), the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (Deci et al., 1994), the Basic Psychological Need Scale (BPNS) - Basic Need Satisfaction in General (Deci & Ryan, 2009), and the Digital Competences of Higher Education Students (van Deursen et al., 2015; adapt. Aires et al., 2022).
These instruments will be responded by the experimental group and a control group, before and after the programme’s implementation. Statistical analyses will be computed to determine if there are significant differences among groups and if sociodemographic variables, including social class and work status, can predict the results of the programme. After the programme, focus groups will be organized with a random sample to gather qualitative data on the programme.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a distance-based career intervention programme and its impact according to students’ social class and work status. With the analysis of the B4C programme’s results we expect to gather evidence concerning the extent to which career resources can be improved through remote intervention and the influence of students’ characteristics on the programme outcomes.
This study is expected to contribute to the development of knowledge about students' career resources throughout their HE studies, according to different personal and contextual circumstances, and the development of knowledge about the impact of this intervention with HE students, with diverse individual and contextual characteristics, increasing evidence-based practices in this field.
It is expected that this programme, mostly asynchronous and fully online, with free access to every student and accessible to a variety of students, including non-traditional ones, may contribute to overcoming some career guidance challenges that have been pointed out, such as difficulty in matching timetables, physical distances, or financial costs (Gati & Asulin-Peretz, 2011). It is expected a positive impact on participants’ career resources and future career trajectories, particularly among the most vulnerable students. In addition, it is expected that the evaluation of this new intervention programme might contribute to informing about the effectiveness of further career intervention actions. Providing policy makers, educators and students with evidence of the feasibility and utility of distance interventions on career resources may be a way to improve employability and mitigate social inequalities, fulfilling the recommendations of UNESCO (2019) and the sustainable development goals for comprehensive and accessible education. Future research should investigate how the B4C programme may influence students’ transition to the labour market.
ReferencesBakhshi, H., Downing, J.M., Osborne, M.A., & Schneider, P. (2017). The Future of skills: Employment in 2030. Pearson and Nesta.
Carlsen, A., Holmberg, C., Neghina, C., & Owusu-Boampong, A. (2016). Closing the gap: Opportunities for distance education to benefit adult learners in higher education. UNESCO.
Deci, E.L., Eghrari, H., Patrick, B.C., & Leone, D.R. (1994). Facilitating internalization: The self-determination theory perspective. Journal of Personality, 62(1), 119-142. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-6494.1994.TB00797.X
Deci, E.L. & Ryan, R.M. (2009). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
García-Aracil, A., Monteiro, S., & Almeida, L.S. (2021). Students’ perceptions of their preparedness for transition to work after graduation. Active Learning in Higher Education, 22(1), 49-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787418791026
Gati, I., & Asulin-Peretz, L. (2011). Internet-based self-help career assessments and interventions: Challenges and implications for evidence-based career counselling. Journal of Career Assessment, 19(3), 259-273. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072710395533
Hirschi, A., Nagy, N., Baumeler, F., Johnston, C.S., & Spurk, D. (2018). Assessing key predictors of career success. Journal of Career Assessment,26(2), 338-358. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072717695584
Kettunen, K., Lindberg, M., Nygaard, E., & Kárdal, J. (2020). Enhancing career practitioners’ understanding and use of ICT in guidance and counselling. In H. Haug, T. Hooley, J. Kettunen & R. Thomsen (Eds.), Career and career guidance in the Nordic countries (pp. 163-175). Brill.
Krathwohl, D.R. (2002). A revision of Bloom's taxonomy: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(4), 212-218. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_2
Monteiro, S. & Almeida, L.S. (2021a). Employability of higher education graduates: Reflections and pedagogical implications. Revista Lusófona Educação, 51, 47-58. https://doi.org/10.24140/issn.1645-7250.rle51.03
Monteiro, S. & Almeida, L.S. (2021b). Adaptation and initial validation of the Career Resources Questionnaire for Portuguese - HE students form. Análise Psicológica, 39(2), 287-298.
Pereira, A., Mendes, A.Q., Morgado, L., Amante, L., & Bidarra, J. (2007). Modelo Pedagógico Virtual da Universidade Aberta. Para uma universidade de futuro. Universidade Aberta.
Ryan, R.M., & Deci, E.L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford.
Taveira, M.C. (1997). Exploração e desenvolvimento vocacional de jovens: Estudo sobre as relações entre a exploração, a identidade e a indecisão vocacional. Unpublished PhD thesis, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Universidade do Minho.
Tomlinson, M., (2008). The degree is not enough: Students’ perceptions of the role of higher education credentials for graduate work and employability. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(1), 49-61. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 01425690701737457
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