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Why do students from underprivileged families less often intend to study abroad?

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Abstract

Alongside the educational expansion and internationalisation of economies, it has become more important for students’ labour market success to spend part of their studies abroad. However, only a fraction of German students studies abroad. In particular, students from underprivileged families refrain from doing so. While the social selectivity of international student mobility is well documented, the mechanisms underlying this pattern of inequality are insufficiently understood. Aiming to narrow this research gap, we examine an early stage of the process leading to international mobility and address the question why students from underprivileged families intend to study abroad less often. Applying theories of rational choice and cultural reproduction, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates several mechanisms explaining the observed social inequality. Using a nationally representative panel data set from the German School Leavers Survey, we estimate logistic regressions and effect decompositions. Our findings indicate that underprivileged students’ lower likelihood of forming a study abroad intention partially results from previous life course events. Related to their previous educational decisions and experiences, underprivileged students have worse performance-related preconditions for studying abroad. Furthermore, their higher cost sensitivity and lower benefit expectation explain their reluctance to study abroad.

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Notes

  1. Teichler et al. (2011) employ two major distinctions to define international student mobility. First, they differentiate between credit mobility (part of the studies abroad) and diploma mobility (whole degree abroad). Second, they distinguish genuine international student mobility from study abroad, the latter being a crude statistical construct to approximate international mobility flows based on students’ citizenship. Because we use survey data, which capture (plans for) international mobility of upper secondary graduates in Germany, we analyse genuine international mobility. As we ask students about their plans for a study-related stay abroad, we mainly capture credit mobility. By focussing on the intention, however, we cannot determine whether some students eventually complete their entire studies abroad. In line with previous research (e.g. Salisbury et al. 2009; Luo and Jamieson-Drake 2015), we refer to this form of international student mobility as study abroad. Details on our sample and operationalisations are provided in Sect. 3 and Table 4 in Appendix.

  2. The decision to study abroad is arguably also influenced by students’ current opportunity structures (e.g. the availability of exchange programmes) and the need to gain international experience as part of the study programme (Perna et al. 2015). However, as this article focusses on the intention to study abroad of individuals having only recently graduated from upper secondary education, we concentrate on the role of educational experiences and decisions taken earlier in the life course. The opportunity structures at higher education institutions should be more relevant to the realisation of a stay abroad.

  3. A total of 29,500 pupils were motivated to participate in the first wave (response rate = 49 %); 70 % of the first-wave respondents agreed to participate in the follow-up survey. The second wave sample comprised 8397 cases (response rate = 38 %). As students with low school performance were disproportionately likely to drop out of the survey, the second-wave data were weighted using information on students’ final school grade. Additionally, the data were weighted by gender, type of secondary school, type of higher education entrance qualification and federal state in which the entrance qualification was obtained.

  4. Social background is a multidimensional construct. Besides parents’ educational attainment, the occupational prestige of parents’ jobs represents an important facet of social background. We ran several sensitivity checks, including analyses using parents’ occupational prestige—constructed using Wegener’s (1988) magnitude prestige scale—instead of their highest educational attainment. This did not change our results substantially (Table 7 in Appendix).

  5. In Germany, school grades range from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best grade. For passing the final secondary school examinations, pupils have to obtain an average grade not worse than 4. Therefore, final school grades of upper secondary graduates lie between 1 and 4. We recoded the final school grade so that a higher number implies a better grade (‘0 = satisfactory’ up to ‘3 = very good’).

  6. Our data set does not allow us to test the invariance of students’ cost sensitivity over time. Possibly, those not realising a stay abroad during studies because of their higher cost sensitivity refrained from a school-related stay abroad for the same reason.

  7. Our main model can explain 77 % of the social background difference in the intention to study abroad and our robustness check including a metric, prestige-based measure of social background can explain 72 % of this difference. In a previous study, Lörz and Krawietz (2011) could explain 43 % of the social background difference regarding the realisation of a stay abroad. We believe that our model explains a larger share of the social background difference because we can more neatly operationalise our hypotheses on students’ cost and benefit considerations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank our anonymous reviewers as well as Kathrin Leuze and Wout Ultee for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sociology, University of Hannover, Schneiderberg 50, 30167, Hannover, Germany

    Markus Lörz

  2. German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Goseriede 9, 30159, Hannover, Germany

    Nicolai Netz & Heiko Quast

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  1. Markus Lörz
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Correspondence to Markus Lörz.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Table 4 Description and distribution of variables
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Table 5 Determinants of the intention to study abroad: Robust standard errors for regression coefficients presented in Table 3
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Table 6 Determinants of the intention to study abroad: results of a logistic regression (average marginal effects) and of a non-linear decomposition (KHB method)
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Table 7 Determinants of the intention to study abroad: results of a logistic regression (average marginal effects) and of a non-linear decomposition (KHB method), including an alternative operationalisation of social background
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Lörz, M., Netz, N. & Quast, H. Why do students from underprivileged families less often intend to study abroad?. High Educ 72, 153–174 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9943-1

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