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Equality of opportunities in Spanish higher education

Higher Education volume 58, pages 285–306 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

In the past few decades, there has been a sharp increase in the number of students attending higher education institutions in Spain. Many commentators believe that this expansion is associated with greater equality of opportunities as more university places offer greater potential for the advancement of students from poorer backgrounds. Unfortunately, this argument is not always true. In fact, there is empirical evidence that the expansion in higher education system disproportionately benefits children from relatively rich and well educated families. In that context, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the possible effects of socioeconomic background on the decision to complete a degree before leaving the educational system in Spain. Taking the data from the Spanish module data on school to work transitions, I estimate several logit models in order to detect the influence of personal and regional characteristics on the educational decisions. The results show that, in spite of the disappearance of universities for only the elite, socioeconomic variables heavily influence the demand for university education, so the equality of opportunities in this educational level has not been completely achieved.

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Notes

  1. For more information, see Table 3 of Appendix 1.

  2. The Spanish Labor Force Survey is a nation-wide household survey and it is carried out every quarter on a sample of some 60,000 households. This survey is designed to be representative of the total Spanish population and contains very detailed information on labour force and schooling status of people aged 16 and over. In particular, the Spanish Labor Force Survey provides abundant information on family characteristics of youngsters, such as parent’s level of education, parent’s employment and socioeconomic situation and number of siblings.

  3. The EULFS ad hoc module, which is a European-wide endeavour, has already been used for comparative purposes, mostly by a group of researchers at the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung. To mention just that closest to this paper, Ianelli (2002) shows that parents’ education is still a significant factor influencing young people’s educational and early occupational attainment in Europe.

  4. The description of these explanatory variables is displayed in Table 8 of Appendix 2.

  5. To study the evolution of the participation of women in Spanish University education throughout the last three decades, see Table 4 of Appendix 1.

  6. The evolution of the proportion of women in university education by field of studies is displayed in Table 5 of Appendix 1.

  7. See Table 5 of Appendix 1.

  8. In fact, 19 of 48 Spanish public Universities were created between 1987 and 1998, as we could see in Table 6 of Appendix 1.

  9. Our data source presents missing values for some variables such as parental socioeconomic and labour situation. For instance, when we consider father’s labour situation we loose 4,000 observations and when mother’s labour situation is considered we loose another 300 observations. Despite this circumstance, I decided to take this type of variables into account because they are clearly significant to explain the individual’s decision to leave the educational system after completing a degree.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Economía Aplicada IV, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Marta Rahona López

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Correspondence to Marta Rahona López.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Table 3 Percentage of adult population that has attained higher education, by age (2005)
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Table 4 Women’s access in Spanish university education
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Table 5 Women’s access in university education by field of study (1990–2006)
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Table 6 Net enrolment rates in Spanish University education at 20 years old, by gender and regions (2000)
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Table 7 Spanish public universities created since 1987
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Appendix 2

See Table 8.

Table 8 Description of the variables included in the model (percentages)
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Rahona López, M. Equality of opportunities in Spanish higher education. High Educ 58, 285–306 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9194-5

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Keywords

  • Influence of socioeconomic background
  • Logit models
  • Spain
  • University studies