Bachelor degree participation in vocational institutions: examining the determinants of participation

Abstract

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.

Parental expectations of children’s higher education participation in Australia

“…Koshy et al (2019) suggest that higher expectations for girls in Australia may be due to a more limited range of VET pathways for girls outside of university relative to boys, coupled with a gendered societal expectation of higher education being more acceptable for young women (in the Australian context of VET and higher education decision-making, see e.g. Koshy et al, 2020). This may also account for the greater sensitivity of expectations for boys in response to some variables.…”

‘A degree is a degree’: understanding vocational institution’s bachelor degrees in Australia’s high participation system

“…The second paper draws together a team, larger than the original ARC team, to use data from the cohort-based Australian Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth to explore curious findings from the student survey in the ARC Discovery project (Webb et al, 2019). Koshy et al (2020) examine in detail the student population of bachelor's degrees in TAFEs and considers what that means for current Australian definitions of equity.…”