Family socioeconomic status and college attendance: A consideration of individual-level and school-level pathways

Abstract

Inequality research has found that a college education can ameliorate intergenerational disparities in economic outcomes. Much attention has focused on how family resources impact academic achievement, though research continues to identify how mechanisms related to social class and structural contexts drive college attendance patterns. Using the Education Longitudinal Study and multilevel modeling techniques, this study uniquely highlights how extracurricular activities relate to family socioeconomic status and school contexts to influence college attendance. Altogether, sport and non-sport extracurricular participation, college expectations, and academic achievement scores, situated within unique school contexts that are driven by residential social class segregation, contribute to the cumulative advantages of children from higher SES families. The results from this study show that these cumulative advantages are positively associated with college attendance and an increased likelihood of attending a more selective school.

Predicting Academic Success of College Students Using Machine Learning Techniques

“…Consequently, the application of the knowledge obtained from the data is leveraged, for example, in constant monitoring or continuous tracking that acts as a tool to assess progress in academic performance, class attendance, extracurricular activities and other key indicators [87]. Other strategies include personalized tutorial support or intervention plans, remediation and other resources for students who have demonstrated compelling needs [88,89]. Machine learning, along with other data analysis techniques, offers valuable suggestions for targeted interventions for the benefit of students, with the goal of helping them achieve academic success in the shortest possible time.…”

The impact of social-environmental factors on IQ in syndromic intellectual developmental disabilities

“…Higher income also may facilitate increased educational opportunities for parents (e.g., increased college attendance) [ 44 ] and children (e.g., greater availability and higher quality of childcare, school, and behavioral intervention programs) [ 45 , 46 ] that drive cognitive growth. For example, access to higher-quality preschool programming and early behavioral intervention improves IQ in children with and without IDDs [ 47 , 48 ].…”

“…However, their scoping nature impedes interpretation of the specific mechanisms through which economic stability influences IQ. Third, several studies have relied on parental education (typically as a proxy for parental IQ), which may clarify the association between economic stability and child IQ due to the robust, albeit indirect, association between household income and access to postsecondary education [ 44 ]. Although parental education is easily assessed and reliably associated with income, it is heavily influenced by and confounded with familial genetic factors [ 104 ].…”

Sample characteristics for quantitative analyses in Body Image: Issues of generalisability

“…The first one is that students have, on average, a lower BMI than non-student individuals of the same age. This could be linked to socio-economic status, as we know that socio-economic status influences the likelihood of attending a university (e.g., Tompsett & Knoester, 2023), and there is a social gradient in BMI, with lower SES being associated with a higher BMI (e.g., Mayor, 2017). A second potential explanation would be that students with a higher BMI may be less likely to participate in studies about body image (selfselection bias).…”