Is what they aspire what they get? The role of cultural heterogeneity in the classroom for the realization of Abitur aspirations

Abstract

Even though the German education system is characterized by strong between-school tracking, routes to tertiary education are diverse. Students not initially placed in a school track leading straight to the qualification for enrolling in tertiary education, i.e. the Abitur, are able to revise their initial track placement and attain Abitur after all. While students are increasingly taking those non-standard routes to Abitur, evidence suggests that even more aspire than actually attain it. In this paper, I test whether cultural heterogeneity in educational models can account for this. For disadvantaged neighborhoods in the U.S., it has been shown that cultural heterogeneity contributes to decreased realization of college aspirations because adolescents have a harder time to stick to their educational goals. To test whether this explanation is equally applicable to the aspiration realization of German students, this paper uses longitudinal data of CILS4EU. Linear probability models are estimated to test whether cultural heterogeneity in class contributes to the non-realization of aspirations for students on non-standard routes to Abitur. I do not find strong support for this hypothesis. Several robustness checks do not yield a substantially different picture.