What Has High School Got to Do With It? High School Composition, Structures, and College Enrollment

Abstract

This study investigates whether the ethnic and SES composition of the secondary school affect higher education enrollment and program choice (professional or academic bachelor). School-wide social capital is used as an underlying mechanism to explain how school composition affects higher education enrollment. Results of logistic multilevel analyses, carried out on the International Study of City Youth (ISCY) data of 943 Flemish students across 30 schools, showed that students enrolled in ethnic concentration schools showed lower rates of higher education attendance because these schools were associated with a low socio-economic composition. Attending ethnic concentration schools and/or high socio-economic composition schools was beneficial to attend academic bachelor programs. High quality peer relationships and teacher-student relationships mediated these composition effects.Additionally, the positive interaction effect of teacher-student relationships and the buffering effect of high quality peer relations at school render them interesting tools for educational policy and could thus be used to decrease social inequality in higher education enrollment and program choice.