Survey highlights unequal educational opportunities

The results of a new survey on students’ parent backgrounds has prompted Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW) – the German National Association for Student Affairs – to reiterate its call for a better social infrastructure in higher education.

According to the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies – Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung (DZHW) – 79 out of 100 children in families of parents with an academic degree make it to university, compared to just 27 out of 100 among other families.

The centre conducts empirical research for higher education institutions and policy-makers. It is supported by the federal and state governments and cooperates closely with the University of Hanover.

DZHW states that educational opportunities continue to be very unevenly distributed and depend heavily on children’s educational backgrounds, with a mere 12% of children per cohort with parents without any vocational qualification enrolling.

However, twice as many children coming from families with at least one parent with a vocational qualification take up studying, and for families with at least one parent holding an ‘Abitur’, the German higher secondary education qualification, the figure is 48% per cohort.

The centre refers to a range of factors causing this inequality in educational opportunities. Parents already have to make a crucial decision when their children have completed primary education.

“Families with a poorer educational background frequently tend to overestimate the cost of secondary education and underestimate the benefits it provides, irrespective of the high education potential their children may bear,” explains Nancy Kracke, one of the authors of the ‘Education Funnel’, which DZHW has been compiling at regular intervals since 1985.

Kracke says that families with a greater affinity to education have more resources to back their children and view an advanced educational degree as part of securing the family’s social status. As children pass through the education system, each decision taken on their further course represents a selection that is influenced by their parents’ affinity to education.

“Germany’s education system continues to be characterised by social inequality that starts when children from non-academic families switch to secondary school and continues when young people go on to higher secondary school or higher education,” says DSW President Rolf-Dieter Postlep.

Boosting the social infrastructure of higher education would be a logical consequence to draw from the findings of the DZHW survey, Postlep argues, adding that adapting the government-funded BAföG student grants to present conditions would be the most important step towards more equal opportunities in higher education.

“It is entirely unacceptable that people’s educational career should depend so much on their social background,” Postlep maintains. “Remedying this state of affairs is up to the government – the issue affects the entire education system.”

The DSW also emphasises the lack of affordable housing for students as a further hurdle. Postlep welcomes that the federal and state governments have pledged to support the construction of new student hostels and the refurbishment of existing ones, and emphasises that this pledge is stated in the agreement on the Grand Coalition forming the present federal government.

Michael Gardner Email: michael.gardner@uw-news.com