Pursuing educational ambitions? Higher education enrolment and the choice of study programmes among immigrant and non-immigrant youth in Norway

Abstract

This article focuses on differences in higher education (HE) enrolment and choice of study according to students’ background, specifically amongst first- or second-generation immigrants to Norway. A special emphasis is placed on the choice of prestigious study programmes. The results indicate that students with an immigrant background tend to make more ambitious choices than ethnic Norwegians, irrespective of their parents’ education level.

Keywords:

• higher education
• immigrants
• type of study
• gender

Notes

1. This refers to statistics from the Norwegian Universities and Colleges Admission Service (NUCAS).

2. Africa, Asia, South and Central America, Europe (except EU/EEA) and Oceania (except Australia and New Zealand) are defined as non-Western countries. Second-generation are Norwegian-born to immigrant parents.

3. Persons with no immigrant background, that is neither first- nor second-generation immigrants, are here labeled ethnic Norwegians.

4. Morgan and Todd (2009) find that intergenerational closure does not increase achievement in public schools, but it may, to a modest extent, increase achievement in Catholic schools.

5. The data set is compiled from raw data from Statistics Norway and from Norwegian county municipalities. The latter were originally delivered by the counties on behalf of the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. The data were anonymized before they were delivered from Statistics Norway to the author.

6. Forty-seven percent of the cohort had enrolled into HE in within six years after starting upper secondary education.

7. The low enrolment rate among ethnic Norwegian males is to some extent due to military service; however, only a minority of the males have to do military service and a large gender difference in HE is also found at later stages. In total, 61% of HE students in Norway are females (Statistics Norway 2010b).

8. The estimations displayed in the graphs are based on the results of Table 3 and are made according to the formula

where Z = the intercept plus the effects of the control variables (Z = B₀+B₁X₁+B₂X₂…), and j is an expression of the different outcomes on the dependent variable (the logit has j – 1 different sets of parameters).