The impact of COVID-19 on social inequalities in German higher education. An analysis of dropout intentions of vulnerable student groups

ABSTRACT

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, contact, education, and employment opportunities have fundamentally changed worldwide. However, various studies have pointed out that not everyone is equally affected by the changed circumstances. This paper focuses on the impact of the pandemic on the study situation in German higher education and explores the question to what extent the pandemic has led to increasing or decreasing social inequalities. Building on social stratification research and Tinto’s model of social and academic integration we focus on dropout intentions of traditionally disadvantaged student groups – students with disabilities, with children, from families with lower levels of education, and with a migrant background. Based on comparable data from a German-wide representative student survey ‘Studying in Corona Times’ (2020) and data from the ‘21st Social Survey’ (2016) our analysis shows to what extent the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced students’ dropout intentions in Germany and which vulnerable student groups are particularly affected. The results of our logistic regression analysis indicate that compared to 2016 social inequalities in dropout intention have increased significantly in all vulnerable student groups. In particular, students with disabilities and students with children have a higher risk of intending to drop out in 2020.

KEYWORDS:

• Social inequalities
• vulnerable student groups
• COVID-19
• dropout intention
• digital teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To compensate for sample-related biases, the weighting is carried out along the official statistics on the composition of the student body and normalized to the sample (for survey weighting with Stata, see Valliant and Dever 2018).

2 Cases who responded with 3 or higher at the respective scales are counted as cases with an (very) high dropout intention (=1).

3 Referring to ISCED 2011 a university degree would here correspond to levels 6 (excluding vocational training), 7 and 8.

4 The exact country of birth of the students’ parents was not surveyed, so that a distinction is only made between born aboard vs. born in Germany.

5 Whether the correlation is significant (p < .001) or not can be read off from the confidence intervals shown. If the confidence interval touches the zero line, the correlation is not significant.

6 Further analyzes indicate a cumulative effect instead of an interaction effect (for further information, please contact the corresponding author).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Project ‘Vulnerability of students in times of the Corona pandemic’, Identifier: 470278283).

Notes on contributors

Jonas Koopmann

Jonas Koopmann is a junior researcher in the department ‘Educational Careers and Graduate Employment’ at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies. He studied Political Science (B.A.) and Social Sciences (B.A.) at the University of Hannover. Following this, he completed the master’s programme in Political Science (M.A.). Main research topics are social inequalities and study success.

Lena M. Zimmer

Lena M. Zimmer, Dr. is senior researcher in the office of ‘Vice President for Academic Affairs’ at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She studied Sociology at the University of Mainz and completed her doctorate on the academic career path of the junior professorship. In her research, she is mainly concerned with the student body and academic career paths. As cross-cutting issues, she focuses primarily on social inequalities, gender inequalities, and disciplinary characteristics.

Markus Lörz

Markus Lörz, Dr. is senior researcher at the department ‘Educational Governance’ at the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF). He studied Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim and Wuppertal and completed his doctorate on educational expansion, differentiation and social inequality. In his research, he is mainly concerned with social inequalities in educational and occupational pathways. Furthermore, he focuses on knowledge transfer, student recruitment and the evaluation of education policy.