High school never ends. Normative and comparative peer group effects on higher education outcomes through the school-level students’ expectation culture

ABSTRACT

Recent research has increasingly been studying the long-lasting effects of secondary education structures and processes on higher education (HE) outcomes. While the influence of socioeconomic composition on higher education enrolment is established, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We posit that the composition effect partially runs through the educational expectations of the students’ peers at school. By considering shared post-secondary expectations among students within a school – or, peer expectation culture – we transcend the dominant individual approach to expectations. Additionally, we go beyond the supposed positive (i.e. normative) effects of peers on HE enrolment, by considering the negative effects of having ambitious peers on HE enrolment resulting from comparative group processes. Logistic multilevel analyses of longitudinal data (2013–2019) from 1250 students across 30 Flemish high schools showed that socio-economic status (SES) composition effects on HE outcomes were mediated by expectation culture. Students attending schools with high expectation cultures were more likely to attend HE in general, and to attend university over other HE institutes compared to students in schools with low expectation cultures. The results suggest normative effects of peers on both outcomes, while comparative processes were only found for the choice of institution. This study underscores the long-term consequences of both individual and school-level expectations in secondary education and calls for including comparative reference group effects in studies on educational decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational expectations
• school culture
• school socioeconomic status
• higher education
• peer groups
• longitudinal studies

Acknowledgments

In this article, the Flemish part of the data of the International Study of City Youth (ISCY) was used, which is an international collaborative project designed and implemented by various research partners from across the world. The cities participating in the study are Barcelona (Spain), Bergen (Norway), Bordeaux (France), Ghent (Belgium), Melbourne (Australia), Montréal (Canada), Reykjavik (Iceland), San Diego (US), Santa Barbara (US), Sacramento (US), Santiago (Chile), Tijuana (Mexico), Turku (Finland), and Wroclaw (Poland). The project is led by the Centre for International Research on Education Systems (CIRES) at Victoria University, Australia. We would like to thank all researchers that contributed to this international project. The International Study of City Youth has received funding from various sources. We owe a special thanks to the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Department of Education and Training, and CIRES at Victoria University, Australia.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation-Flanders (Belgium) with a personal grant awarded to Laura Van den Broeck (grant number FWO16/ASP/242); and by the Special Research Fund, Ghent University, Belgium (grant number 01N03518).