ABSTRACT
The aim of the study was to analyse enrolment patterns, and study efficiency and completion among students in programmes with professional qualifications, using microdata from Statistics Sweden. The programmes were Architecture, Medicine, Nursing, Law, Social work, Psychology, andEngineering (year 2001–2002,n = 15,918). Using the concepts from Bourdieu’s sociology, data was analysed with Specific Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Different patterns emerged and were constructed as different dimensions of the social space of educational strategies in higher education, patterns of enrolment, efficiency, and completion. The students’ relative positions in the social structure were analysed by the type and amount of their cultural capital. The most important factors for differences between coherent intensive and scattered extensive enrolment patterns were programmes, gender, mother’s socioeconomic index, parents’ education, and type of university. Regarding efficiency, the most important factors were programme and type of university. The factors most important for graduation were gender and type of university.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Sverker Lundin, of Gothenburg University, who offered excellent support with sequence analysis and data preparation in Mathematica ®, and Brigitte Le Roux, of the Université Paris Descartes, and Sciences Po, Paris, for valuable consultations on the GDA analyses and the reviewers for valuable comments on the manuscript.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Carina Carlhed http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4494-8015
Notes
2Public finance studies expert group (Author’s translation).
3A normal timeframe would be within one year of the last registration in the programme.
5A normal timeframe would be within one year of the last registration in the programme.
6’Other Europe’ refers to countries in Europe besides Sweden and the other Nordic countries and Eastern-Europe. The standardised classification comes from Statistics Sweden.
7The standardised classification comes from Statistics Sweden.
8Labels of parents’ work sector modalities and father’s socioeconomic status are omitted in the graphs due to readability.
9Labels of parents’ work sector modalities are omitted in the graphs due to readability.
10Earn a diploma within 5 years from expected graduation point.