Ethnicity and higher education: The role of aspirations,expectations and beliefs in overcoming disadvantage

Abstract

The papers in this issue examine various aspects of ethnic differences in higher education. The first three papers, all of which focus on Britain, attempt to explain the very high motivation behind enrollment in higher and further education by ethnic minority students. These papers argue that investment in higher education is a defiance strategy that is used by ethnic minorities to counterbalance the effect of ethnic penalties. It seems that aspirations are still significant in shaping the educational attainment and are fuelled by the grim structural barriers facing ethnic minorities. The anticipation of labour market discrimination on the one hand, and the belief in the value of education as the main means for social mobility on the other hand, lead ethnic minorities in Britain to over-invest in education. The fourth paper tells a different story, in that immigrant students experience systematic disadvantages throughout their school careers including a much lower enrollment in higher education. These young immigrants hold more negative perceptions towards the value of education, not only in comparison with their Italian counterparts, but it seems also in comparisons with minority young people in Britain. However, in the last paper, the results resemble the British case, in that the second generation students hold higher academic expectations than their non-immigrant origin peers, and that these higher expectations are associated with higher levels of persistence and attainment. The authors here highlight the importance of the theory of immigrant optimism in explaining the between-groups differences. However, this theory does not seem to have strong explanatory power in the Italian case, if anything, perhaps ‘immigrant pessimism’ is a better theory to explain the low aspirations for higher education and poor educational attainment among immigrants in Italy. Of course, further evidence is required to substantiate this claim.

Keywords

Aspirations ethnic inequality expectations higher education immigrant optimism

Introduction

In modern society, education is considered to be the main force for social mobility. Following liberal ideas of equal opportunity and meritocracy, an idea that many European governments espouse on (Heath et al., 2008), individuals are expected to be assessed, and subsequently rewarded, on the basis of their ability and talent as opposed to criteria of ascription (Bell, 1973; Blau and Duncan, 1967; Durkheim, 1933; Parsons, 1970; Treiman, 1970). For example, ethnic/racial and religious identities, gender as well as class background should no longer be taken as a criteria of selection. However, the literature on the educational attainment of second generation immigrants and ethnic minority students in developed countries tells a different story. Although some differences exist, the general agreement between researchers of stratification and social mobility is that minority students whose parents arrived from non-European countries are substantially disadvantaged when compared to respective majority groups (Borgna and Contini, 2014; Haque and Bell, 2001; Heath and Brinbaum, 2007; Heath et al., 2008; Tolsma et al., 2007). Young people of Turkish ancestry in Germany (Kristen and Granato, 2007), Moroccan and Maghrebin ancestry in France, the Netherlands and Belgium (Brinbaum and Cebolla-Boado, 2007; Phalet et al., 2007; Tolsma et al., 2007), and young people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ancestry and Caribbean ancestry in the UK (Rothon, 2007) have significantly lower school achievement than the respective white majority groups in these countries. Likewise, in the US, the achievement gap between black and Latino students on the one hand and white students on the other hand is very well established (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Lutz, 2007).

There are some exceptions to this general pattern, referred to as the ‘immigrant paradox’ (Kasinitz et al., 2009; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009). For example, studies from the UK and Norway suggested that a few groups outperform the majority population, sometimes by a considerable distance. For example, Fekjaer (2007) found that unlike students of Pakistani and Turkish background, Indian students are as advantaged as the majority group in relation to their probability of completing upper secondary and bachelor education and are significantly more advantaged than the majority group in completing education at Master’s level. In the UK, unlike Pakistani/Bangladeshi and Caribbean students, Indian students (Rothon, 2007) and Chinese students (Archer and Francis, 2006) are more likely than the white majority to gain A*-C at the GCSE level. Furthermore, many Asian American students, especially Chinese are also considered to be high achievers (Keller and Tillman, 2008; Pearce, 2006). However, a recent study by Feliciano and Lanuza (2017) has questioned the ‘immigrant paradox’ claim, arguing that the ‘immigrant paradox’ has been overstated by various studies. Much of the observed advantage among second-generation pupils can actually be explained by the class background of their parents, especially when the historical and geographical context within which this class background has been formed.

Furthermore, the above pattern (presented in the first paragraph) needs to be refined. A number of studies have shown that the achievement gap between minorities and majority groups was primarily found in relation to attainment tests taken during the compulsory schooling; for example, the GCSE exams in Britain that are taken at the end of compulsory education when students are 16 years old. However, when higher levels of educational attainment are considered, such as transition to higher secondary school (A-Levels), or transition to degree level, the picture is reversed. In that, the same disadvantaged groups during the compulsory education become more advantaged than the majority group. In a recent study, Jackson (2012) has pointed out that

in the transition to A-level education, the white majority is far from being the most advantaged group, with a transition rate higher than some ethnic minority groups, but lower than others. In the transition to degree level, the white majority is disadvantaged in comparison to all ethnic minority groups but the Black Caribbean and Other Black groups. (p. 203)

Conceptual and empirical challenges

Most of these studies face two key theoretical challenges. The first challenge is associated with the inadequacy of the classical origin (O)-education (E)-destination (D) framework in explaining the disadvantage or the success of minority groups(Goldthorpe, 1996; Li, 2018). Broadly speaking, this approach argues that primary effects or class-based resources (Boudon, 1974; Breen and Goldthorpe, 1997) are the key determinants of educational success. Therefore, when controlling for class and other individual characteristics, the achievement gap between the groups is expected to disappear. However, many studies have found that class background does not explain the achievement gap between various minorities and majority groups (Fekjaer, 2007; Lee and Zhou, 2014; Modood, 2003). It is worth noting though that a few studies have claimed that class effects operate among minority and majority groups alike (Rothon, 2007), but the empirical evidence that was provided clearly shows that class background does not explain the entire achievement gap between minority and majority groups. In some cases, where ethnic advantage was found (compared to whites), controlling for class background tends to increase the size of that advantage (Jackson, 2012).

The second theoretical challenge facing these studies is how to explain why some minority and immigrant groups remain substantially disadvantaged (e.g. Turkish students in a number of European countries), whereas other groups manage to improve their achievement to the extent that they have outperformed majority groups (e.g. Indian students in the UK and Chinese in the US). The same challenge applies in the cases where the same group tends to be disadvantaged during compulsory education, but educationally advantaged in higher levels of the educational system.

Given that theories and explanations based on class and family socio-economic background (Breen and Goldthorpe, 1997; Breen and Jonsson, 2005) or Bourdieu’s cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1997) have not provided a sufficient explanation for the ethnic gaps in educational achievement, the same way they do in relation to the white working class for example, many researchers have turned to alternative explanations (Archer and Francis, 2006; Feliciano and Lanuza, 2017; Fernández-Reino, 2016; Modood, 2004; Van de Werfhorst and Mijs, 2010; Zhou and Kim, 2006).

Some scholars draw on institutional explanations in order to explain cross-national variations arguing that educational inequality between minorities and majority groups is likely to be associated with the degree of educational differentiation in school types and tracks in secondary schooling (Van de Werfhorst and Mijs, 2010). Crul and Vermeulen (2003) argue that the national contexts vary widely in the types of institutional arrangements and opportunities they offer to second-generation migrants. In some countries, such as Germany and Austria, selection and allocation of students into different schooling tracks (vocational versus academic) occur as early as the age of 10, whereas in countries such as the UK, this selection takes place much later at the age of 16. Furthermore, others examine the degree to which exclusionary and discriminatory practices are at play and the extent to which these practices vary between countries as possible explanations (Heath et al., 2008). These explanations might help account for cross-national variations, but not within country variations. For that end, other scholars have drawn on more specific and micro-level ethnic-based explanations. Most notably, the theory of ‘ethnic capital’ (Borjas, 1992; Lee and Zhou, 2014; Modood, 2004).

Possible explanations

According to the abovementioned ‘ethnic capital’ theory, various minorities use ethnicity as a resource to construct and support a strict ‘success frame’ (Lee and Zhou, 2014) as a strategy to counterbalance potential and real disadvantages in accessing educational resources in the host society. Some minorities, given their awareness of their relative disadvantaged position in society, understand that in order to reverse this situation they need to ensure the educational success of the next generation. These groups are able to draw on their ethnic and community-based resources (Fleischmann et al., 2013), offering a range of tangible resources including afterschool tutoring, supplementary educational programs and college preparation classes for children, and intangible resources such as social networking and relevant information (Lee and Zhou, 2014). One of the main ways through which these resources operate and influence the educational attainment of children of minorities and immigrants is instilling high aspirations and expectations for future social mobility (Modood, 2004), sometimes this is almost the only resource available to minorities (Yair et al., 2004). Perhaps the first and most influential study linking social background to future social mobility via aspirations and expectations was the ‘Wisconsin model of status attainment’ (Alexander et al., 1975; Sewell and Hauser, 1975, 1980). The model perceived educational expectations as the ‘motor to behaviour’ (Woelfel and Haller, 1971) – conceptualised as an important link in the causal chain from background status (i.e. parental status) to the current status obtained by the individual. This special issue focuses on how these aspirations for social mobility are linked to educational success. In other words, what are the mechanisms through which aspirations, expectations, and beliefs affect ethnic inequality and/or success in education.

In the opening paper of this special issue, ‘Against the Odds?’ Li (2018) proposes a new thesis on ‘reinvigorated ambition for second-generation education’ to explain the mismatch between ethnic minorities’ socio-economic disadvantages, e.g. in the labour market, and the second-generation’s educational attainment. He begins his paper by reviewing the mainstream theories, from the classical modernisation theory to the social reproduction theory and the rational action theory, concluding that despite the strong prediction power of these theories, they do not seem to provide a satisfactory explanation of second-generation educational attainment in Britain. Furthermore, he criticised the segmented theory due to lacking empirical support and the theses of ethnic optimism, ethnic capital and lower opportunity cost. The latter, as argued by Li (2018), neither explain why the optimism or support is available to some but not to other groups nor do they explain why ethnic minorities make better use of the opportunities than their white peers.

Having criticised the classical modernisation theory, the social reproduction and the rational choice theory, Li (2018) does not actually claim that second-generation students are not affected by their family circumstances in terms of advantages and disadvantages. On the contrary, he argues that the family socio-economic background and material circumstances affect minorities just as they affect the majority group. Furthermore, he argues that ethnic minorities face additional barriers arising from cumulative discrimination in the labour market. However, second-generation students follow an educational pathway that diverges from that which is often found among the white working class students. They stay in full-time education longer, showing a strong commitment to education and are more likely to attain higher qualifications.

This is precisely the mismatch that this paper aims to explain. Li (2018) incorporates insights from both stratification and ethnic studies traditions to develop his thesis on ‘reinvigorated ambition for second-generation education’. He argues that young people with ethnic minority backgrounds expect that there will be greater difficulties for them than for their white peers in finding employment and gaining career advancement. Given their parents’ and other co-ethnics’ experiences in the labour market, these young people are aware of ethnic inequality in general and of unfair treatment in the labour market in particular. In order to offset the effect of employers’ unfair practices, they would develop a view that they need to be better qualified and better equipped than their white counterparts, by having higher levels of education. They would assume that their higher levels of qualifications may countervail against the lower weight placed upon them. Thus, pursuing higher education on the part of the second-generation is seen by the author as a strategy of ‘resistance’ (Khattab, 2003; Yair et al., 2004), or a stratagem to overcome the anticipated difficulties and unfair treatment in the labour market.

A similar attempt to link the negative labour market experience of ethnic minorities and their further educational investment is made in the second paper in this special issue by Lessard-Phillips et al. (2018). Like Li’s paper, here too the authors consider the investment in further education as a defiance strategy. By taking an analytical approach linked to ‘ethnic penalties’ (Heath and Cheung, 2007), they examine ethnic differences in attainment among graduates of Russell Group universities. In their paper, they focus on five distinct graduate destinations: employment in professional occupations; further study; employment in non-professional occupations; inactivity and unemployment.

Although somewhat debatable, these post-graduation destinations are considered by the authors to be ordered from providing more ‘positive’ to more ‘negative’ outcomes. It is interesting to see however that, for example, full time further study is not necessarily a wholly positive destination. For some social groups, especially those facing discrimination in the labour market, including ethnic minorities, pursuing further education can be seen as the only way to avoid unemployment or incidents of over-qualification. In many cases, the drive for further education can be positive, in that people wish to obtain further education, and in particular post-graduate qualifications in order to improve their chances of gaining a professional job and better salaries. However, as argued in this paper, the drive for post-graduate qualifications among ethnic minorities in Britain is negative, implying that it is a compensatory strategy to avoid short-term unemployment or underemployment in a non-graduate job.

For the analytical part of the paper, the authors draw on linked data from two sources, both are supplied by the Higher Education Statistics Authority: Administrative data from UK universities and data collected directly from graduates regarding their main activity six months after the end of their undergraduate courses, via a survey known as the ‘Destination of Leavers from Higher Education. The findings suggest that the importance of gaining a degree from Russell Group university is contingent upon the ethnic and class background of the graduates. The authors point out that ethnic minority graduates of Russell Group universities tend to be more likely to engage in further study following their undergraduate degrees, relative to comparable white graduates, and are more likely to be under-employed or unemployed. Like Li (2018), the authors of this paper draw on similar logic to explain the greater tendency for further education among ethnic minorities. They suggest that ethnic minority graduates are likely to adopt a strategy of further education in order to offset the immediate impact of unrealised aspirations.

However, neither paper provides direct empirical evidence to support the existence of this mechanism. We do not really know, from these two papers, whether pursuing further education on the part of ethnic minorities is a calculated and a consciously intended move to mitigate the effects of unfair treatment and disadvantages in the labour market. However, the third paper in this special issue, by Scandone (2018), drawing on qualitative data, provides more direct evidence that second-generation ethnic minorities are fully aware of the difficulties they would face in the labour market, including racism and discrimination.

In her paper, Scandone (2018) applies a Bourdieusian framework to the analysis of the education and career aspirations of British-born young women of Bangladeshi heritage in higher education. In particular, she frames aspirations as an aspect of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which is then applied by him/her as an analytical framework to examine the links between individual and collective experiences, the interconnection of past, present and future in discourses and practices. This framework is also used to examine the ways in which the past and present experience of the respondents are affected by different endowments of economic, social and cultural capital. She argues that the multiple social identities of the respondents (e.g. class, ethnicity, religious faith and gender) intersect with one another in shaping aspirations and the capacity to realise them. Moreover, they inform self-perceptions and understandings of the social and economic circumstances (context), as well as influencing access to specific capital which can be utilised in the education and labour market fields.

This study builds on two rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 British-born female undergraduate students of Bangladeshi heritage in their early 20s studying for a variety of undergraduate degrees at a range of differently ranked universities including Russell Group institutions, ‘old’ non-Russell Group universities and ex-polytechnics. The findings of this study show that the young women who participated in this study attributed a strong value to education and held high aspirations, which is in line with the claims made by the first two papers in relation to the very high commitment to education as a main means to social mobility. The findings also illustrate how these views were grounded in, and supported by, specific interpretations of ‘what people like us do’, where the ‘like us’ is informed by ethnicised, religious, classed and gendered connotations leading to a narrower ‘horizons for action’, compared to their white middle class counterparts.

This implies, as argued by Scandone (2018)

that for students from ethnic minority backgrounds, of both middle-class and especially working-class origins, family networks do not provide the same access as those of their white British middle-class peers to the mainstream cultural and social capitals that enable effective navigation of the labour market, and which have been shown to be often more significant than educational qualifications in securing jobs.

It seems that for many second-generation minority students in Britain, labour market penalties are a fact of life which they have to live with. However, knowing that they are going to face these penalties does not deter them from pursuing higher education. On the contrary, as argued in the previous two papers, it seems that this is likely to reinforce their educational and social mobility aspirations even further.

The fourth paper titled ‘The unobserved power of context: Can context moderate the effect of expectations on educational achievement?’ by Lazarus and Khattab (2018) proposes a new and a novel hypothesis labelled here by the authors as the ‘moderating effect of background’. This hypothesis suggests that expectations still matter in affecting achievement gaps among social groups, but this effect is contingent upon the specific background factors. This is likely to happen due to differential abilities among different groups to capitalise on every expectation unit they attain – a phenomenon that may counter the process of attenuation of gaps. The authors of the paper argue that this option is based on a line of research pointing to the inadequacy of the linear assumption in most sociological models and thus examining non-linear effects on achievement (Ganzach, 2000; Morgan, 2004) on which they affix the more specific option that cultural and social context, also at the school level, may affect the returns on expectations. In other words, the authors posit that the relationship between expectation and achievement is likely to be moderated by different background variables rendering it strong for some social groups or schools and weak for others. Hence, the paper expands our understanding of the mechanism connecting background variables to achievement arguing that structural and cultural variables, as a whole affect achievement, not only via the well-known internalisation and utilisation of norms, expectations and motivation but also via their ability to alter returns of social actors on already existing traits.

The empirical part of the paper draws on data obtained from waves 1–3 of the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE) panel survey and matching administrative data from the National Pupil Database (NPD). The analysis revealed that for some groups, such as white working class, it seems that expectations are still a rare and valuable resource in two ways: First, average expectation level within the groups is lower compared to other groups. Second, the relatively strong effect of expectations on achievement within these groups indicates that here expectations can still assist achievement. Integrating these two findings, the authors note that the mechanism causing achievement within these groups is adequately explained by the ‘classical’ model, but contradicts the neo-liberal notion (Schneider and Stevenson, 1999). It seems that for some disadvantaged groups (this is also true for white working class), expectations hold the potential to raise achievement and generate social mobility, if only average expectations were higher. Hence, in these cases, it is not ‘heightened expectations’ that hinder high achievement but rather a persistent low average expectation level that causes the hidden potential of expectations to be largely unrealised. Finally, this hidden potential of expectations also refutes, to some extent, the social ‘reproduction’ theory (Blossfeld and Shavit, 1993) since evidently, when expectations are high, inequality among the social groups (both ethnicities and social classes) is smaller.

In the fifth paper in this special issue, titled ‘Does Generational Status Matter in College? Expectations and Academic Performance Among Second Generation College Students in the US’, Kirui and Kao (2018) examine generational differences in the relationship between educational expectations, academic achievement and college persistence among native-born and immigrant youth in the United States. There are three main questions that the authors aim to answer here: First, how generational status influences degree attainment expectations and academic performance. Second, how second-generation college students fare in college relative to their peers with native-born parents. And finally whether theories of the relationship between generational status and educational attainment among immigrant youth persist through young adulthood.

The authors draw on the theories of immigrant optimism (Kao and Tienda, 1995) and accommodation without assimilation (Gibson, 1988) to explain the phenomenon of generational differences in academic performance and the persistence of these differences into young adulthood. According to the theory of immigrant optimism, those who immigrate voluntarily do so with a certain level of optimism for their future and that of their children (Kao and Tienda, 1995). Those who subscribe to theories of accommodation without assimilation argue that while immigrant youth show signs of acclimation to American society, their parents discourage primary interaction with American peers. The implication is that by limiting their children’s interactions with their American peers, immigrant parents create an environment more conducive to the transmission of their cultural optimism to their American-born children (Gibson, 1988; Kao and Tienda, 1995).

For the empirical part of the paper, the authors use the 2004–2009 wave of the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative sample of students who enrolled in college in 2004. The analyses suggest that second generation students have (1) consistently higher degree attainment rates and (2) consistently lower withdrawal rates than their academically similar peers with non-immigrant backgrounds. In addition, the results indicate that second generation students hold higher academic expectations than their non-immigrant origin peers, and that these higher expectations are associated with higher levels of persistence and attainment. This leads the authors to conclude that the optimism that immigrant parents confer upon their American-born children does not dissipate after youth and adolescence. The theory of immigrant optimism may explain differences in degree expectations, academic achievement, and educational attainment at the college level.

The last paper ‘Higher Education Beliefs and Intentions among Immigrant-Origin Students in Italy’ by Mantovani et al. (2018) tells a different story about the migrants–natives educational gap. The article investigates the extent to which students of non-Italian origin differ from their native fellow students in terms of characteristics associated with a higher likelihood of enrolling in tertiary education. The study utilises data obtained from a survey involving over 5600 last-year upper secondary students – 525 of whom are of immigrant origin – in Italy during the 2013/2014 school year.

The findings of this study show that the majority of immigrant-origin youths’ parents belong to the working class, against one-fifth of Italians, despite being better qualified. Compared to native students, immigrant students experience systematic disadvantages throughout their school careers. They are over-concentrated in vocational and technical schools, have higher rate of grade repetition, especially at higher education levels and are more likely to earn lower marks in their oral and written exams. Unlike the British case, examined in the previous three papers, in Italy, the authors of this paper point out that only a minority of non-Italian students continue their studies at the university level versus a majority of Italians.

In terms of the beliefs about the benefits of higher education and the aspirations to study at university level, the findings reveal that immigrant-origin students have slightly more critical views of higher education and are more sensitive to cost considerations when contemplating further learning efforts than their Italian counterparts. With respect to higher education aspirations, the picture that emerges is slightly more indistinct. Italian students have higher initial aspirations to enrol at a university. However, this initial gap disappears once other factors such as socio-economic background, level and type of school and students’ performance are taken into account, leading the authors of this paper to conclude that weaker tertiary education aspirations among immigrant-origin youths are determined by early selection mechanisms. These mechanisms permeate the transition from lower to upper secondary education and the ensuing preference for non-academic tracks.

Conclusions

The papers in this issue examine various aspects of ethnic differences in higher education and educational achievement. The first three papers, all of which focus on Britain, attempt to explain the very high motivation behind enrolment in higher and further education by ethnic minority students. Given the real and anticipated labour market discrimination against ethnic minorities, their higher rate of pursuing higher and further education creates a theoretical challenge. These papers argue, though in different ways, that investment in higher education is a defiance strategy that is used by ethnic minorities to counterbalance the effect of ethnic penalties. In these papers, it seems that aspirations are still significant in shaping the educational attainment and are fuelled by the grim structural barriers facing ethnic minorities. The anticipation of labour market discrimination on the one hand, and the belief in the value of education as the main means for social mobility on the other hand, lead ethnic minorities in Britain to over-invest in education.

The fourth paper highlights the importance of high expectations as a mechanism through which disadvantaged groups and white working class students can potentially enhance their achievement. It seems that for some groups expectations hold the potential to raise achievement and generate social mobility, if only average expectations were higher.

In the fifth paper, the results resemble the British case, in that the second-generation students hold higher academic expectations than their non-immigrant origin peers, and that these higher expectations are associated with higher levels of persistence and attainment. The authors here highlight the importance of the theory of immigrant optimism in explaining the between-groups differences. However, this theory does not seem to have strong explanatory power in the Italian case, if anything, perhaps ‘immigrant pessimism’ is a better theory to explain the low aspirations for higher education and poor educational attainment among immigrants in Italy. Of course, further evidence is required to substantiate this claim.

The pattern that the last paper describes in relation to first- and second-generation migrants in Italy is different than the British case. Immigrant students experience systematic disadvantages throughout their school careers including a much lower enrolment in higher education. These young immigrants hold more negative perceptions towards the value of education, not only in comparison with their Italian counterparts but it seems also in comparisons with minority young people in Britain.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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