Drivers of inequalities in Higher Education and the unexpected consequences of equality policies (original) (raw)
Related papers
2011
"In our paper we want to investigate factors affecting inequalities between HEIs performance because of their localization in more or less developed regions. We test the relationships existing between public policies, market investment and inequalities in HEIs performance, according to three hypotheses: 1. Good scientific performance is related to the wealth of the economic context; 2. Public policies aimed at reducing inequalities may rather increase them, as they do not intervene on the real causes of inequality; 3. Market forces are correlated with inequalities: i.e. disciplines with higher share of private investment and more variance of private investment are those with stronger qualitative inequalities."
Advances in Cartography and GIScience of the ICA
In the last decade, the tertiary education system in Italy has shrinked and a larger heterogeneity has emerged among universities located in different areas of the country, with a strong concentration of increasingly scarce resources in a narrow and geographically concentrated number of institutions. The less developed areas, such as those in Southern Italy have been hit the most, in terms of enrolled students, academic staff, financial resources, courses offered. In this work we investigate these issues by adopting a cartographic approach. We highlight these polarizing dynamics, disentangling the possible causes. We focus, particularly, on the role of new regulatory policies and the funding mechanisms based on performance indicators as producers of inequalities.
Higher education and equality of opportunity in Italy
2007
This paper proposes a definition of equality of educational opportunities. Then, it develops a comprehensive model that allows to test for the existence of equality of opportunity in a given distribution and to rank distributions according to equality of opportunity. Finally, it provides an empirical analysis of equality of opportunity for higher education in Italy.
Fairness in education: The Italian university before and after the reform
Economics of Education Review, 2012
In 2001 the Italian tertiary education system embarked in a broad process of reform. The main novelty brought by the reform was a reduction of the length of study to get a first level degree together with the introduction of a 2-years, second level, master degree. This paper aims at studying the effects of the reform in terms of fairness in educational opportunity. In order to do so we first define fairness criteria following a well-developed responsibility sensitive egalitarian literature, we then discuss existing inequality of opportunity measures consistent with these criteria, we show their relationship, and we adapt them to the educational framework. We finally employ this set of measures to show the evolution of fairness in the access to university in Italy before and after the reform.
Socioeconomic Inequality and Student Outcomes in Italy
Socioeconomic Inequality and Student Outcomes, 2019
This chapter assesses inequalities in educational outcomes in Italy linking their evolution to changes in the Italian educational system. We analyze how to track choice and performance in PISA tests among 15-year olds are influenced by social origins. We consider how inequalities by social origins are intertwined with inequalities by immigrant status and area of residence. We detect a small reduction of inequalities in participation in the academic track and a reduction of inequality in achievement limited to the northern regions, but overall our results show high inertia in the reproduction of social inequalities. These results are observed during a period where the reduction of inequalities in education has remained a marginal issue in the policy debate as well as a marginal target of educational policies.
Chapter 5 : Socioeconomic Inequality and Student Outcomes in Italy
This chapter assesses inequalities in educational outcomes in Italy linking their evolution to changes in the Italian educational system. We analyse how track choice and performance in PISA tests among 15-year olds are influenced by social origins. We consider how inequalities by social origins are intertwined with inequalities by immigrant status and area of residence. We detect a small reduction of inequalities in participation in the academic track and a reduction of inequality in achievement limited to the northern regions, but overall our results show a high inertia in the reproduction of social inequalities. These results are observed during a period where the reduction of inequalities in education has remained a marginal issue in the policy debate as well as a marginal target of educational policies.
Higher education, 2011
The focus of this paper is on the relationships between social origin, participation in tertiary education (enrolment, drop-out, enrolment at second level and post-tertiary education) and occupational instability among university graduates in a recent period of university and labour market reforms (the differentiation of higher education due to the “Bologna process” and the flexibilization of employment contracts). In the first part of the paper we review these institutional reforms, discussing how they have changed the structure of opportunities and constraints for students and graduates. In the second part we analyse data from several cross-section waves of the Upper Secondary Graduates Survey and the University Graduates Survey which cover both pre- and post-reform cohorts. Results from logistic regression models show a slight decline in the association between parents’ education and enrolment in tertiary education, whereas there is a reduction and a new increase of inequality in drop-outs. We also find remarkable effects of parents’ education on enrolment in post-graduate courses, but smaller on the risks of having unstable jobs and both are mainly stable over time. Only a slight reduction of the role of social origin in university participation and in the transition to the labour market took place, but it seems not to be too closely connected to the specific reforms which occurred in the 1990s.
Previous research on Italian higher education showed that social origin affected students' academic progression and results in the 20 th century. In this paper we examine the role of student employment-i.e. working during university-in the reproduction of social inequality in academic outcomes. In the first part, we review previous research results in the US, UK and Italy and discuss several competing hypotheses. In the second part, we use data from the Italian Longitudinal Household Survey (ILFI) to study a) the relation between student employment and academic outcomes; b) the relation between social origin and student employment, and c) the mediating effect of student employment in the relation between social origin and academic outcomes. Bivariate analysis and multinomial logistic regression models show that full-time students are more likely to graduate on time than working-students, but only high-intensity work has a detrimental effect on dropping out. Social origin affects the probability of being a high-intensity worker, but not the likelihood of being a low-intensity worker. Finally, results from a non-linear decomposition analysis suggest that the overall role of student employment in the reproduction of inequality in higher education is low, while the most important variable is the type of high-school attended (especially lyceum vs non-academic).
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2010
In the knowledge economy and current public finance constraints, matching higher education and labour market is not one of the main issues in higher education policy sustainability: it is "the issue". Being universities' sources of funding almost entirely domestic and in most countries primarily governmental, politicians are expected to ensure that the increasing public investment in higher education is justified by the fact that the benefits are captured by domestic workers and investors. In doing so they must avoid disrupting the international and free community of scholars and students pursuing knowledge, killing the goose that laid the golden eggs for so long. The European debate and frontiers of research concerning the interactions between universities and labour markets are analyzed. The much needed reform of university governance in Italy is evaluated in its premises and implications for the matching of higher education and labour market.
Participation, performance and inequality in Italian higher education in the 20th century
higher education, 2009
Using data from the five waves of the Italian Longitudinal Household Survey, this paper examines the dynamics of Italian higher education in the twentieth century. The main goals are to study changes in participation in higher education (enrolment, transition, and graduation rates), in performance (drop out and delayed graduation rates, average delay duration), and how these have changed in different social classes. The main results are as follows. Enrolment growth has not been followed by a proportional increase in graduation rates. The drop out rate, the number of delayed graduations and the average delay duration were already high before the 1969 reform, and subsequently increased over time. Delayed graduations increased among students from both upper-middle and lower-middle classes, whereas the drop out rate rose only among the latter, and stayed steady for the former. As a whole, absolute inequalities persisted over time, with any slight reduction that took place resulting from declining performance of the upper classes, and not from an improvement of the lower classes.