Passage One
Did your mum and dad go to university, or did they leave school and go straight to the Job Centre The educational experience of parents is still important when it comes to how today’s students choose an area of study and what to do after graduation, according to The Future-track research in the UK.
The research was done by the Higher Education Careers Service Unit. It plans to follow university applicants for six years from 2006 through their early careers.
The first year’s findings come from a study of 130,000 university applicants. They show significant differences in prospective students’ approach to higher education, depending on whether their parents got degrees (second-generation applicants) or didn’t (first-generation applicants).
First-generation applicants were more likely to say that their career and employment prospects were uppermost in their minds in deciding to go to university. About one-fifth of this group gave "to enable me to get a good job" as their main reason for choosing HE. And 37 percent said that a degree was "part of my career plan".
A young person coming from a non-professional household where finances are stretched may find the idea of learning for its own sake to be a luxury. This explains the explosion in vocational courses.
At Portsmouth University, first-year student Kim Burnett, 19, says that she specifically chose her degree in health research management and psychology to get a secure, well-paid job. Harriet Edge, 20, studying medicine at Manchester University, also wanted job security. Her parents lacked college degrees, though the fact that her uncle is a doctor appears to have influenced her choice.
"Medicine is one of those fields where it’s pretty likely you’ll get a job at the end. That’s a big plus, as the debt levels after five years of study are going to be frightening," she says. Many experts believe that this situation affects those with no family tradition of higher education far more keenly. The fact that 26 percent of respondents said that they needed more advice implies that some students may end up feeling that their higher education investment was not worthwhile.
For those with graduate parents, this lack of guidance may, the researchers suggest, be less of a problem. "But, for those without the advantages, lack of access to career guidance before applying for higher education leaves them exposed to making poorer choices," the survey concludes. Those with graduate parents may