OTTAWA—New research into what affects young people’s ability to opt for higher education has found that although cost is an important consideration, it comes second to various complex family-related influences beginning early in life.
The research is based on data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) developed by Statistics Canada and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada that studied two groups of youth over nine years.
“Probably the most significant [finding] is our understanding of the factors that affect access to post-secondary education,” said Prof. Ross Finnie of University of Ottawa and Statistics Canada.
“Rather than being the narrow economic or financial factors that we thought in the past were most important, like tuition rates and student financial aid, at least in terms of affecting change at the margin or bringing new students in the system, it’s more to do with what we’ve call ‘cultural factors’ related to the family.”
These include a host of subtle, interrelated factors like a child’s experiences growing up, parental education and attitudes towards schooling, preparation that a student receives for going to college or university, and the student’s own aspirations, motivations, engagement with school, study habits, and high school outcomes.
“It’s a complex process, it starts early, and it’s rooted to a great degree in the family,” Prof. Finnie said.
Prof. Finnie is among four co-authors of “New Perspectives on Access to Post-secondary Education,” an article in Statistics Canada’s April 2010 issue of “Education Matters: Insights on Education, Learning and Training in Canada.”
The YITS studied two groups of youth as they moved from their mid-teens to their late twenties, making decisions about—and in some cases progressing through—post-secondary education while also making choices about moving into and out of the job market.
Each group was interviewed five times at two-year intervals, starting in early 2000, with the latest data referring to 2008.
Few True Dropouts
Prof. Finnie said the new data has made it possible to identify a number of important educational pathways that have previously been insufficiently understood.
For example, in addition to access to post-secondary education, another key line of research concerns students’ persistence toward post-secondary graduation. The YITS data showed that about half of all students failed to finish their initial program within five years, but only about 10 to 15 percent can be considered true dropouts.
