Should I make an effort? Educational trajectories in a permeable system

A long-standing debate focuses on how human agency and institutional structure influence life course outcomes. Kaspar’s research assessed the extent to which institutional differentiation and key agentic dimensions - persistence and effort - affect educational trajectories in Switzerland. 

The Swiss education system is vertically differentiated but permeable and provides both standard and nonstandard pathways to higher education. Drawing on data from a prospective cohort study of 4986 people, the study examined to what extent lower secondary school tracking affects individuals’ probability of moving into an academic or vocational programme at the upper secondary level. It explored how this predicts the probability of entering university when considering human agency. 

Overall, the system powerfully channelled educational trajectories with individual agency playing a minor, albeit not completely negligible, role in academic success. 

Links

• Department of Social Science
• Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• Centre for Quantitative Social Science