In 2013, an art college in a large Northeastern city in the United States launched the Art College Scholars (ACS) program in response to the growing exclusion of high-achieving, low-income students from higher education, and a need to diversify the pool of art and design school applicants. The 3-year ACS program offers 80 hours of art and design…

In light of the need to both grow and diversify graduate enrollments in computing fields, this quantitative study examined variables associated with students' initial aspirations for computing graduate school as well as how aspirations were sustained or developed over time. Using a longitudinal sample of undergraduate students who enrolled in…

Asset-based approaches to public service reform suggest a need for policymakers to shift attention from 'fixing' the perceived deficits of disadvantaged neighbourhoods, to recognising and building on the resources, or assets, they hold. However, these approaches have also been critiqued for interpreting assets so broadly that they effectively…

This article reports a study that investigated secondary school students' higher education aspirations (towards university studies, ISCED 6 and above) and how these differ between student groups as well as how these are impacted by values of education. Panel data of more than 300 secondary school students in two countries, Luxembourg and…

Formal education has all too often been portrayed as a means of achieving social and economic mobility, there is a need to address the unequal footing for adolescents in the Global South attempting to achieve social mobility through education. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Sri Lanka, this article considers the impact of upward…

Using a unique database from Hungarian primary schools, this study investigates whether academic self-assessment and educational aspirations differ between Roma minority and non-Roma majority students with similar cognitive skills and abilities. I find that Roma students have lower self-assessment, on average, than their non-Roma classmates with…

Past work and college-access programs often treat college knowledge as discrete pieces of information and focus on the amount of available college information. I use ethnographic and multiwave interview data to compare college-aspiring working- and middle-class black 9th and 11th graders across almost two years in high school along with their…

Students with learning disabilities (LD) have not kept pace with peers without disabilities regarding enrollment in postsecondary education. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of "I'm Determined" youth leaders with LD who have enrolled in higher education. Participation led to structured experiences and…

Based on a case study, this article discusses connections between educational inequality in Brazil, transnational migration and educational upward mobility. It analyses a young woman's migration from a "favela" in Brazil to Germany with a focus on the educational aspirations that motivated it, that is, as a case of "educational…

Objective: The purpose of this study is to highlight the type of community cultural wealth developed and used by Latina/o community college transfer students who encountered limited pre-transfer assistance and unreceptive cultures at their transfer institutions. Method: This study took place at Southwest State University (SSU), a Predominantly…

This study examines the challenges of female doctoral students in China at the intersection of neoliberal education and Confucian gender roles. Employing qualitative interviews with 12 students, it explores how they navigate academic pressures and societal expectations. Leveraging Margaret Archer's reflexivity theory, key findings show that these…

Educational innovation has received significant attention in contemporary policy debates. Many countries and regions have initiated comprehensive reforms to reshape teaching methods and link innovative practices with improved equity and performance outcomes. In Catalonia (Spain), a clear example of this phenomenon, recent policy developments have…

The interest in educational and professional aspirations of students transiting to post-secondary education has gained prominence in academic debates and policy agendas internationally. Political interventions for raising aspirations quite often draw on narrow instrumental and rationalistic assumptions of individual decision-making that, as we…

To address social inequality, many western governments have sought to pursue principles of 'widening participation' as a key policy response in higher education. Though originally intended to complement social justice policy agendas, alignment of education policies with broader neoliberal policy frameworks has led policymakers, such as those in…

This study uses the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS:2002) to examine how varying levels of intention (planning) and action (choice) in pursuing a science-based major affect American college students' degree attainment in Science and Engineering (S&E) fields by age 26. The study is guided by the Social Cognitive Career Theory's…