Prof. David Reimer from the University of Iceland is going to give a lecture as part of the LIfBi Lectures series. 

While an extensive body of literature in the social science has analysed the mechanisms leading to inequalities in educational decisions based on observational data, a newer rapidly evolving stream of research from sociology, economics and psychology employs field experiments that provide more rigorous tests of mechanisms that can help to reduce inequalities in educational attainment with implications for real-world behaviour. In these experiments, students are for example provided with additional information about the benefits of (more) education, offered practical assistance in the college-application assistance process, or they obtain additional guidance. One shortcoming of previous interventions that attempt to update student beliefs about education is that they often only focused on correcting students’ biased perceptions of costs and returns while neglecting important psychological and social barriers that might prevent students from lower socioeconomic background from pursuing higher levels of education. In the first part of this talk, I will present results from two experimental intervention studies that were implemented at the transition to higher education in Denmark with the goal to address this limitation. This first study tested the effects of a combined information and role model intervention designed to reduce inequalities at the transition from high school to university. The intervention led to a significant increase in expectations of attending university and applications in the centralized admissions system among students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the second follow-up study, we implemented a similar intervention albeit with multiple treatment arms, to test whether the provision of role-model (videos) vs. labour market statistics is more effective in reducing inequality in access to higher education. The findings from the second study suggest that assigning participants to the treatment condition which involves the presentation of videos featuring first-generation university students is more effective in diminishing inequality in access higher education. In the second part of this talk, I will briefly present the contours of the newly started large scale project EDUCHANGE project (see www.educhange.hi.is) that builds on the results of the aforementioned research but further seeks to test the effectiveness of strategies that can reduce inequality at the transitions to upper secondary and tertiary education with a cross-country comparative design that is currently implemented in four strategically chosen countries: Germany, Hungary, Denmark and Iceland.

David Reimer is Professor of Educational Sociology at the University of Iceland. His research focusses on inequality in the domain of education and the transition from education to work. He is particularly interested in how social class, gender or ethnic inequalities are affected and moderated by different institutional arrangements across Europe and beyond.