Research Projects of the Sociology of Education Working Group

Stefanie Schröder

How do study preparation institutions shape the educational pathways of refugees to German universities?

German Title: Wie gestalten Studienvorbereitungseinrichtungen die Bildungswege von Geflüchteten an deutsche Hochschulen?

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christian Imdorf

Planned Submission Date: Summer 2024

A remarkable share of refugees who have arrived in Germany since 2014/2015 is highly qualified and has strong educational and academic aspirations. Preparatory colleges (the so called ‚Studienkollegs‘) and higher education institutions as language course providers are the two main organizations offering obligatory study preparation for non‐EU international study applicants, including refugees. So far, research on conditions for refugees’ successful transitions into and through study preparation, and eventually into higher education, is scarce.
The dissertation project fills a research gap on the organisational level by considering the established norms and rules in the field of study preparation and the role of professional staff within the organizations in shaping successful pathways into higher education. For the theoretical framing, the dissertation project draws on concepts from the sociology of education and inequality as well as from the sociology of valuation. The empirical basis is formed by expert interviews with key actors in the field study preparation organizations, especially teachers and managers of study preparation courses, as well as interviews with refugee participants from study preparation courses. The qualitative data was conducted within the DZHW project ‚Refugees on their way into German higher education‘ (‚WeGe‘; 01.04.2017-31.03.2021).

Helena Geisler

Significance of educational credentials in the recruitment of skilled personnel

German title: Bedeutung von Bildungszertifikaten bei der Auswahl von Fachkräften

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Christian Imdorf, LUH & Prof. Dr. Irene Kriesi, SFUVET

Planned Submission Date: 2026

It is an ongoing debate whether the education system should expand vocational or general education. Switzerland has the highest proportion of compulsory school leavers in upper-secondary vocational education and training (VET) programs in Europe. Vocational programmes are also widespread at the tertiary level and offer an alternative to university programmes, which require a university entrance certificate. However, there is little research on how recruiters evaluate different educational pathways within an occupational field. With my cumulative dissertation I contribute to this question and focus on the organizational level represented by the recruiters. I will first reconstruct different recruitment goals and find out how recruiters evaluate applicant information in relation to these goals. Therefore, I will use sociological theories of valuation. Secondly, I want to focus on the significance of educational certificates in relation to non-educational information like age, gender, hobbies etc. Recruiters get this non-educational information by interpreting the applicants’ CV, motivation letter and job interview. For the analysis I will use sociological theories about the re-production of social inequalities in employers’ decision making as well as economic theories emphasizing productivity and signalling properties of credentials. Thirdly, I want to investigate what competences and status recruiters attribute to different credentials.

My dissertation is part of the project The role of educational credentials and skills in the hiring process at Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. We follow a sequential Mixed-Method Design and will first conduct semistructured interviews with recruiters of different occupational fields in the German speaking part of Switzerland. We will then conduct a Factorial Survey where recruiters evaluate fictional CVs that differ regarding the education pathways.

Nadine Dörffer

Vocationally oriented schools as pathways to higher education for socially disadvantaged students?

German title: Berufliche Schulen als Weg an die Hochschule für sozial benachteiligte Schüler*innen?

Supervisor and first examiner: Prof. Dr. Christian Imdorf

Second examiner: Prof. Dr. Nadine Bernhard

Planned submission date: 2024

Nowadays approximately one-third of all higher education entrance certificates in Germany are obtained at a vocationally oriented school. However, these schools remain subordinate in the discussion about socially unequal transitions to higher education. Even though early pathways to higher education via vocational school types have been institutionalized since the educational expansion processes of the 1960s/70s, knowledge about their respective contribution in guiding their students to higher education remains scarce. Additionally, vocationally oriented schools differ in their institutional and organizational structures between school types and federal states. In my dissertation, I address the question how vocationally oriented schools enable socially disadvantaged students to transition to higher education. My dissertation is broadly embedded in educational inequality research and focuses on institutional permeability as a precondition of social mobility (Bernhard 2018). For this purpose, this cumulative dissertation follows a mixed methods approach. Within its publications, the dissertation explores the main research question from individual, institutional and organizational perspectives. Therefore, I use secondary data sets of individuals (DZHW Studienberechtigtenpanel) for multivariate analysis and collected qualitative data material (documents, interviews) for qualitative content analysis. Overall, the dissertation project aims to enrich and specify knowledge about vocationally oriented schools as pathways to higher education and to critically classify the findings about their opportunities to reduce social inequalities in the transition to higher education.