The academic advantage of having university-educated parents decreases with the proportion of university-educated parents in a society: evidence from Spain

ABSTRACT

The academic advantage associated with having a university-educated parent may be intrinsic to that condition or depend on the proportion of university-educated parents in a society. If the latter, the expansion at university level will bring about a decrease in the average performance of children from university-educated families. I capitalize on the research opportunity that offers a late-expansion case such as Spain and assess how the academic achievement of students coming from university-educated families has evolved across the successive PISA waves. I document a strong decline that is partially explained by the increasing number of university-educated parents (particularly fathers) without a highly-skilled job. Furthermore, as the expansion of university causes the increase of hypogamous university-educated families where girls have an advantage, I test whether the decline in academic achievement is different for boys and girls. I observe no decline in academic achievement for girls coming from hypogamous university-educated families.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic achievement
• educational inequality
• educational expansion
• PISA

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The ISCED schema describes the following levels in the Spanish educational system: Primary Education (ISCED1), Lower Secondary Education (ISCED2), Academic Upper Secondary Education (ISCED3A), Vocational Upper Secondary Education (ISCED3B), University education (ISCED5A) and Higher Vocational Education (ISCED5B).

2. The ISCO scheme distinguish the following major groups: (1) managers, (2) professionals, (3) technicians and associate professionals, (4) clerical support workers, (5) service and sale workers, (6) skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers, (7) craft and related trades workers, (8) plant and machine operators and assemblers, (9) elementary occupations, and (10) armed forces occupations.

3. Plausible values should be interpreted as likely results in each domain had the student completed the whole questionnaire.

4. The conclusions hold completely (results available upon request). Unfortunately, the OECD alerted that the Spanish reading results in 2018 were unreliable and not adequate for comparison with previous waves, so I cannot replicate the analysis for those scores.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Programa de actividades de I + D en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Comunidad de Madrid [H2019/HUM-5802].

Notes on contributors

Manuel T. Valdés

Manuel T. Valdés is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology II of the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid, Spain. His current research interests comprise educational expectations and transitions, inequality of educational opportunities, and social stratification. His research has been published in journals such as Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Educational Review, Social Science Research, or the International Journal of Sociology of Education.