The influence of social and cultural determinants on post-secondary pathways and transitions : Influence des déterminants sociaux et culturels sur les parcours et les transitions dans les études postsecondaires

The facts democratization of access to post-secondary learning, demonstrate specifically that youth from low-income thanks in part to the policy of free and compulsory families or Aboriginal communities remain under- primary and secondary education, which has con- represented at the post-secondary level, whereas the tributed to the increase in the number of youth proportion of youth from middle- a [...] In the wake of the sweeping reforms around the Even in a context of quantitative democratization, middle of the last century, remarkable progress has the mechanisms of self-selection and reproduction been made in terms of attainment rates, so much of social groups are seen to be perpetuated. [...] The student’s academic among others, continue to face considerable barriers experience is defined as the outcome of family to post-secondary education attainment (Corak, Lipps mobilization (i.e., by the parents and the students and Zhao, 2005; Finnie, Laporte and Lascelles, 2005; themselves) and of the transmission of cultural habits, Drolet, 2005; Finnie, Lascelles and Sweetman, 2005). [...] Second, we wish to measure the effect of Although cognitive skills are certainly linked academic background and examine to what degree to an individual’s level of education, the latter is the effect of social determinants on participation in an imperfect gauge of the former as they develop in PSE depends on that background. [...] Multinomial While we acknowledge the longitudinal nature of regression makes it possible to grasp the influence the data and the relevance of taking into account the of the various factors on completion of one event effect of time, we have preferred to limit our exam- as compared to several others.