In a post on the Data Impact blog in 2018, we outlined our project aims and preliminary results on a project examining the educational experiences and labour market outcomes of first in family (FiF) students. This new blog post aims to update you on the things we found.
What does ‘first in family’ mean?
‘First in family’ is where neither parent graduated from university.
Our research examined whether being uk rcs data first in family presents a barrier to university participation, and if FiF students have different experiences while at university and in the labour market.
What did we find?
Our research found that access to university is still not equal.
Take two young people of the same age, with similar GCSEs and who come from a similar socioeconomic background; except that one has graduate parents while the other has not. The one without graduate parents would be almost half as likely to go to university as the other.
More specifically, the probability of university participation by parental education is 34% for potential first in family students, while for those with graduate parents the probability is 72%.
While at university, first in family students are three percentage points less likely to attend elite universities than their peers with university-educated parents.
They were also four percentage points more likely to drop out of university than students whose parents have a degree, conditional on their prior attainment and a range of demographic characteristics.
We found that having non-graduate parents is one of the most important barriers to university participation; more important than free school meal eligibility and the neighbourhood where you live, for example.