Art Research
Attitudes of Sixth Former’s once finishing A-Levels on whether they go straight in to employment or continue in to Higher Education.
Introduction: “More students are applying for Higher Education to get themselves a decent job after they finish Sixth Form” (Art Research,2015). As Croll et al (2010) identified;
90% children post-16 go to University to get a good job. 1 in 5 children post 16 said that parents’ expectations were a reason to go. Only 6.5% suggested they would go in to Higher Education if their friends did. 1 in 3 did not want to go to University because of tuition fees .
Objective 1:
There are a variety of factors that have changed student perceptions on continuing in to Higher Education in the last 10 years. This is down to the rise of other alternatives such as apprenticeships and employment opportunities as well as anxiety towards tuition fees, expectations and education. Figure 2.1 reveals feelings towards the following aspects for applying to University and Figures 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 show anxiety levels about employment, money, education and expectation from the students Art Research asked.
It is expected that ART Research will have a similar outcome from literature the team has studied. The poster will flow by following a trajectory, focusing on each objective with a conclusion at the end to summarise the most crucial findings that ART Research has identified.
Figure 2.1
The data for this project was collected throughout a 6-week period from 87 respondents in three colleges in the South-West region; these were Chichester College, Felpham Community College and South Downs College. 82% of Sixth Formers asked are applying or considering applying for Higher Education which so far matches this statement.
The three objectives which will be covered in this poster are;
Analysing Student Perceptions on Higher Education.
Analysing student perceptions of Higher Education. Looking into whether perceptions are area, dependant, income dependant or if there are other major contributing factors. Investigating what motivates students to apply for Higher Education.
Objective 2:
ART Research has investigated the factors towards going into Higher Education. The research shows that the main perceptions of University for students are heavily influenced by the following factors; income, area, family and the degree route they are taking. Analysing Objective 2 will start with a cross tabulation of the different areas students are from and then follow on by looking at Figures 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 which focus on income.
When carrying out the survey the question “Why do you think students do not apply for Higher Education?” was asked. It was found that;
High tuition fees were most of a concern for students.
Along with this was living expenses with over 30% selecting Very Concerned.
A dislike of education was mostly selected as not concerned.
Students were also concerned about the rise of other alternatives being over 30%.
With a lack of course opportunities not being a major concern.
Identifying whether perceptions are area dependant, income dependant, or if there are other major contributing factors.
Figure 3.1
1403330 Investigating what motivates students to apply for Higher Education.
Objective 3:
Art Research has investigated the motivators for students to apply for University. The motivating factors can range from the degree to the influence of family. Art Research has investigated what the motivators are and how influential each aspect is. This objective starts by looking at Figure 4.1 which is about the influence of family and how motivational they are when applying to Higher Education.
Figure 4.1
Figure 3.1 compares and contrasts the distribution of applying to University by Sixth Form College. The results show that all of the students of Chichester College are applying or considering applying going to University. Over 80% of students are applying to University, showing that students are still in favour for Higher Education than against.
Figure 3.3
Figure 4.2
Figure 1.1 Figure 2.2
1407635 1400512 1404732
Zivcic-Berirevic et al (2011) state that parents still play a significant role in a student applying for University even if they are separated. More importantly students worry more about their parents’ expectations than their own.
From this, it is likely the results will show that parents do have a great influence when applying to University.
The pie chart constructed shows that the students Art Research interviewed in fact contradicts what ZivcicBerirevic et al (2011) are saying. Only 7% of people asked suggested that family were extremely influential in the decision making process. This was perhaps down to the fact the team only had 87 respondents.
As Figure 4.2 shows the most influencing factor motivating students to go to University is the degree they will be undertaking.
The least influential factor affecting the decision to go to University is family with almost half of the students deciding that it was not influential or slightly influential.
Figure 2.3 Figure 3.2
A Mann-Whitney test will now be performed to see if there is a significant difference between male and females motivational factors to apply for University. The results can be displayed in Figure 4.3
Art Research asked students what were the three words that came in to mind when talking about Higher Education. The results can be identified in Figure 1.1. Out of 199 words, exciting was used the most with 20 people opting for it (11%), the next popular word was expensive with 14 people using it (8%) and 7 people also used hard (4%). Overall, 139 words were positive (70%) and 60 were negative (30%).
Survey Overview: In total, the sample comprised
Figure 1.2
55.1% males and 44.9% females
A lot of students consider going to University as a gateway to their career, however it has also shown that there is a lot of concern about not being able to get a job after University which Davey (2004) states saying students “don’t believe it is easier to get a job with a degree”. The results of ART Research have confirmed in Figure 2.2 that they are concerned about obtaining a job with only around 10.3% of students not feeling anxious about employment and the majority falling into the category anxious at around 31%, additionally around 8% feel extremely anxious.
(Figure 1.2)
Figure 2.4
Three different Sixth Forms and Colleges; South Downs, Chichester College and Felpham Community College.
Figure 2.3 shows that nearly 40% of students feel anxious about money. This is dramatically higher than any other category of anxiety, with around only 14.9% feeling not anxious about money. This is further backed by Davey (2004) who explains that students feel it is too expensive. Income and debt seem to be some of the main contributing factors in the decision not to go to University.
Comparing the student’s applications to University in relation to income is a common theme.
Art Research expected students whose parents were in the lower brackets to be less likely to apply for University.
Rosenstone (2005) states “The prospect of years of debt after graduating is the key factor in their decision not to do a degree”. This is represented in Figure 2.3, as if students are anxious about money, believing financially they will not be sufficiently able to support themselves or feel the debt they have to repay is too large, then they will be less likely to complete a degree.
Figure 2.5
In total,
48% of the students were influenced by the cost of living when deciding to live at home
or move away to go to University.
45% were uncertain if their decision about entering Higher Education in the future would change. 55% of both first and second years at Sixth Form are potentially applying for University. Whereas only 33.3% of those in a retake year are considering University. With the majority of these students applying, wishing to stay close to the South Coast Region, (see below Figure 1.3). More than half of the students asked said that they need Higher Education to achieve their potential career/goal. 45 out of the possible 87 respondents had only considered going to University within the last 1-4 years. The majority (44%) chose the highest bracket of income when asked how much they would like to attain in the future, along with larger percentages in the higher brackets and only 1.1% in the smallest bracket. Money was a definite factor in leading to high levels of anxiousness compared to the other possible
Figure 2.4 shows 35.6% of students feel anxious in relation to their expectations of University. This is the highest value in the graph.
The percentage of students not feeling anxious about University is 20.7%.
Over
The results in Figure 2.5 for education anxiety levels are interesting as the 29.9% of students are not anxious; however, this is only marginally higher than the number of students that are anxious.
There is a significant difference between male’s and female’s influential factors when making a decision to apply for University; applying for University is influenced by family, independence , social life and getting a degree.
Conclusion:
Null Hypothesis Figure 3.6
Figure 3.4 has shown that students who perceive University as a necessity to achieve their career goal are more likely to apply for University. The interesting result is that students that are uncertain of Higher Education’s necessity are more likely to apply for University. There are still students applying for University even though it is not perceived as necessary to achieve their goals. Students who feel that Higher Education is unnecessary could potentially be thinking of going in to an apprenticeship . Despite Universities having high numbers of attendees and being a popular option for students, the level of students going into apprenticeships is increasing so this is another contributing factor (Delebarre, 2015). This shows that more students are going to college with the intention of going into an apprenticeship after Sixth Form instead of going straight into an apprenticeship, for these students, University was unlikely to have been considered.
Null Hypothesis There is no significant difference between male’s and female’s ambition for their future salary; future salary is not influenced by gender.
The results show that both male’s and female’s are typically anxious of the following aspects in regards to Higher Education regardless of gender. However, there is a significant difference between males and females with money, with males being more anxious than females so we reject the null and accept the alternative. P=0.014 therefore P< 0.05.
Figure 1.3 shows Sixth Formers preferred choices for Higher Education which was conducted in the survey, with the student choices mainly being in or around the South Coast area.
For education, employment and expectations there is no significant difference so we accept the null and reject the alternative. Education-0.102, Employment-0.420 and Expectations-0.916, all greater than 0.05.
Figure 2.7
When completing this, ART Research used a scale factor of 10, this was used to demonstrate the amount of students applying for that University. The majority of applicants are for the University of Portsmouth, with 10 applicants.
Alternative Hypothesis
The results show that we accept the null hypothesis as there is no significant difference between males and females influential factors. Degree-0.387, social-0.197, independence-0.325 and family-0.467 are all greater than 0.05.
Perceptions on the whole are confident in the education they will receive upon attending University. 70.1% of the students have some level of anxiety about a University education.
There is no significant difference between male’s and female’s anxiety levels in aspects in relation to higher education; anxiety levels aren’t influenced by gender.
There is no significant difference between male’s and female’s influential factors when making a decision to apply for University; applying for University is not influenced by family, independence, social life and getting a degree.
Outcome
There is a significant difference between male’s and female’s anxiety levels in aspects in relation to Higher Education; anxiety levels are influenced by gender.
Mostly all students were at least slightly concerned when it came to high tuition fees, with only 11.4% not concerned. 39.8% believed that there was not a concern for responsibilities at home. A vast 62.8% of students do not understand the funding of Higher Education.
Figure 3.4
Null Hypothesis
As Figure 3.2 above shows there is a trend that significantly more students will apply to University rather than not apply to University regardless of their income brackets.
Outcome
Figure 1.3
This contradicts Rosenstone’s (2005) study who states that students believe that they are going to be living through years of debt as a reason they do not apply.
Figure 4.3
Objective 1’s aim was to analyse students perceptions of Higher Education. Art Research found that there was no significant difference between male and female anxiety levels towards employment, education and expectations. However, there was a significant difference between anxiety levels in conjunction with money with males experiencing more anxiety. Art Research also found that high tuition levels and living expenses were a reason as to why students may not apply for education. This links us on to Objective 2 where Art Research identified whether these perceptions were income dependant, area dependant or if there were any other major contributing factors. The findings show that income is not a major contributing factor in the application to University, however the degree route that they were applying for was a major influence and that male’s and female’s ambition for a future salary was not influenced by gender. Similarly in Objective 3, motivational factors were not influenced by gender or family. To sum up, all three objectives showed that more people are applying for Higher Education regardless of certain factors which was predicted at the start of this investigation from Croll et al’s (2010) research.
Recommendations: If Art Research could make any amendments to this process and were to repeat this investigation, then the following would happen;
The team would allow more time to get responses for our questionnaire. The Regis School were late replying via email and were disappointed they could not be included; as a result Art Research missed out on a potential 100 respondents. This was down to busy schedules the Regis School had so rather than leaving it for a week to get respondents, the team should allow a month in future.
More paper copies. Some of the responses were poor on smart phones and tablets and this could have been avoided if the team were to use paper questionnaire copies. Particularly at Felpham, Art Research missed out on more responses due to a lack of paper copies.
Perhaps a direct investigation between Felpham and The Regis School who are the two local schools to see who is more ambitious. Although the team is happy with responses from South Downs and Chichester, it would be more interesting to see results in a particular region.
More questions could be asked in Objective 3 to get a better balance. Art Research was limited to what we could produce with fewer questions asked in this objective.
Alternative Hypothesis
factors.
Figure 2.6
The most notable trend is that the highest selected category is students who would like to earn £60,000+ and are applying for University. This would imply that students believe University to be a necessary step in order to achieve this.
Figure 3.5
This means that 79.3% of the students are feeling at least some level of anxiety about University not meeting their expectations.
A Mann-Whitney Test will now be performed to see if there is a significant difference between male and female anxiety levels to the statistics learned from the graph above. Figure 2.6 reveals the results.
Chanllender and Jackson (2005) conducted a survey about the relationship between the prospective higher education students in 2002. The results from that survey showed that there was a significant difference in the attitudes headed for debts between social classes. There was more negative balance between the costs and benefits of going to University from the lowerincome group. The survey has summarised that debt aversion is a class issue.
A Chi-Square Test will now be performed to see if there is a significant difference between male and female ambition for salary levels which can be displayed in Figure 3.6. Figure 3.5 is a cross tabulation to help visualise the initial results with the majority choosing the category of £60,000+.
The research identified a variety of different statistics which were;
Figure 3.3 shows there is a trend that students who would like a higher salary are more likely to apply to University.
Alternative Hypothesis There is a significant difference between male’s and female’s ambition for their future salary; future salary is influenced by gender.
Outcome Figure 3.7
The results show that we accept the null hypothesis as there is no significant difference between male’s and female’s ambition for future salaries. The Chi-Square value is x²= 1.773. Also, P=0.621 therefore P>0.05. This is surprising because The Higher Education Statistics Agency (2015) shows that females are more ambitious than males. As displayed in Figure 3.7. In this table from The Higher Education Statistics Agency, It shows that there is a consistently higher amount of enrolled females compared to males, in the last three years.
Students at Felpham Sixth Form celebrating attaining a place at University (Figure 2.7).
Reference List:
Challender, C. & Jackson, J. (2005), Does the fear of debt deter students from higher education? Journal of social policy, 34 (4), p.509-540
Croll, P. Attwood,G. & Fuller, C. (2010), Childrens Lives, Childrens Futures: A study of children starting secondary school, Continuum Studies, London, pp.40 – 58.
Davy, J. (2004), ‘How social class difference affects students experience of University’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol 28, Taylor and Francis Group.
Delebarre, J. (2015), Apprenticeship Statistics for England: 1996-2015, House of Commons Library (06113,) p.9.
Higher Education Statistics Agency. (2015), Retrieved from: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/, Accessed 11th December 2015.
Rosenstone, S. J. (2005), Challenges Facing Higher Education in America: in Iacobucci, F. & Tuohy, C. Taking Public Servicing Seriously, p. 63.
Zivcic-Becirevic, I. Jacovcic, I, Juretic, J. (2011), ‘Increase in Anxiety Symptoms in College Students’ in: (eds.) Buchwald, P. Moore, K. A. Ringeisen, T. Stress & Anxiety: Application to Education and Health, Logos Verlag Publishing, Berlin, p. 67.