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Gender inequalities in higher education have attracted interest in the academic literature. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The author uses standardized high school final exam results and probit regression analysis to contribute to this highly important discussion.

Based on secondary, non-survey data, female students tend to outperform males in subjects requiring creativity. Consistent with this comparative advantage, female students also tend to be more affected by their abilities in choosing and preferring the related field of humanities as a higher education. In line with female students’ choices, the results presented in the paper confirm that men are more inclined toward exact and natural sciences, even though they do not prove to have stronger abilities in related subjects. In addition, men are also more influenced by their abilities in obtaining a professional higher education. The choice of social sciences is quite similarly affected by the academic abilities of men and women. The paper also provides evidence that, on average, individuals choose their field of study according to their academic abilities.

For evidence, a data set that makes it possible to relate quantitative measures of very different academic abilities to all major academic disciplines is used in the paper. This unique approach has so far been lacking in the literature due to data limitations. In other words, instead of concentrating on a specific area, such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the author takes a broader view.

The main purpose of this study is aimed to estimate the mediating role of student engagement in the structural relationships between students' field of study choice, learning readiness and academic competence of undergraduate students in higher education.

In the study process, a correlational design was employed. Data were collected from 419 participants who were selected through a simple random sampling technique. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data.

The study findings showed neither field of study choice nor learning readiness has a significant direct effect on student's academic competence. However, when student engagement, entered the relationships between “field of study choice and academic competence” as well as “learning readiness and academic competence”, the indirect effects became significant. Both conditions, therefore, suggesting student engagement had a full mediation role in the structural relationship models.

Based on the results, it can be concluded that student engagement is shown as one of the key variables used to comprehend how students develop competence in the teaching-learning process. Hence, teachers and academic administrators could use engagement as a strong instrument to optimize students' learning and academic competence to enhance their academic success.

In this chapter, we take up the distinction between applied and general fields of study in order to consider how patterns of gender stratification between them may differ. Purporting to offer industry- and firm-specific skills, applied fields of study are often differentiated from general education pathways that are offered within the university sector. However, as our research demonstrates, there is considerable interplay between these two forms of education when higher education engagement over the life course is examined. Using sequence and cluster analysis, we illustrate five ideal-typical higher education pathways in a sample of males and females over a 22-year period in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The gendered patterns of how individuals choose and move between general and applied fields of study offer a deeper account of stratification within general and applied skill acquisition and provide nuance concerning how vocational education can be conceptualised in relation to the actual higher education pathways students undertake. In Canada, where a high percentage of students gain university-level credentials, vertical and horizontal gender stratification within applied and general fields of study is distinctive and highlights system-specific engagement.

Higher education environments have become increasingly competitive and institutions have to compete for students in the recruitment markets. With the introduction of student fees, it is hypothesised that potential applicants to HE will increasingly become consumerist. The research upon which this paper was based was aimed at finding out the factors students consider important in their decision making related to choice of university and courses of study.

Five sixth form schools and colleges in the Southampton University Partnership Scheme participated in the study. Three hundred and eighty seven students (186 male and 201 female) voluntarily participated. The study involved a survey questionnaire based on a 10 point Likert scale and included 35 university choice factors which students were to rank accordingly. It also included 10 items similarly ranked to identify factors influencing university subject or course choice. Simple descriptive statistics were used to identify the factors students consider most important in their choice and decision making.

Two key signals have been identified. First is that, students seem to be adopting a consumerist approach to their HE decision making. The importance attached to labour market motives in terms of employment and career prospects significantly outweigh those related to pursuing HE on the basis of subject interest and a love for the subject. Second is that as a result of this, students consider programme and price related issues as more important than other elements of universities marketing mix.

There are no claims for generalisability of findings from this research on account of the small sample of participants and the use of convenience sampling employed in the study. However, the findings generally support what is already known about factors influencing university choice and go beyond to show signals of change within the undergraduate recruitment market.

The findings have implications for university positioning in a diversifying recruitment market, and for a reconsideration of marketing and recruitment strategy at institutional levels.

The paper identifies signals of a changing undergraduate recruitment market and notes the implication this has on recruitment and marketing activities for institutions intending to position or reposition themselves in the highly competitive markets.

Young men and women dominate different niches of science education in Australia, but how this divide varies between university and post-secondary vocational education and training (VET) is not well understood. Therefore, I compare courses in both sectors to assess if the male–female gap at later stages of education mirrors adolescent career plans and subject choices made in secondary school. Multinomial logistic regressions estimated on data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth (Y06) illustrate the extent to which the gender divides in secondary and post-secondary education correspond with one another. Y06 started with the 2006 Australian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Each year until 2013, a nationally representative sample of youth, who were nearly 16 years old in 2006, reported their schooling and work experiences. I find that Australian women rarely specialise in physics, engineering and technology (PET); in contrast, they dominate the life sciences. While post-secondary science is segregated by gender everywhere, the disparity within VET is much deeper due to a large share of PET enrolments. VET students, who come from modest socio-economic backgrounds and have less academic success at school, learn in more segregated environments than their university peers. This analysis suggests that gender divides will be particularly hard to close within post-secondary VET, even if schools succeed in eradicating gender differentials in students’ career aspirations, science performance, self-concept and choices of science subjects.

Employers regularly complain of a shortage of qualified scientists and advocate that to remain competitive more scientists need to be trained. However, using a survey of graduates from British universities, I report that 3 years after graduation less than 50% of graduates from science subjects are working in a scientific occupation.

Accounting for selection into major and occupation type, I estimate the wages of graduates and report that the wage premium of science graduates only occurs when these graduates are matched to a scientific occupation – and not because science skills are in demand in all occupations. I also provide additional evidence to assess whether science graduates are pushed or pulled into non-scientific occupations. Altogether, the evidence does not support the claim that science graduates are pulled by better conditions, financial or otherwise, into non-scientific jobs.

This paper aims to identify career development theories that explain the intention to choose college majors in arts and design, to integrate the identified theories and to examine the relationships between determinants of the integrated model. In addition, this study attempts to identify the characteristics of the prospective arts and design students.

The literature review resulted in a multitheoretical framework named as PERISCOPE (Personality of Holland's RIASEC in Social Cognitive and Planned Behavior Theories) to reflect the theories it consisted of. This study collected data from Year 12 students in Surabaya (n = 163) and used PLS-SEM technique to assess the measurement model and the structural model of such framework.

The results revealed that the integrated model explains 57.8 percent of the variance of the intention to pursue arts and design majors. This paper hence improves the predictive ability of an earlier model by adding a further theory. In addition, this study identified characteristics of the prospective students and concluded that students with artistic personality will have better self-efficacy, which sequentially have perception that pursuing arts and design majors will not be challenging, thus increases their intention to pursue such majors.

This study demonstrated that PERISCOPE framework is better in terms of predictive power in understanding the college major choice in arts and design. As a result, this study adds to the current body of knowledge in the field of college major choice, which was found to be lacking.

The paper innovates on the existing literature by assessing the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) tertiary education enrolment and career choice in a small country setting and by extending on Master and Meltzoff (2016) theoretical framework to provide a holistic explanation of the gender disparity through a mix of personal, environmental and behavioural factors. The study first probes into the existence of potential gender disparity in STEM tertiary enrolment in Mauritius. Second, in contrast with existing studies where selective factors are used to measure the gender gap in STEM education, this paper investigates into a combination of personal, environmental and behavioural factors that may influence participation in STEM education and career.

The study uses a survey of 209 undergraduates enroled in the main public university and investigates into the existence of a gender gap in STEM tertiary education enrolment and the reasons behind this disparity. Consistent with the theoretical model, the empirical analysis also investigates into the work environment (which cannot be measured from the survey), via semi-structured interviews of 15 women in STEM professions.

The logit regression results first reveal the existence of a gender disparity in the choice of STEM-related degrees. The probability of a female student to enrol in a STEM degree is lower than that of a male student, after controlling for all the personal, environmental and behavioural factors. The most important set of reasons influencing the student's STEM degree choice are self-efficacy and the student's academic performance in STEM subjects at secondary school level. The findings also demonstrate that young women are relatively more likely to choose STEM degrees than their male counterparts when they are supported by their family, school and teachers. There is further evidence of lower participation of women in STEM professions as well as significant challenges which women in STEM careers face compared to their male colleagues.

This study adopts a holistic framework to assess the factors that hinder women's participation in STEM tertiary education and career in Mauritius.

Higher education researchers are often challenged by the difficulty of empirically validating causal links posited by theories or inferred from correlational observations. The instrumental variable (IV) estimation strategy is one approach that researchers can use to estimate the causal impact of various higher education–related interventions. In this chapter, we discuss how the body of quantitative research specifically devoted to higher education has made use of the IV estimation strategy: we describe how this estimation strategy was used to address causality concerns and provide examples of the types of IVs that were used in various subfields of higher education research. Our discussion is based on a systematic review of a corpus of econometric studies on higher education–related issues that spans the last 30 years. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion of the use of IVs in quantitative higher education research and a discussion of good practices when using an IV estimation strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to measure student’s preferences regarding various attributes that affect their decision process while choosing a higher education area of study.

The paper exhibits two different models which shed light on the perceived value of each examined area of study: conjoint analysis and clustering k-means algorithm.

The findings of the used methods exhibit not only which of the attributes have the greatest influence on students’ decision-making process, but also shed light on which types of study areas are most preferred by respondents.

The paper addresses a new view on students’ definition of higher education when adding the choice of selecting the “proper” area of study to one’s profile.