Placement work experience may mitigate lower achievement levels of Black and Asian vs. White students at university

Abstract

Ethnic minority groups have been shown to obtain poorer final year degree outcomes than their majority group counterparts in countries including the US, the UK and The Netherlands. Obtaining a lower degree classification may limit future employment prospects of graduates as well as opportunities for higher level study. To further investigate this achievement gap, we analysed performance levels across three academic years of study of 3,051 Black, Asian and White students from a UK University. Analyses of covariance investigated effects of ethnicity and work placement experience (internships) on first, second and final year marks, whilst statistically controlling for a number of factors thought to influence achievement, including prior academic performance. Results demonstrated superior achievement of White students consistently across all years of study. Placement experience reduced, but did not eliminate, the size of the achievement gap exhibited by final year students. Sex, parental education and socioeconomic status had no significant main effects. Female students showed a more complex pattern of results than males, with Black females not showing the same final year uplift in marks as their Asian and White counterparts. Implications and possible explanations are discussed.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01518
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology
College of Health & Life Sciences > Clinical and Systems Neuroscience
College of Health & Life Sciences
College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Optometry > Vision, Hearing and Language
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Operations & Information Management
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture (CCISC)
Additional Information: © 2017 Moores, Birdi and Higson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Uncontrolled Keywords: attainment gap,placement,internship,university,ethnicity,performance,achievement,BME,Psychology(all)
Publication ISSN: 1664-1078
Last Modified: 08 Jan 2024 08:29
Date Deposited: 04 Sep 2017 08:00
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2017-09-12
Accepted Date: 2017-08-22
Authors: Moores, Elisabeth (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-3997-0832)
Birdi, Gurkiran
Higson, Helen E. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-3433-2823)

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