Publications

Work is a central area of human life, and work-associated stress can affect health over a long period of time. From a health sociological perspective, it was assumed in this paper that education as a resource is able to support the management of stress(ors) and thus has a positive impact on health. Data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS): Starting Cohort 6 – Adults, was used and a cross-sectional analysis was performed. Linear regression models were estimated to analyse the effect of stressors at the workplace on work-related stress. The results show that more well-educated people show a lower level of stress, net of stressors and additional controls.

This paper investigates the relationship between age and attaining a tenured position in academia (postdoctoral researcher or professorship at a university of applied sciences or university). Following considerations about ageism towards doctoral graduates who were 40 years and older (40+) upon attaining a PhD and Robert K. Merton’s idea of cumulative advantages in academic careers (Matthew-Effect), we differentiate between biological and academic age. We test the relationships and the resources accumulated behind the latter using data from the DZHW PhD Panel 2014. Applying piecewise constant exponential estimations and an entropy balancing, we find that PhDs aged 40+ experience a significantly positive effect on attaining a professorship.

Unequal access to university and the decision processes that give rise to it are important factors in the accumulation of educational inequalities. In this paper, we investigate a specific aspect of such decision processes by focusing on those students who change their original plans to start a (nontertiary) vocational education and decide to pursue a tertiary degree instead. In doing so, we find that more than one-fifth of the students in our sample who originally planned to pursue a vocational education change their original decision in this way.

This article is the first to comprehensively examine the question of the extent to which social origin exerts an influence on the choice of educational and occupational options after dropping out of a first degree programme. Based on the survey of exmatriculated students from the 2014 summer semester, six typical patterns of reorientation after dropping out are identified by means of sequence and cluster analyses. These vary with regard to the types of activities as well as temporal dimensions. The social origin proves to be a significant factor influencing reorientation. The impact of social origin is most visible with regard to weighing up between renewed studies and other alternatives: individuals from fully academic parental homes are m