Some recently arrived refugees and forced migrants in Germany, most of them from Syria and Iraq (some from Eritrea or Afghanistan), are already equipped with a foreign university entrance qualification or have already studied in their host countries before they fled from terror or war. This situation generates, first, an opportunity to integrate these people into the German higher education system to overcome a deficit perspective and build on existing educational aspirations and second, a challenge for German universities, universities of applied science, and preparatory colleges.
We investigate for the first time the situation of refugees taking preparatory courses as a way into German universities. Our focus is on the meaning of higher education aspirations for refugees in Germany, their prerequisites, educational habitus and personal situation in regard to their prospects for achieving a German university entrance qualification and taking up study, as well as on the interrelation of the individual initial situations, learning environments and institutions.
We are conducting a mixed method study integrating a quantitative panel study of refugees and other migrants in preparatory courses, qualitative expert interviews with staff from universities and preparatory colleges, and a qualitative panel of episodic interviews with refugees planning to study at university. The study takes place at four regional clusters scattered across Germany, each featuring at least one university, one university of applied science, and one preparatory college.
At preparatory courses we are able to administer paper and pencil classroom interviews (PAPI) with refugees and a comparison group of other foreign students from diverse cultural backgrounds. We plan to administer a panel of three waves with a PAPI in the first and second waves and an online interview in the third wave. While the first and second waves examine the start and end-phase of the preparatory courses, the third wave investigates the progress of the participants’ first university semester or alternative pathways.