Articles

We contribute to research on social inequalities in educational attainment by examining the role of institutional contexts for students’ study abroad (SA) intent and participation. To do so, we extend the individual-level rational choice model predicting SA intent and participation depending on students’ socioeconomic status (SES) into a multi-level model emphasizing the importance of context effects. We test our model based on unique micro-level student data, which we supplement with context data. Examining 18,510 students nested in 69 universities, we provide the first in-depth multi-level analyses of SA intent and participation of students from Japan.

Following the outbreak of the war on Ukraine, Europe experienced a strong rise in inflation in 2022/23, which posed and partially continues to pose major challenges for companies, workers, consumers, and governments. Students were also affected by inflation. We take the recent inflation as an opportunity to take a long-term look back at how inflation has affected students in Europe.

During the Covid-19-pandemic, German universities resorted to carrying out appointment procedures for professors online. Thus, the hearings of candidates no longer allowed for the appointment committee to meet the candidates in person, leading to complaints on the insufficiency of online meetings. On the basis of 17 expert interviews with chairs of appointment committees and members of university leadership, the article explores why personal interaction face-to-face is perceived to be indispensable in the selection process. It finds that those responsible for the procedures argue that a personal meeting allows for a more comprehensive impression of the candidates and that online meetings interfere with the goal of the selection of the best.