Publications

Non-traditional students in higher education drop out more often than traditional students. To understand this difference more clearly, this paper examines differences between the two groups with regard to sociodemographic characteristics, study contexts and life circumstances, as well as individual assessments of prospects of academic success and the costs and returns of studying. A decomposition analysis shows that student age and study context are two factors that have a particularly strong significance for the higher tendency of non-traditional students to drop out. This paper suggests ways in which theoretical models for explaining educational decisions could be adapted with regard to the special group of non-traditional students.

Providing access to higher education and establishing a conducive framework for lifelong learning are important goals of the European Higher Education Area. In the D-A-CH countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), the group of “non-traditional students” includes graduates of technical and vocational training without a school-based university entrance qualification, employees, family workers and “learners in later life”. Based on current data, and operating from the perspective of diversity and inequality theory, the papers in this issue examine university access regulations, students’ time budgets, the effects of care responsibility, and student dropouts, including during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Collecting life history data is highly demanding and therefore prone to error since respondentsmust retrieve and provide extensive complex information. Research has shown that responseburden is an important factor influencing data quality. We examine whether increases indifferent measures of response burden in a (mixed-device) online survey lead to adverseeffects on the data quality and whether these effects vary by the type of device used (mobileversus non-mobile).

The Social Survey is a series of surveys on the economic and social situation of students in Germany that has been in existence since 1951. Every three to four years, a cross-section of students is surveyed on aspects of access to higher education, structural features of study, social and economic situation, including income and cost of living, employment, housing situation, as well as socio-demographic characteristics, partnership status and parenthood. The data package includes the data from the 10th Social Survey (1982), which was limited to German students in the old Länder. An additional questionnaire included Questions about the psychosocial situation. https://doi.org/10.21249/DZHW:ssy10:1.0.0

The survey of scientific and administrative employees at medical faculties in Germany is part of module 7 „Praktikabilität, Akzeptanz und Verhaltenswirksamkeit“ in the collaborative project „Qualitätsmaße zur Evaluierung medizinischer Forschung“ (QuaMedFo). It was planned and conducted in close cooperation of the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) and the Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG) in the first half of 2021. Data preparation was completed in the second half of 2021. https://doi.org/10.21249/DZHW:qmf2021:1.0.0