IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v37y2005i6p619-632.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why people from the UK's minority ethnic communities achieve weaker degree results than whites

Author

Listed:
  • Derek Leslie

Abstract

People from the UK's minority ethnic communities achieve less good degree results than whites. The paper explores some reasons for this under-performance. By analysing a large sample of around two million observations a measure of the quality of qualifications among those accepted into Higher Education is developed. It is found that ethnic minorities are less well qualified than whites. This is because proportionately more are accepted into Higher Education, so lower average quality is unsurprising. Subject choice is also found to have an influence because ethnic minorities choose subjects where it is more difficult to achieve a good degree.

Suggested Citation

  • Derek Leslie, 2005. "Why people from the UK's minority ethnic communities achieve weaker degree results than whites," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 619-632.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:37:y:2005:i:6:p:619-632
    DOI: 10.1080/0003684042000313172
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0003684042000313172
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0003684042000313172?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dolton, Peter J & Greenaway, David & Vignoles, Anna, 1997. "'Whither Higher Education?' An Economic Perspective for the Dearing Committee of Inquiry," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(442), pages 710-726, May.
    2. Jeremy P. Smith & Robin A. Naylor, 2001. "Dropping out of university: A statistical analysis of the probability of withdrawal for UK university students," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 164(2), pages 389-405.
    3. Andrew Abbott & Derek Leslie, 2004. "Recent Trends in Higher Education Applications and Acceptances," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1), pages 67-86.
    4. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    5. Stephen V. Cameron & James J. Heckman, 2001. "The Dynamics of Educational Attainment for Black, Hispanic, and White Males," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(3), pages 455-499, June.
    6. D Leslie, 2004. "Does UK Higher Education Discriminate Against Women?," Economic Issues Journal Articles, Economic Issues, vol. 9(2), pages 51-68, September.
    7. Derek Leslie & Stephen Drinkwatr, 1999. "Staying on in Full‐Time Education: Reasons for Higher Participation Rates Among Ethnic Minority Males and Females," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 66(261), pages 63-77, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arouri, Mohamed & Ben-Youssef, Adel & Nguyen, Cuong Viet, 2019. "Ethnic and racial disparities in children's education: Comparative evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Viet Nam," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 503-514.
    2. Zorlu, Aslan, 2011. "Ethnic Disparities in Degree Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 6158, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Arouri, Mohamed & Ben-Youssef, Adel & Nguyen, Cuong Viet, 2019. "Ethnic and racial disparities in children's education: Comparative evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Viet Nam," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 503-514.
    4. Dries Lens & François Levrau, 2020. "Can Pre-entry Characteristics Account for the Ethnic Attainment Gap? An Analysis of a Flemish University," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 61(1), pages 26-50, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Naylor, Robin & Smith, Jeremy & McKnight, Abigail, 2002. "Sheer class? The impact of degree performance on graduate labour market outcomes," Economic Research Papers 269472, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    2. Rossella Iraci Capuccinello, 2014. "Determinants and timing of dropping out decisions: evidence from the UK FE sector," Working Papers 15742191, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    3. Contini,Dalit & Ricciardi,Riccardo & Romito,Marco & Salza,Guido & Zotti,Roberto, 2020. "Improving university dropout and student careers. What room for institutional action?," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 202004, University of Turin.
    4. Yelena Kalyuzhnova & Uma Kambhampati, 2007. "Education or employment-choices facing young people in Kazakhstan," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(5), pages 607-626.
    5. Gianna Boero & Abigail McKnight & Robin Naylor & Jeremy Smith, 2004. "Graduates and Graduate Labour Markets in the UK and Italy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Daniele Checchi & Claudio Lucifora (ed.), Education, Training and Labour Market Outcomes in Europe, chapter 6, pages 129-165, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Contini, Dalit & Salza, Guido, 2020. "Too few university graduates. Inclusiveness and effectiveness of the Italian higher education system," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    7. Regina Riphahn & Florian Schieferdecker, 2012. "The transition to tertiary education and parental background over time," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 635-675, January.
    8. Rossella Iraci Capuccinello & Steve Bradley, 2014. "The effect of college mergers on student dropout behaviour," Working Papers 64907218, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    9. Dominik Schreyer, 2019. "Football spectator no-show behaviour in the German Bundesliga," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(45), pages 4882-4901, September.
    10. Fors, Gunnar & Zejan, Mario, 1996. "Overseas R&D by Multinationals in foreign Centers of Excellence," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 111, Stockholm School of Economics.
    11. Evens Salies & Catherine Waddams, 2003. "Pricing structure in the deregulated UK electricity market," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03592457, HAL.
    12. MacKinnon, J G, 1989. "Heteroskedasticity-Robust Tests for Structural Change," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 77-92.
    13. Kemptner, Daniel & Tolan, Songül, 2018. "The role of time preferences in educational decision making," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 25-39.
    14. Fenech, Jean-Pierre & Skully, Michael & Xuguang, Han, 2014. "Franking credits and market reactions: Evidence from the Australian convertible security market," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-19.
    15. Bliss, Mark A. & Gul, Ferdinand A., 2012. "Political connection and leverage: Some Malaysian evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 2344-2350.
    16. Gu, Chen & Kurov, Alexander & Wolfe, Marketa Halova, 2018. "Relief Rallies after FOMC Announcements as a Resolution of Uncertainty," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 1-18.
    17. Son K. Lam & Thomas E. DeCarlo & Ashish Sharma, 2019. "Salesperson ambidexterity in customer engagement: do customer base characteristics matter?," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 659-680, July.
    18. David A. Volkman, 1999. "Market Volatility And Perverse Timing Performance Of Mutual Fund Managers," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 22(4), pages 449-470, December.
    19. Goncalves, Silvia & Kilian, Lutz, 2004. "Bootstrapping autoregressions with conditional heteroskedasticity of unknown form," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 89-120, November.
    20. Daron Acemoglu & Philippe Aghion & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2007. "Technology, Information, and the Decentralization of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1759-1799.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:37:y:2005:i:6:p:619-632. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.