Browsing by Author "Halmkrona, Esa"

Preparatory courses have established themselves as a part of higher education admissions in certain fields of study in Finland. In my thesis I set out to study preparatory courses as shadow education nested within the higher education system. My interest is especially in applicants that are currently studying in a secondary study programme and applying for a place in their primary programme. The purpose of my thesis is to outline the role of preparatory courses in the higher education admissions game as a partly invisible part of the applying process. In my thesis I used both quantitative and qualitative data. As a study design I looked at the phenomenon from two different perspectives with triangulation. The aim of the quantitative analysis was to outline the background of the phenomenon. I used the qualitative data to further deepen the understanding with individual stories. As quantitative data I used survey data from The Student Barometer 2016 by Research Foundation for Studies and Education OTUS (n = 5341). The qualitative data consisted of three interviews, which I executed as narrative interviews. The informants who took part in the interviews had taken a preparatory course and studied in a secondary study programme at the time. I analyzed the qualitative data using expectation analysis and small stories as a framework. In this study the preparatory courses are outlined as an integral part of admissions game, where the interviewed applicants have a position weaker than their perceived peers regarding the forms of capital. Preparatory courses are regarded as products in line with the idea of educational consumerism. The producers of the courses are critically compared with each other as with other products in the market. The community within a preparatory course appears to be highly competitive, there appears to be no peer-support, community-building or similar functions in the courses.