Browsing by Author "Lampinen, Hemu"

Despite the Finnish schooling system, which leans on the idea of equal educational opportunities, various studies have found that education is inherited. One of the best explanatory causes for this is thought to be the inheriting of cultural capitals, which is a central part of Bourdieu’s research in the field of social class. Additionally, former studies have found that cram schools inequalize students applying to universities based on their financial capitals. Regardless of the tendency to inherit education, some students whose parents are not highly educated still manage to apply and get in the university studies. In this thesis these students are called cross-generational educational risers. The objective of this thesis is to examine the reasons and background factors which encourage the cross-generational educational risers to apply to the university studies by a mixed method research strategy. These factors have been first studied via an internet survey conducted in four faculties of the University of Helsinki: educational sciences, social sciences, law and medicine. These influences to the applying process are studied using general statistics. The survey reached a total of 186 answers of which 29 were from cross-generational educational risers. Additionally, after the survey the case of one cross-generational educational riser from the faculty of law is studied and even further attention is payed to how these factors have been of influence in his case. This part of the thesis is executed through a semi-structured interview and the results are then analyzed using the phenomenological analysis. Differing from former studies in the field of inheriting education studies, this thesis detaches further away from the research tradition of social class studies and links closer to the research tradition of inheriting education. According to the survey, the greatest positive influences were found to be parents and different teachers. The lowest grade was given to the school counselor which was the only influencer to receive a grade below neutral. Of all the students from the faculties of law and medicine who answered, close to 90 % had attended a cram school before their university studies. The person interviewed, whose answers were in line with the results of the survey, also pointed out that his good grades throughout the school years and his coaches in sports were of great influence. The results of the school counselor are somewhat alarming and researchers should pay more attention to the role of the school counselor in the future.