Browsing by Subject "Hämäläis-Osakunta"

Aims. The expansion of higher education in the late 20th century has brought about changes in many traditional academic structures. For example, the traditional regional recruitment base of the student nations of Helsinki University broke down and their membership was made voluntary in 1969. During the next decades the number of new members in student nations declined rapidly despite the rise in overall student enrolment. The aim of this study is to investigate the changing role of the student nations through the changing regional and social basis of their new members from the 1970s to 1990s. For the subject of this study was chosen Hämäläis-Osakunta student nation, where the change was most rapid. This study aims to approach structural changes in education from the viewpoint of educational sociology by inspecting the representation of different social groups in the membership of the nation through the means of participation ratio to filter the changes of simultaneous changes in educational and societal structure. Methods. The study uses data from the membership register of Hämäläis-Osakunta. A permission to use the data was obtained from the nation. No identifiable personal data were collected. The data was picked from new member entries from the period 1969-1999 with ten-year intervals. The regional background of the members was operationalised by the place of the matriculation exam and the social background by the occupational status of the father, which was classified according to the census classification rules of Statistics Finland. Participation ratios were calculated with employed males ages 45–54 as base population. These were compared to new students of both at Helsinki University and countrywide as well as new members of Savo nation. Findings and conclusions. The social background of new Hämäläis-Osakunta members was observed to follow the general development of new students both at Helsinki University and countrywide. Exceptional growth of the nation's membership was mainly due to increase in members from Uusimaa region, while the traditional recruitment area of Häme declined until the 1990s. At the same time, the proportion of descendants of upper level employees (especially with higher education degrees) grew, although the overrepresentation of these groups was somewhat mitigated by the general rise of social status. From a regional viewpoint, a clear division could be observed: the role of upper level employees was accentuated in Uusimaa, while in Häme and the rest of Finland the social breakdown was more even. The representation of agricultural workforce increased slightly, while that of lower level employees decreased; workers remained largely underrepresented. The findings support the conclusion that traditional academic institutions, like student nations, retain their appeal most persistently among the more educated classes, who can best recognize their cultural capital.