A downside to high aspirations: Immigrants’ (non-)success in tertiary education

Abstract

While many studies document the ambitious educational choices of immigrants across Europe, researchers have only recently begun to investigate the consequences of these ambitious choices. Our article extends this emerging literature by focusing on immigrants’ success throughout tertiary education in Germany. We argue that after the transition into tertiary education, immigrants lose their advantages over native students regarding higher aspirations while retaining or even increasing their disadvantages regarding academic achievements, which ultimately results in a higher risk of dropping out. Analyses based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) confirm our hypotheses. Net of socioeconomic background and prior academic achievements, immigrants enter tertiary education with similar aspirations as their native peers. At the same time, immigrants, especially those of Turkish origins, have lower grades and competency levels. Furthermore, immigrants continue to receive lower grades during tertiary education and have a considerably higher risk of dropping out. We conclude that immigrants’ high aspirations enable them to enroll in tertiary education at comparably low levels of academic achievement but ultimately increase the risk of academic failure. We discuss possible policy measures to improve the situation of immigrants.