Marta Rahona Lo´pez

Abstract: In the past few decades, there has been a sharp increase in the number of students attending higher education institutions in Spain. Many commentators believe that this expansion is associated with greater equality of opportunities as more university places offer greater potential for the advancement of students from poorer backgrounds. Unfor-tunately, this argument is not always true. In fact, there is empirical evidence that the expansion in higher education system disproportionately benefits children from relatively rich and well educated families. In that context, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the possible effects of socioeconomic background on the decision to complete a degree before leaving the educational system in Spain. Taking the data from the Spanish module data on school to work transitions, I estimate several logit models in order to detect the influence of personal and regional characteristics on the educational decisions. The results show that, in spite of the disappearance of universities for only the elite, socioeconomic variables heavily influence the demand for university education, so the equality of opportunities in this educational level has not been completely achieved.

Key words:influence of socioeconomic background;logit models;Spain;university studies

总结：1、在过去几十年中，西班牙高等教育的学生入学率呈现显著增长的趋势，许多评论家认为这个增长与教育机会的均等有很大的关联，教育机会均等一定程度上保证了来自薄弱背景家庭中的孩子拥有接受教育的机会。

2、本文主要分析了西班牙的学生在离开教育系统获得一定学位之前社会经济因素对其接受教育的影响。

3、调查结果显示，尽管大学精英教育模式在逐渐消失，但是，社会经济仍然会深刻影响到大学教育的需求，因此，教育机会的均等仍未完全达到。

来源：High Educ (2009) 58:285–306

DOI 10.1007/s10734-008-9194-5.