6533b82dfe1ef96bd129114d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Repeated selection : access to a higher education diploma for vocational baccalaureate holders

subject

description

This thesis examines the access of vocational baccalaureate holders to higher education in light of two major recent developments: the explosion in the number of vocational baccalaureate holders, on the one hand, and the continuous increase in their enrollment rate in higher education, on the other hand. Between 2000 and 2015, the combination of these two phenomena led to an almost fourfold increase in the number of vocational baccalaureates enrolled in higher education. In this research, we explain the obstacles and levers of these new educational paths through the determinants of the successive passage through three stages of selection.First, informal selection corresponds to the influence of the students' environment on their educational aspirations: this work shows that the social environment, relatives, and teachers of students with a vocational baccalaureate contribute to the orientation of their higher education projects as much as their personal tastes or their academic level.Second, formal selection is the moment when the educational institution chooses the candidates it authorizes to enroll in the requested program: the ‘section de technicien supérieur’ (STS), an essential program for the continuation of studies for vocational baccalaureate holders, appears here as a highly competitive program, which mobilizes invisible or even illegitimate selection criteria for vocational baccalaureate holders, putting young people from working-class backgrounds, foreigners and scholarship students at a disadvantage. Moreover, although theoretically favored by a public policy initiated in 2013, in 2018 vocational baccalaureate holders are still penalized for entering STS, compared to other baccalaureate holders.Finally, effective selection refers to student success, considering their chances of graduation as a sign of "real" access to higher education. In STS, our results underline the absence of social inequalities in academic success among vocational baccalaureates. On the other hand, among all the training courses, the latter are penalized by a lack of confidence and a lesser sense of personal effectiveness, as well as by a lack of mastery of personal work methods. Finally, the success of vocational baccalaureates in higher education is hampered by significant socioeconomic difficulties, including the need to hold a job or the difficulty of financing housing.