Conference Program

Higher education has undergone a massive expansion in recent decades. However, dropout rates remain high. In countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development one-third of students who enroll in university drop out (Aina et al. 2022). Studies identifying individual factors contributing to dropouts, such as health, finances, and academic capacity (e.g., Li & Carroll 2020, Von Hippel & Hofflinger 2021), have been complemented by research acknowledging the importance of contextual factors (Behr et al. 2021). Yet there is a lack of studies that consider the status and position of an education program within the field of higher education.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of fields, strategies, and capital (Bourdieu, 1996; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) this study explores throughput and dropout in preschool and primary teacher education programs in Sweden. These programs were characterised by low throughput and a subordinate position within the field of higher education. The aim of the study is to examine how throughput and dropout are related to the positions of the programs within the field of higher education and to the educational strategies of students attending the programs.

The study is based on 47 interviews with students and staff at the preschool and primary teacher programs at Uppsala University. Most of the interviews were carried out digitally and lasted 50–60 minutes. The themes for the student interviews were the students’ professional and educational backgrounds, pathways to and expectations of the teacher program, experiences of the studies, views on the preschool and primary teaching profession, and experiences of dropped studies. Interviews with educational officials focused on student throughput and dropout. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke 2022).

The study offers three key insights. First, a significant gap existed between students’ expectations of easy program completion and the actual demands. This gap was fuelled by the programs’ marginalised status in higher education alongside staff efforts to uphold educational quality. Second, students with relatively much cultural and social capital developed educational strategies in which they collaborated with each other to bridge this gap. Lastly, staff efforts to protect education quality, and the strategies of well-resourced students created internal tracking systems that instigated dropout among less-resourced students.
The results resonate with previous Bourdieusian research which indicates that students lacking social and cultural capital are more likely to drop out (Thomas 2002, Lehmann 2007, Longden 2004, Romito et al. 2020). However, the study develops this by identifying that a scarcity of resources not only fosters a sense of alienation within the higher education system but also that students with more capital may distance themselves from those with fewer resources, thereby possibly contributing to their risk of dropping out. This distancing serves both to manage the resource rich students’ own academic commitments and to protect the status of the preschool and teacher program and the preschool and teacher profession.