BMBF junior research group ACCESS investigates the role of institutional barriers in university access

14 January 2021, by CSS

Photo: Ramon

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funds a new junior research group lead by CSS member Dr. Florian Hertel (Department of Socioeconomics). Over the next five years, the research group ACCESS will investigate the role of institutional barriers (such as numerus clausus, waiting semesters or aptitude tests) for the (re)production of social inequalities in university access and subject choice. The research question is to what extent barriers can explain social inequality in educational decision making at the transition to university and how barriers should be constructed to equalize access chances. Starting in April 2021, Florian Hertel will be joined by a postdoc and two PhD students, who will conduct theoretical and empirical research on how admission barriers shape social selectivity in the transition to higher education. In addition to describing the relationship in Germany for the first time, the aim of the research group is to examine alternative selection mechanisms and to contrast their distributional effects with the existing ones. While being framed by an international comparison, the German context will be the main focus of the project. Further information on the project can be found here [in German]. An enlightening video produced by Florian Hertel on institutional barriers to university access can be found here [in German].