If not education, then what?

Parental education is not a good proxy for measuring socioeconomic status, writes Trevor Gale. The long-awaited move to a new way of measuring the socioeconomic status of higher education students is gathering pace. Submissions in response to DEEWR’s recent discussion paper on the issue are due at the end of the week. The paper canvasses the current ideas on how SES can be measured, and seeks feedback on which measures could and should be used. Last year (CR, 08.12.09), I noted that while education is one possible SES indicator, the international research shows that the correlation between parental education attainment (PEA) and their child’s educational attainment is not overly high. According to recent research by Arnaud Chevalier, a research fellow at the Centre for the Economics of Education at the London School of Economics, a parent’s educational attainment accounts for between 6 per cent and 16 per cent of the effect on their child’s educational attainment. That’s still statistically significant, but suggests that the usefulness of PEAs in measuring university students’ SES is similarly low to moderate. Nevertheless, there is a connection. The real issue is whether education per se has validity as an indicator for measuring the SES of higher education students, irrespective of whether it is the educational attainment of the individual or their parents. Is it fit for purpose? In contexts other than education or in society generally, it makes sense to use education as a measure of SES. But it doesn’t make sense to take a group of people who experience educational disadvantage, classify them as low SES on this basis, and then use this to determine how many low-SES people are enrolled in university. It’s like using a metre ruler to measure out a length of string, then using the string to see how metre rulers measure up. Logically, low-SES people (when defined in terms of educational disadvantage) can’t be enrolled at university unless we are prepared to regard university enrolment as a form of educational disadvantage. As soon as they are successful at university, they are no longer low SES, which also means that we are without a way of determining how many low-SES people enroll in postgraduate study. The Australian Bureau of Statistics offers this same cautionary note about the SEIFA index of education and occupation: “We do not recommend using this index if the user ... is analysing information that has already been included in the index.” And it is why the OECD has opted to use parental occupation rather than parental education as a measure of the SES of students involved in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). If we ignore their lead and use education as a measure of SES anyway, we run the risk of undermining the government’s desire to break the nexus between low SES and educational disadvantage. The two will be inseparable if one is defined in terms of the other. If education is not an appropriate measure of the SES of higher education students, what is? Another possibility raised in the discussion paper is occupation. It is a logical choice. The research literature indicates that occupation is the best single indicator of socioeconomic status. While never entirely indicative, occupation’s value as a stand-alone measure of SES is its tendency to reflect the outcome of educational attainment and to influence patterns of remuneration. More generally, occupation is both expressive and generative of the “social, cultural and economic resources” – including education and income/wealth – that the discussion paper notes broadly define SES. Unlike the alternatives, much of the work in preparing occupation for use as an indicator has already been done. The ABS has a well-established classification of occupations in Australia, and researchers at the ANU and ACER have a well-developed method for determining the relative prestige or status of these occupations. More than the alternatives, occupation fits the discussion paper’s criteria of a “good measure”. As well as exhibiting construct and predictive validity, occupation has face validity; it is readily and commonly understood to measure SES. ‘What do you do?’ is the question frequently used in informal settings as shorthand for determining status. It also presents fewer problems of sensitivity/privacy and accuracy in the collection of data about students’ individual circumstances. Compared with parental education attainment and parental income, students are often more knowledgeable and less concerned with sharing information about their parents’ occupation. As a measure, occupation is also less volatile than education and income, with fewer changes in the status of occupations over time. And, as an indicator of SES, it can be used to reflect the individual circumstances of higher education students or the area circumstances of higher education students. Using occupation as a measure of SES also serves the government’s agenda to include within any new measure indicators of the individual circumstances of students. Indeed, the problem of how to determine the SES of mature age students only arises when individual measures are introduced. Area measures can be applied irrespective of age. While we know that area measures are not perfect (they assign SES to all people in an area irrespective of their individual circumstances), individual-circumstance measures are also problematic. For example, given the multiplicity of family arrangements in modern Australia, measurement difficulties arise as to which parent’s details to use as a proxy for students’ SES, at what age students become independent of their parents and their data, and indeed what to do with students without identifiable parents. One way forward is to resolve that individual measures of the SES of mature-age students should be determined independent of their parents, as implied in their mature-age and independent status in applying for university study and Centrelink support. As a measure, occupation is well suited to the problem of mature-age students, whereas the classification, stratification and accuracy problems associated with reporting their own or their parents’ educational attainment are exacerbated for mature-age students. Of course, occupation cannot do everything that is required of a defensible measure of SES. It would need to be coupled with an area measure of SES, most probably based on census collection districts, to provide a contextual multidimensional measure, including the relative access to occupations by people differently located. Area measures will be needed anyway because of the government’s desire, advocated in the HEPPP guidelines, to stimulate a partnership rather than an institutional approach to encourage and enable low-SES people to access higher education. If not education, then occupation. And if occupation, then perhaps coupled with income proxies (such as Centrelink data) but certainly balanced by area measures of SES. Trevor Gale is professor and director of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, hosted at the University of South Australia.