The Diverse Effects of Shadow Education for Tracking Allocation in Germany, Japan and the United States – Evidence from National Panel Studies

• In Event: Shadow Education in a Digital Age: Evolving Provision, Diverse Function, and Varying Effect

Proposal

Families with advantaged socioeconomic status (SES) are believed to increasingly invest in shadow education (SE) to enhance their children’s school success and thereby ensure they maintain a high social status. The global rise in SE therefore points to increasing inequality in relative educational opportunities, because high SES families may significantly improve their children’s educational success at critical transition points in the education system by investing in SE. However, comparative research indicates significant cross-national differences in the effects and thus implications of SE for social inequalities.

To better understand under which circumstances SE may foster educational inequalities, we comparatively investigate the effects of SE on school allocation focusing on the transition to higher education institutions of different selectivity in three countries with very different systems of secondary schooling and school allocation, namely Germany, Japan and the United States. The following questions shall guide our empirical endeavors: Is shadow education more likely to be used by families with a high SES in all countries? Second, do the outcomes of SE differ in the three countries and can this be traced back to class-specific differences in the motives to pursue SE? Finally, how does the use of SE affect social inequality in educational attainment in the considered countries? The last question is significant, as the frequent use of SE is believed to lead to dislocations in the educational process of children and youth, as indicated in studies on east Asia. In particular, the extent to which students with SE experience fare in the allocation to higher levels of education in different countries was not sufficiently examined yet.

To narrow this research gap, we first draw on two competing theoretical lines of argumentation to explain the possible effects of SE on allocation in formal schooling with regards to inequality in educational opportunities: (1) the social reproduction model (SRM), and (2) the social mobility model (SMM). The hypotheses gained from this analysis are quantitatively tested by means of logistic regressions and structural equation modeling using national representative panel data from Germany, Japan, and the United States.

Our results indicate that the implications of SE are intertwined with characteristics of education system, educational investment strategies, and learning culture in the respective countries. Whereas SE is a strategy primarily used by rather high SES and well-performing students to (moderately or significantly) enhance their chances of admission to more selective colleges in the US and Japan, in Germany SE is primarily used by mid-SES strata with low performance to complete their school degrees before leaving the education system.

Finally, our results are discussed with regards to the potential role of SE for social inequalities and educational attainment in the three societies and overall.

Authors

• Steve Richard Entrich, Universität Zürich

• Hiroki Nakanishi

• Soo-yong Byun, Penn State University