college
FINANCIAL worries and a lack of parental guidance are keeping a substantial portion of the middle classes from college, new research shows.

The percentage of young people from the “lower white collar” social group enrolling in college has fallen, whereas it has risen for children of every other group, from manual workers to professionals.



There is now a greater percentage of semi-skilled workers’ children in college than there are young people from lower white collar backgrounds.

The lower white collar group includes families where the main earner might be a bus driver, postal worker, hairdresser, chef or caretaker.

This “other non-manual” group, as it is called, makes up nearly 10pc of the population.

A forthcoming report from the Economic and Social Research Institute seeks to explain why so few from this group stay in education, right through to college.

The main reasons are:

Worries about money, even if they qualify for higher education grants.
No family tradition of higher education.
Absence of effective guidance and encouragement in school.
The report, seen by the Irish Independent, suggests that previous studies of participation rates had “concealed a dramatic picture of educational disadvantage among young people from ‘other non-manual’ backgrounds”. It found that many were “disaffected” from school at an early age and see college as something to be avoided.

-By John Walshe

see more: http://www.independent.ie/education/latest-news/white-collar-woes-hit-college-hopes-1879869.html