Introduction

Ethnic educational inequality research has shown that immigrants and their descendants are often disadvantaged in the educational system. These findings can be seen in a wide variety of national contexts (Heath et al., 2008) and generally relate to performance and school-leaving qualifications but often also to participation in the education system in general. However, immigrants and their descendants choose academic alternatives more often than natives at various educational transitions in light of their comparatively low socioeconomic background and achievement (Dollmann, 2017). This so-called positive secondary ethnic effectFootnote 1 might lead to a compensation for ethnic disadvantages in terms of educational success in the medium term.

Research has shown that, consistent with secondary ethnic effects, immigrants and their descendants have relatively high educational aspirations and expectations compared to families without migration experience (Becker & Gresch, 2016; Hao & Bonstead-Bruns, 1998). High educational aspirations and expectations are associated with various educational transitions and at least partly explain immigrants’ increased transition rates (Dollmann, 2017; Glick & White, 2004; Kristen & Dollmann, 2010). Another strand of related research has examined the concrete mechanisms associated with the situation of immigrants and their descendants (e.g., immigrant optimism) and examined the explanatory power of these mechanisms for increased aspirations and expectations among immigrants (Hadjar & Scharf, 2019; Salikutluk, 2016; Tjaden & Hunkler, 2017). However, the empirical evidence has not shown a uniform picture, which is not least due to differences or incomplete operationalizations of the relevant mechanisms. Additionally, it is not yet clear to what extent the concrete mechanisms of increased aspirations and expectations affect the educational transitions that are ultimately realized. Educational aspirations and expectations, while understood as predictions or anticipations of the transition decision (Kleine et al., 2010), may deviate from actual educational transitions for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, aspirations and expectations might change in light of new information. On the other hand, students may not be able to realize the transitions they originally sought (Roderick et al., 2011), for example, because they do not meet admission requirements or because they encounter other structural barriers. Another limitation of previous research on increased ethnic aspirations and expectations concerns the specific educational transitions studied. Most related studies have focused on educational transitions within compulsory education or transitions from school to vocational education and training (VET). Only a few authors have addressed ethnic differences at the transition to higher education (HE) (Blake & Langenkamp, 2022; Jackson, 2012; Kristen et al., 2008; Tong & Harris, 2021) or within HE (Kirui & Kao, 2018; Neumeyer & Pietrzyk, 2019, 2023; Tienda & Zhao, 2017; Wakeling & Laurison, 2017). However, HE is increasingly important for the attainment of high socioeconomic positions in Western societies.

Taken together, these research gaps give rise to the following two research questions that we address in this article: Are there ethnic differences in educational decision-making at the transition to HE? What role do aspirations and expectations and their underlying mechanisms play in the emergence of ethnic differences in the transition to HE?

To answer these questions, we examine the educational transitions of upper secondary school leavers in Germany. The transition to the German HE system seems to us to be particularly well suited to answering our research questions. On the one hand, students meet comparatively few restrictions on access to universities once they obtain a higher education entry qualification. The majority of bachelor's programmes in Germany have no admission restrictions (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, 2020, p. 21). Therefore, if graduates from upper secondary schools are flexible in their choice of field or institution, they can circumvent achievement restrictions. This situation is in contrast to, for example, the situation in the U.S. or UK, where there is stronger selectivity by institutions. On the other hand, there are no tuition fees in Germany, a relatively small private sector of HE, or funding possibilities for students from low-income families (according to the Federal Training Assistance Act). For a first degree at a German university, semester fees are required, but these fees are usually well below 500 euros per semester and often include a ticket for public transport. Accordingly, students pay only a negligible fraction of tuition fees compared to studying at a public university in the U.S. or UK (Garritzmann, 2016). Thus, it can be assumed that high aspirations and expectations are of particular importance for the decision to study in Germany. However, there are alternative educational paths in Germany that also enable access to prestigious professions and high labour market returns. In Germany, there is a relatively well-developed system of VET in which various professions can be learned in the so-called dual system or at vocational schools (similar to Austria and Switzerland). The professional qualifications obtained there are perceived as relatively viable alternatives to HE, which is not the case in other countries without comparable VET programmes (e.g., the US). Therefore, a sufficiently large group of individuals with a higher education entry qualification (HEEQ) is taking educational paths other than HE after upper secondary education.

This article contributes to the state of related research in three ways. First, by analysing the transition to HE, we focus on a transition that is rarely analysed in research on the educational trajectories of immigrants. Second, we replicate existing analyses on the transition of immigrant students to HE compared to that of natives with more recent, large panel data in Germany. In our analyses, we distinguish specific groups of immigrants by their ethnic group and their immigrant generation. Third, we examine to what extent explanatory approaches that have been developed in the context of high aspirations and expectations of immigrants (for an overview, see Becker & Gresch, 2016) can also contribute to increased probabilities of immigrants enrolling in HE: immigrant optimism, relative status maintenance, anticipated discrimination, and information deficits. We apply decomposition analyses for nonlinear models to quantify the extent to which specific approaches explain ethnic differences.

To answer our research questions, we employ data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), starting cohort 4. The NEPS data cover the educational careers of a recent cohort of school leavers who have obtained an HEEQ in Germany. It is possible to distinguish between specific immigrant groups regarding ethnic origin and generational status with this data. Furthermore, the NEPS data allow a more exhaustive test of the different mechanisms of increased aspirations and expectations.

Our article is structured as follows: First, we describe theoretical explanations of ethnic secondary effects. In doing so, we account for migration-specific mechanisms that have been formulated in the context of the formation of high aspirations and expectations of immigrants. Based on these theoretical considerations, we develop our hypotheses and provide an overview of the current state of related research. Where applicable, we derive hypotheses for specific immigrant groups (Sect. 2). In Sect. 3, we describe the data before we present the results in Sect. 4. In the concluding section, we discuss our results and address their theoretical and practical implications.

Explanations of Secondary Ethnic Effects

Research on ethnic inequalities often draws on the distinction between primary and secondary effects coined by Boudon (1974) (Heath & Brinbaum, 2007). Primary ethnic effects refer to differences in skill levels and school performance between different ethnic groups that persist after controlling for the often less favourable socioeconomic background of different immigrant groups. Typically, primary ethnic effects are negative and often visible in early childhood (Becker & Klein, 2021). Secondary ethnic effects, the focus of this paper, refer to ethnic differences in educational choices that exist after socioeconomic background and ethnic primary effects, i.e., differences in achievement, are accounted for. Research has shown that secondary ethnic effects are positive at various educational transitions and that secondary effects are aligned with increased educational aspirations and expectations of ethnic minorities (Dollmann, 2017; Glick & White, 2004). Aspirations (or idealistic aspirations) and expectations (also called realistic aspirations) (Haller, 1968) reflect different types of goals that are assumed to be important in educational decision-making and that are explained by different theories: Aspirations represent educational wishes independently of the respective actual circumstances. According to the Wisconsin model (Sewell et al., 1969), educational aspirations are shaped by the norms and values of significant others (e.g., parents or peers). In the formation of expectations, however, actors take individual resources (e.g., social and financial capital) and prerequisites (e.g., academic performance) into account. According to rational choice theory, educational expectations are assumed to be based on rational decision-making processes (Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997; Erikson & Jonsson, 1996). Actors compare the costs, benefits, and probabilities of success of different educational alternatives, as well as their utility for intergenerational status maintenance. Theoretically, aspirations and expectations and the underlying considerations for their emergence can be clearly distinguished from one another. Empirically, however, it is difficult to measure the two concepts separately, and it is assumed that aspirations and expectations are strongly interwoven and that both significant others and rational calculations play a role in ethnic minorities’ educational decision-making (Busse et al., 2023; Schmaus et al., 2024). In the following, we consider aspirations and expectations since both types can also be relevant for transition decisions and are theoretically associated with secondary ethnic effects (Becker & Gresch, 2016).

The increased aspirations and expectations of ethnic minorities are attributed to various factors. On the one hand, these aspects are directly related to migration itself. On the other hand, these aspects are related to how the situation of immigrants in the county of destination affects their norms and values as well as the parameters of rational decision-making (Becker & Gresch, 2016). Four different immigration-specific lines of theoretical arguments for increased educational aspirations and expectations are distinguished.

Immigrant Optimism

Migrants are assumed to be more positively selected than nonmigrants regarding their motivation and their orientation to strive for upwards mobility (Kao & Tienda, 1995). Education is seen as a central means to achieve this social advancement and is therefore attributed a high value (Hadjar & Scharf, 2019). It is also assumed that parents pass on their high occupational and educational aspirations to their children (Louie, 2001; Shah et al., 2010), especially since first-generation immigrants are able to realize their goals in their own lives only to a limited extent.

Hypothesis 1

Higher levels of immigrant optimism contribute to increased rates of college enrolment among ethnic minorities. We assume that the immigrant optimism is particularly pronounced for immigrants who migrate for economic reasons. Therefore, it should contribute, at least to some extent, to increased rates of enrolment in HE among all major immigrant groups in Germany.

Relative Status Maintenance

The motive for status maintenance, formulated in the context of socioeconomic inequalities in education (e.g., Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997), should apply equally to families with and without migration experience. However, many immigrants had a higher status within their origin country, e.g., in terms of education (Spörlein & Kristen, 2019). In immigrant families, relative status in the country of origin could serve as a reference point in the formation of aspirations and educational decision-making (Becker & Gresch, 2016; Engzell, 2019).

Hypothesis 2

Higher levels of relative status in the country of origin contribute to increased rates of college enrolment among ethnic minorities. This mechanism should work equally for all immigrant groups, although specific groups may, of course, differ in their educational or occupational selectivity (see Spörlein & Kristen, 2019; Spörlein et al., 2020).

Anticipated Discrimination

In the case of Germany, which has a large share of company-based dual VET, students from ethnic minorities might fear discrimination when they are accessing a VET position, as it is usually the company managers who decide on the hiring process partly on the basis of personal interviews. In contrast, access to HE is granted through a more formalized and less personal process, leaving less room for individual discrimination. If students expect discrimination in access to VET, opportunity costs of longer education ultimately decrease, and students may direct their expectations towards HE (Heath & Brinbaum, 2007). Additionally, in academic labour market segments, less discrimination based on ethnic origin is expected than in labour markets for less qualified employees (Heath et al., 2008; Sue & Okazaki, 2009). If this argument is correct, anticipated discrimination should particularly affect the assessment of the relative returns of VET and HE and thereby influence the educational decision in favour of entry into HE.

Hypothesis 3

Anticipated discrimination in accessing VET and in labour markets for VET graduates contributes to increased college enrolment rates of ethnic minorities. It can be assumed that this mechanism is more relevant for immigrant groups with greater social distance to the majority population and immigrant groups that are visually more recognisable. In Germany, this applies above all to immigrants from Turkey (Hans, 2010).

Information Deficit

Missing or incorrect information about the education system can lead to distorted assessments of school performance, the necessary requirements and the usability of qualifications in the labour market (Kao & Tienda, 1998; Kristen & Granato, 2007; Ogbu, 1987; Relikowski et al., 2012). This should be reflected in expectations that deviate more from real conditions. Additionally, immigrants might be less familiar with specific educational careers in the host country that are less important in their country of origin. In our application case, this refers in particular to the VET system in Germany, which does not exist in this way in most immigrants' countries of origin. Furthermore, it is assumed that immigrants tend to overestimate the probability of successful completion of a university degree for two reasons. First, they report higher levels of academic self-concept; i.e., they perceive their own academic abilities as higher than majority students with similar grades (Kao & Tienda, 1998; Ogbu, 1987; Siegert & Roth, 2020) on the basis of comparisons within their ethnic group. Second, they assign less importance to performance per se and, instead, put more emphasis on motivational factors (Relikowski et al., 2012).

Hypothesis 4

Lower familiarity with VET and high academic self-concepts contribute to increased rates of college enrolment among ethnic minorities. In particular, immigrants who come from countries where there is no established vocational training system should be less familiar with VET. In Germany, this applies primarily to immigrants from Turkey. We also expect that information deficits diminish over the course of generations. In particular, for third-generation immigrants whose parents have already completed the education system in the host country, information deficits should be negligible.

Figure 1 summarizes the assumed general explanations of ethnic differences in educational transitions. Furthermore, we expect the explanatory factors to have an indirect effect on educational decisions, mediated by aspirations and expectations. In the present study, we focus on the overall influences of the four explanatory mechanisms for two reasons. First, they are more informative and differentiated regarding the underlying factors of differences in educational decisions. Second, it is theoretically expected that their influences on transition behaviour are largely mediated by aspirations and expectations. However, we exploit aspirations and expectations as a benchmark of the four explanatory mechanisms. This allows us to assess whether the four mechanisms exhaustively account for the explanatory value of aspirations and expectations for ethnic differences in the postsecondary transition. If this is not the case, other unobserved mechanisms might play a role in the formation of high educational aspirations and expectations of immigrant students.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Theoretical model explaining increased aspirations and expectations and transitions into higher educational tracks of ethnic minorities

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Some studiesFootnote 2 are already available on the individual arguments to explain the high aspirations and expectations of immigrants, although it is difficult to compare these studies due to the different operationalizations of the central explanatory variables. Research that analyses different arguments at the same time has been the exception thus far (Salikutluk, 2016). In the context of the transition to HE, research has provided initial indications of the importance of some of these factors. Mantovani et al. (2018) examined the intention to study and showed that parents' expectations, social capital and attitudes towards the costs and benefits of university education, in particular, help explain ethnic differences. Goyette and ** urban students’ participation in college application, four-year college enrollment, and college match. Sociology of Education, 84(3), 178–211." href="/article/10.1007/s11162-024-09791-w#ref-CR55" id="ref-link-section-d148415346e3396">2011). Furthermore, we expect that, in contexts without an established VET system, secondary effects in access to HE are not driven by information deficits about educational alternatives and therefore are less pronounced than in Germany. In our study, we showed that immigrants and their descendants have great potential to help overcome the shortage of skilled labour. Our study provides important information, particularly for education policy makers in countries with high barriers to university access.

However, future research should address several limitations. First, regarding the measurement of immigrant optimism, we were not able to capture the motive for status gain compared to the status of one’s parents, as proposed by Salikutluk (2016). Instead, we utilized occupational aspirations, which might be driven by factors other than the status gain motive. Second, we assumed that relative education captures the relative position of immigrant parents in their countries of origin. As occupational status is strongly linked to education in the origin countries we analysed (Schneider, 2010), we assumed that relative education is an adequate indicator of individuals’ position in the occupational hierarchy of their origin country. However, the relative position in terms of occupational status (socioeconomic status, income, prestige) might differ from that of education status in origin countries with a weaker link between education and occupation. Therefore, whether this operationalization of relative status maintenance can be applied should be reexamined for all countries of origin.

In addition, building on our results, further research is needed. In view of the ambitious decisions made by many descendants of immigrants, the next step is to ask to what extent they will also succeed in completing their studies and thus reduce ethnic educational inequality in the medium term. This is of particular interest for school leavers who have comparatively lower prerequisites (e.g., lower academic achievement). It has been shown that initial differences in achievement are associated with higher dropout rates in HE (Klein & Müller, 2020). However, the extent to which this is driven by secondary ethnic effects, as the role that aspirations and expectations might play in persistence in HE, remains unclear. Furthermore, it is theoretically important to ask whether the phenomenon of positive ethnic secondary effects is exhausted with university entry or whether this tendency continues into the further course of the university system, e.g., in relation to master's degree programmes and doctorates (e.g., Neumeyer & Pietrzyk, 2023).

In conclusion, this study contributes to the understanding of what factors drive ethnic preferences for higher education in their postsecondary educational transition. Our results highlight that multiple mechanisms are important in explaining secondary ethnic effects. Furthermore, we can show that some of the underlying mechanisms are relevant to various immigrant groups in different ways.