"Access to postsecondary education: can schools compensate for socioeconomic disadvantage?" in Higher Education
While access to postsecondary education in Canada has increased over the past decade, a number of recent studies demonstrate that youth from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are vulnerable to some degree of exclusion from postsecondary education. These studies tend to emphasize the lack of financial resources and social capital as the main sources of this vulnerability. Our paper employs multilevel framework to explore the extent of the impact of schools on access to postsecondary education, especially for youth from disadvantaged background. Our analyses revealed that: (1) for youth with similar financial constraints who attend schools with relatively similar quality, those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds who attend schools with high concentration of low SES students are particularly vulnerable to exclusion from university education, and (2) a substantial portion of the SES effect operate through the impact of high school academic achievement and postsecondary education expectation on access to postsecondary education.
Joseph Mensah is a Professor in the Department of Geography at York University. Mensah works in cultural studies, transnationalism, formations of ethno-racial identity, African development, socio-spatial dialectics, race and return migration.
Other publications from this author include:
- "The Black, continental African presence and the nation-immigration dialectic in Canada" in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture (2015)
- "Seeing/being double: how African immigrants in Canada balance their ethno-racial and national identities" in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal (2015)
- "Black continental African identities in Canada: Exploring the intersections of identity formation and immigrant transnationalism" in Journal of Canadian Studies (2014)
- "The global financial crisis and access to health care in Africa" in Africa Today (2014)
- "Ghana's National Health Insurance: insights from members, administrators, and health care providers" in Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (2013)
- "Cultural dimensions of African immigrant housing in Toronto: a qualitative insight" in Housing Studies (2013)
- Ghanaian and Somali immigrants in Toronto's rental market: a comparative cultural perspective of housing issues and coping strategies" in Canadian Ethnic Studies (2013)
- "Gender, power, and religious transnationalism among the African diaspora in Canada" in African Geographical Review (2012)
- Black Canadians: History, Experience, Social Conditions (2010)
- Neoliberalism and Globalization in Africa: Contestations on the Embattled Continent (2008)