Family background, adolescents’ educational aspirations, and Australian young adults’ educational attainment

In this longitudinal study, relationships were examined between educational aspirations and educational attainment for Australian young adults from different ethnic and social status backgrounds. Participants included 6, 811 (3, 547 women and 3, 264 men) young adults (mean age = 20.3 years) who were in Year 9 when the study began. In the analysis, the AM Statistical Software was used to take into account the design features of the sample. The results indicated (a) that family background and adolescents’ aspirations combined to have large associations with young adults’ educational attainment, (b) there were gender differences in the linear and curvilinear nature of relationships among family background, adolescents’ aspirations, and young adults’ attainment, and (c) for young adults from lower social status families there were ethnic group differences in attainment at all aspiration levels, whereas for young adults from higher social status families, ethnic group differences in attainment were minimised at high aspiration levels.