University Attendance and the Children of Immigrants: Patterns of Persistence and the Role of Background Factors

Abstract

The children of Canadian immigrants from some source regions, Asia, Africa and China in particular, attend university at very high rates. Most other immigrant groups participate at lower rates, but still compare favourably with non-immigrant Canadians. In this paper the Youth in Transition Survey is used to analyse the role of various background factors on these outcomes, including parental education, family income, parental expectations, high school grades, and PISA test scores. To some degree, the children of immigrants go to university because they have higher levels of the background attributes associated with university attendance, parental education in particular. But by allowing these effects to vary by immigrant group, this research finds that the high overall immigrant university participation rates are largely driven by those who attend university in spite of some apparent disadvantages (e.g., low parental education). Another finding is that among our population of youth who had arrived in Canada by the age of 15, year of immigration has no effect on PSE participation.