Vilka bakgrundsfaktorer påverkar individens val av akademiska studier? En studie vid Lunds universitet

Sammanfattning: What students choose to study is effected by different variables. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine how different background variables and personality traits from the Big-five theory influence students choice of higher education. The study exam-ined the relation between socioeconomic status, personality traits, gender and ethnici-ty and their choice of study was observed on students from Lund University through-out a descriptive study. The result established that personality could describe 16-19 % of the variance when it comes to choices of higher education. Personality traits that were found significant were stability and conscientiousness. Regarding the influences from the family when it comes to higher education the result showed that individuals with parents who have an exam from university are more likely to choose a higher classified education, towards individuals with parents who do not have academic ex-perience. One conclusion is that our different backgrounds and our personality traits do have influence on our choice of academic studies. Keywords: Big five, personality, higher education, socioeconomic status, gender, eth-nicity, Bourdieu, social imbalance recruitment.