Non-cognitive skills and prestige education : An explorative study of how non-cognitive skills affect the association between social class of origin and selection into prestigious university education in Sweden

Sammanfattning: With the expansion of higher education in recent decades, exclusive academic qualifications have become the prominent way in which the status hierarchy of education is preserved. Much of the previous research explaining social class differences in educational attainment have focused on cognitive ability but largely overlooked the importance of non-cognitive skills for enrolling in more prestigious educational fields. Using unique longitudinal data, the focus of this thesis is on childhood non-cognitive skills to explore their role for understanding the association between social class of origin and selection into prestigious university education in Sweden. The results confirm class differences in attending prestige education, but also show that non-cognitive skills cannot explain much of the variation in educational attainment between or within classes. More research is needed in order to fully understand the large class gap in prestigious academic outcomes in Sweden.