Project

General

Profile

Support #1139

Polytechnic vs university degree

Added by Nurfatima Jandarova about 5 years ago. Updated over 1 year ago.

Status:
Resolved
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
Nurfatima Jandarova
Category:
Questionnaire content
Start date:
02/06/2019
% Done:

100%

Description

We would like to use the Understanding Society data to study educational choices in the UK population.

As you probably know, the Further and Higher Education act of 1992 allowed former polytechnics to award tertiary education degrees that before could be awarded only by traditional universities.

We imagine that when a UK respondent is asked in, say, 2010 whether he/she has a college degree, he/she answers yes in both cases (polytechnic and traditional university degree), even if he/she obtained the degree before 1992.

We have seen that in the BHPS, the variable ba_fetype in wave 1 contains the option “polytechnic”. But we could not find the same information in the Understanding Society waves. The only variable we could find was a_edtype in wave 1 of UKHLS, which lists fe college, he college and university.

Could you please tell us if in the Understanding Society data there is a way to identify whether a tertiary education degree comes from a polytechnic or from a traditional university, both before and after 1992.

We would really appreciate for any advice you might have on this question.

Andrea Ichino and Nurfatima Jandarova

Also available in: Atom PDF