Transition to higher education as a life upgrade

Abstract

The transition from high school to higher education assumes a major role in high adolescence and it is presumed as a very pleasant life experience to students. Nevertheless, the impact of such transition cannot be predicted with accuracy, as it is mediated, not only by students' psychosocial variables but also by their expectations. In fact, the quality of the transition experience is deeply influenced by the clash between what freshmen expect from and what they actually find in higher education. Literature draws attention to the relationships between the initial experiences of students as they begin their higher education and how they perform subsequently. This research focused on the transition to higher education, approaching freshmen's personal and developmental variables. In Portugal, the new student's reception is ritualized by tradition and involves the organisation of an entire integration ceremony (known as praxe) proposed by peers. This paper argues that initiation practices in Portuguese higher education can be regarded as a transition ritual, a group of symbolic activities that brand the shift from secondary to tertiary education. For that, a qualitative methodological approach was adopted, using content analysis as a privileged tool. The target population for this study is composed of 43 first-year students enrolled in Engineering, who had been attending higher education for six months. The sample was composed of 30 students. The chosen method for data collection was a semi-structured interview, which presented topics and questions to the interviewee, without leading him/her toward preconceived choices. Thus, students were questioned about their perceptions concerning the way they experienced the transition to higher education. Data analysis was performed through content analysis, privileging the semantic approach over the syntactic one. Transcripts were coded according to themes and analysed using a constant comparison approach [1]. The data were coded by paragraph and sentence as proposed by Strauss and Corbin [2]. Participants' own categories were tabulated as suggested by Silverman [3]. Results confirm that transition to higher education is actually perceived by students as a true-life transition. However, this life transition is experienced differently according to students' sociocultural background, which influences both the symbolic impact of enrolment in higher education and their expectations about it. The conceptualization of higher education enrolment as a true-life transition and the methodological study design are the features that highlight the present paper in the higher education scientific arena.