Student success in Higher Education: An exploratory study of the relationships between Higher Education students' academic performance and age, gender, language background and socio-economic background

Abstract

This study presents a measure of student success (SI) and examines its relationship with five variables that commonly serve as background in previous research on student success (e.g. De Clerq et al., 2021). There is no international standard on how to measure student success (Kolster & Kaiser, 2015), and it is uncommon in both international and national policy contexts to present data on how different groups of students progress through higher education. The study is based on collected survey data and data on grades and credits that are analyzed descriptively and inferentially through multiple regression analysis. The results show that SI is a relevant measure of study success and that higher age has a small positive effect on SI. The variable parental second language background has a strong negative effect on SI. Based on the results of the study, implications for higher education are discussed.