We study the role of non-cognitive skills in academic performance of students who are the first in their family to attend university. We collected survey data on an incoming student cohort from a leading Australian university and linked the survey with students' administrative entry and performance records. First-in-family students have lower grade point averages by about a quarter of a standard deviation than the average student. This performance penalty is larger for young men. The penalty is strongest in the first semester but disappears over time. Some non-cognitive skills (Conscientiousness, Extraversion) predict academic performance almost as strongly as standardised university admissions test scores.
High levels of Conscientiousness over-compensate for the performance penalty experienced by first-in-family students, while very low levels exacerbate it. However, adjusting for extreme responses in self-assessed Conscientiousness with anchoring vignettes eliminates the performance advantage of disadvantaged, but highly conscientious students. Overall, our findings accentuate the importance of non-cognitive skills as key indicators of university readiness, and their potential for closing the socioeconomic gap in academic performance.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.