Global Perspectives of Socio-economic Status Determinants and Academic Performance in Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This seminar paper aims to conduct a systematic literature review on global perspectives of socio-economic determinants and academic achievement in higher education institutions (HEIs). To this effect, the reviewers consulted three databases, namely ERIC (n= 3, 671), Google Scholar (n= 2, 460), and Taylor and Francis (n= 1, 267), and obtained a total of 7,398 articles in the initial searches. Of these, 7,190 articles were excluded using automation tools, and 203 records were eliminated by the reviewers strictly following pre-established eligibility criteria Finally, five studies were included in the review from 18 records that were assessed for eligibility. The excluded records were two duplicates, seven quantitative records, four records that studied subjects other than higher education, two meta-analyses, and three systematic reviews. The reviewers used backward snowballing to ensure literature saturation and a summative content analysis method to determine the global perspectives of socio-economic status (SES) determinants in higher education (HE) and to understand the relationship between SES and AP in higher education. This method enabled the reviewers to understand the underlying meanings and track trends. The findings revealed that contemporary HEIs are perceived as instruments of economic development, which is the predominant perspective on higher education. In addition, the findings indicated that socio-economic and political factors hamper this core mission of the HEIs. The findings also revealed that the level of income, educational status, social status or class, and the university internal environment itself are the most dominant determinants of SES in HEIs. It was also found that SES affects students’ choice of university and selection of programme and has a moderate impact on higher education students’ academic performance, because students’ motivation and determination for a purpose-driven life are boosted as a result of maturity and resilience. Besides, the literature has noted that global flows such as internationalization, AI, mental health, institutional instability, center-periphery logic, or attracting global talent, and school-level socio-economic factors are some of the dominant socio-economic status determinants that affect the academic performance of students in higher education.