Care-experienced graduates' decision-making, choices, and destinations: How does a background of care affect graduate plans?

Care-experienced (CE) students (those who have spent time in the care system often due to childhood neglect or maltreatment) overcome profound challenges to access and progress through higher education (HE). Yet, we know little about their onward trajectories as graduates. Recent quantitative evidence of CE graduate destinations presents a complex pattern; they are less likely to be employed, though are more likely to move directly into postgraduate study. Dominant theories in the sociology of education would predict a continuation of disadvantage, which only partially exists here. To begin exploring this complexity, the presentation will share interim findings from the first phase of a British Academy funded study which qualitatively and longitudinally explores CE students’ transitions from HE to graduate life in England and Scotland. In reporting on these findings, the presentation provides some initial insights into constellations of structural enablements and constraints that CE students experience as they approach graduation. This, in turn, can help us to understand whether HE may help to transcend early life disadvantages, or if challenges persist.