Pathways fostering Mobility to Higher Education for Vulnerable Immigrants in France, Switzerland and Canada

In this article we wish to clarify not only if, but also how – through which institutional settings – higher education is accessed by students from vulnerable immigrant groups in France, Switzerland and Canada. We are interested in the possible educational mobility that immigrant youths can experience arising from country-specific educational policies designed to increase the enrolment in higher education, particularly the flow from upper-secondary vocational educational tracks to higher education ones. We analyse using panel data in each country the accessibility of different pathways to higher education while taking into account the characteristics of the students. In terms of educational mobility, in France the democratisation of educational system, including the development of the vocational baccalauréat, has enabled more youths of immigrant background to access higher education. In Switzerland and Canada there is more “cooling down” and down-streaming of their educational aspirations towards non higher education and more labour market oriented pathways

Do vocational pathways improve higher education access for women and men from less privileged social backgrounds? A comparison of vocational tracks to higher education in France and Switzerland

Educational policy developments in France and Switzerland have increased eligibility for higher education. This paper explores the extent to which vocationally orientated pathways to higher education reduce social inequalities in France and Switzerland. More specifically, we analyse how the vocational pathway facilitates access to higher education for male and female students from lower cultural capital backgrounds. We refer to gender theory to link young people’s subjective self-image and its corresponding institutional fit with different educational pathways. We use panel data from France (panel DEPP) and Switzerland (panel TREE) and multinomial logistic regression to analyse the accessibility of different institutional pathways to higher education for male and female students separately. Our results show different consequences of the two national educational systems with regard to social reproduction and gender inequalities. An intersectional analysis highlights that, in France, vocationally oriented programmes foster higher education access for young women with lower cultural capital. In Switzerland, the vocational pathway to access higher education is primarily used by young men from privileged educational backgrounds as a compensation for their underrepresentation in the traditional general education pathway to higher education

Plausibilisierung

Die vorliegende Handreichung zeigt, dass in quantitativen, sozialwissenschaftlichen Erhebungen Unplausibilitäten entstehen können, die möglicherweise zu Auswertungsproblemen und Fehlanalysen führen. Ziel der Handreichung ist, die möglichen Probleme zu systematisieren und konkrete Hilfestellungen bei der Identifikation, dem Umgang und der Vermeidung von Unplausibilitäten zu geben. Außerdem werden Dokumentationsempfehlungen ausgesprochen. Diese Handreichung richtet sich dabei in erster Linie an Datenmanager:innen oder Datenproduzent:innen von Erhebungen, die bei der Studienplanung und Datenaufbereitung mit Plausibilitätsproblemen in Berührung kommen. Aber auch für Studierende und Forscher:innen könnte sie eine Hilfestellung darstellen. Gegliedert ist die Handreichung wie folgt: Nach einer Einleitung und der inhaltlichen Einbettung des Themas in den Forschungsprozess folgt eine allgemeine Einführung in den Plausibilisierungsprozess. Dabei wird zunächst diskutiert, ob Plausibilisierung überhaupt zwangsläufig stattfinden muss oder sollte. Im Anschluss wird ein Überblick über die Möglichkeiten gegeben, mit denen Plausibilitätsprobleme zunächst identifiziert und dann behandelt werden können. Diese Punkte werden allgemeingültig formuliert und beziehen sich nicht auf spezielle Arten von Plausibilitätsproblemen. Diese werden anhand der spezifischen Use Cases in den Folgekapiteln diskutiert. Die Plausibilitätsprobleme und Beispiele werden weitgehend unabhängig voneinander behandelt, sodass die Leser:innen sich auf die für ihre Studie bzw. Forschungsinteressen relevanten Inhalte konzentrieren oder die Handreichung als eine Art Nachschlagewerk verwenden können.

Patient-derived head and neck cancer organoids allow treatment stratification and serve as a tool for biomarker validation and identification

Background: Organoids are in vitro three-dimensional structures that can be grown from patient tissue. Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a collective term used for multiple tumor types including squamous cell carcinomas and salivary gland adenocarcinomas.Methods: Organoids were established from HNC patient tumor tissue and characterized using immunohistochemistry and DNA sequencing. Organoids were exposed to chemo- and radiotherapy and a panel of targeted agents. Organoid response was correlated with patient clinical response. CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing of organoids was applied for biomarker validation.Findings: A HNC biobank consisting of 110 models, including 65 tumor models, was generated. Organoids retained DNA alterations found in HNC. Comparison of organoid and patient response to radiotherapy (primary [n = 6] and adjuvant [n = 15]) indicated potential for guiding treatment options in the adjuvant setting. In organoids, the radio-sensitizing potential of cisplatin and carboplatin could be validated. However, cetuximab conveyed radioprotection in most models. HNC-targeted treatments were tested on 31 models, indicating possible novel treatment options with the potential for treatment stratification in the future. Activating PIK3CA mutations did not predict alpelisib response in organoids. Protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5) inhibitors were identified as a potential treatment option for cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (CDKN2A) null HNC.Conclusions: Organoids hold potential as a diagnostic tool in personalized medicine for HNC. In vitro organoid response to radiotherapy (RT) showed a trend that mimics clinical response, indicating the predictive potential of patient-derived organoids. Moreover, organoids could be used for biomarker discovery and validation.</p

Patient-derived head and neck cancer organoids allow treatment stratification and serve as a tool for biomarker validation and identification

Background: Organoids are in vitro three-dimensional structures that can be grown from patient tissue. Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a collective term used for multiple tumor types including squamous cell carcinomas and salivary gland adenocarcinomas. Methods: Organoids were established from HNC patient tumor tissue and characterized using immunohistochemistry and DNA sequencing. Organoids were exposed to chemo- and radiotherapy and a panel of targeted agents. Organoid response was correlated with patient clinical response. CRISPR-Cas9-based gene editing of organoids was applied for biomarker validation. Findings: A HNC biobank consisting of 110 models, including 65 tumor models, was generated. Organoids retained DNA alterations found in HNC. Comparison of organoid and patient response to radiotherapy (primary [n = 6] and adjuvant [n = 15]) indicated potential for guiding treatment options in the adjuvant setting. In organoids, the radio-sensitizing potential of cisplatin and carboplatin could be validated. However, cetuximab conveyed radioprotection in most models. HNC-targeted treatments were tested on 31 models, indicating possible novel treatment options with the potential for treatment stratification in the future. Activating PIK3CA mutations did not predict alpelisib response in organoids. Protein arginine methyltransferase 5 (PRMT5) inhibitors were identified as a potential treatment option for cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (CDKN2A) null HNC. Conclusions: Organoids hold potential as a diagnostic tool in personalized medicine for HNC. In vitro organoid response to radiotherapy (RT) showed a trend that mimics clinical response, indicating the predictive potential of patient-derived organoids. Moreover, organoids could be used for biomarker discovery and validation

How Do Second-Generation Immigrant Students Access Higher Education? The Importance of Vocational Routes to Higher Education in Switzerland, France and Germany

We analyse the access to different institutional pathways to higher education for second-generation students, focusing on youths that hold a higher-education entrance certificate. The alternative vocational pathway appears to compensate to some degree, compared to the traditional academic one, for North-African and Southern-European youths in France, those from Turkey in Germany, and to a lesser degree those from Portugal, Turkey, Ex-Yugoslavia, Albania/Kosovo in Switzerland. This is not the case in Switzerland for Western-European, Italian and Spanish youths who indeed access higher education via the academic pathway more often than Swiss youths. Using youth panel and survey data, multinomial models are applied to analyse these choices of pathways

Pathways to higher education in France and Switzerland : Do vocational tracks facilitate access to higher education for immigrant students?

In this chapter we wish to clarify through which institutional pathways higher education is accessed by immigrant group students in Switzerland and France. We have chosen these two countries because they differ from each other both in their educational systems and in the ways new routes to higher education have been set up through vocationally orientated programmes. The educational landscape in France is characterised by a more school-based system and has a greater tradition of prestigious tertiary education institutions (Duru-Bellat et al., 2008). Moreover, traditional vocational education and training (VET) does not have very high status and therefore fails to attract a large proportion of well-performing students. However, France has witnessed a vocationalisation of the academic route to higher education through the implementation of the specifically vocationally orientated track (particularly the baccalauréat professionnel). The situation in Switzerland is more or less reversed. Less people pursue academic education and over two thirds of students enrol in a variety of VET programmes. In the Swiss case, a new route to higher education has been created through the academisation of VET with the setting up of the Federal Vocational Baccalaureate diploma that grants access to universities of applied science. Using youth panel data from France (DEPP panel d'élèves) and Switzerland (Transitions from Education to Employment, TREE), we will analyse the pathways to higher education in both countries in more detail, looking specifically at the access of higher education through different educational tracks while taking in account the different characteristics of the students, e.g. immigrant backgrounds, gender and aspirations