Desires, Beliefs and Opportunities in decision-making of secondary students heading to university. Actions and reactions regarding the implementation of the ranking score in the admission system.

Abstract

This study addresses school choice and migration processes of students from academically demanding public schools, in comparison to students from schools with a different profile, in the context of the recently implemented high-school ranking score in the Single Admission System (SUA) of the Council of Rectors (CRUCH), between 2013 and 2014. The work addresses the interactive dimension that underlies the implementation of public policies, referring to the experience of students who, in the transition from secondary to higher education, become actors who make decisions within the framework of a new regulatory scenario. Through interviews with school leaders and students at this juncture, the research approaches a critical case in which student experience is analysed based on their desires, beliefs and opportunities, by means of the Hedström’s DBO model (Desires, Beliefs & Opportunities). The analysis showed that the model performs in terms of its illustrative capacity. However, it is not exhaustive regarding the phenomenon, as new elements emerged that need to be addressed to perform an appropriate analysis.