Entering Higher Education with a “Bac Pro”: A Biased Selection
This article examines the access of vocational baccalaureate holders to a higher education diploma in light of two major recent developments: the explosion in the number of vocational baccalaureate holders, on the one hand, and the continuous increase in their enrollment rate in higher education, on the other. Between 2000 and 2015, the combination of these two phenomena led to an almost fourfold increase in the number of vocational baccalaureates enrolled in higher education. In this research, we explain the brakes and levers of these new educational paths through the determinants of formal selection in higher education. Formal selection is the moment when the educational institution chooses the candidates authorized to enroll in the requested program: the section of technicien supérieur (STS), an essential program for vocational baccalaureates, appears here as a highly competitive program, which mobilizes invisible or even illegitimate selection criteria for vocational baccalaureates, disadvantaging in particular young people from working-class backgrounds, foreigners or students with scholarships. Moreover, although theoretically favored by a public policy begun in 2013, in 2018 vocational baccalaureate holders are still penalized for entering STS, compared to other baccalaureate holders.