Page 18 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

Introduction
or university programmes, students who take these courses will mainly consist of 1 students who aspire further education, and hence will be the target audience for
university preparation.
1.4 What is university readiness and what do we know about it?
e more a secondary school student is ‘ready’ for university, i.e., well-prepared for its demands, the more successful his or her transition is likely to be. However, especially in Europe, not much research has speci cally focused on university readiness. A common conception by both secondary school teachers and university lecturers is that someone who is eligible for university – i.e., holds the diploma that grants access to university – should be su ciently prepared. High dropout rates unfortunately show that this is not necessarily the case. Clearly, university readiness entails more than having successfully completed secondary education: University eligibility does not equate university readiness. In the United States, college readiness has gained quite some attention in research, policy, and practice. It is recognised as an urgent problem in education, since about a third of rst-year students in public universities need to take remedial courses (Bettinger & Long, 2009), many students struggle, and a substantial number even drop out eventually (e.g., Roderick, 2006). An in uential researcher in the area of college readiness is David Conley, who emphasises that it takes more than mastering secondary school content knowledge to be successful in postsecondary education. We draw on his research and de ne university readiness as the degree to which previous educational and personal experiences have equipped a student for the expectations and demands they will encounter in university (Conley, 2008). What does this ‘equipment’ consist of? According to Conley, there are four keys to college readiness: cognitive strategies, content knowledge, learning skills and techniques, and transition knowledge. Figure 1.1 shows these keys and the subfactors within these keys. We will now brie y discuss these keys and their relevance to university readiness in the Netherlands.
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