Social scientists have long examined the social disparities in higher education (1, 2). In order to accomplish this, researchers have often looked at the different transitional stages of educational systems. However, social disparity during the transition from a secondary school to a university is not yet fully understood.

Typically, the studies of social disparities are based on self-reports and questionnaires. However, physiological measurements may be very useful in this realm, especially regarding the measurement of stress which is a relevant variable in terms of social disparity (3–5). For the present study, we applied an interdisciplinary approach by relating the students' social status (i.e., parental educational background) to their chronic physiological stress status in the early university freshman stage.

Stress responses can be considered as “psychological, physiological, and behavioral responses to an event perceived as relevant to one's well-being with some potential for harm or loss and requiring adaptation” (6, 7). According to the transactional model of stress (7), stress emerges from an individual's perception of a threat in combination with a perceived lack of the ability to cope with it. Such negative psychological appraisals referring to stressful circumstances can be followed by a pronounced physiological cortisol response (8–11). Thereby, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis is activated, which leads to the secretion of cortisol into the blood (12). The cortisol also gets into the growing hair and thus reflects the accumulated cortisol concentration over the period of hair growth (13). Therefore, a reliable and valid way to assess stress during a prolonged phase of life is by measuring the long-term cumulative hair cortisol concentration (HCC) (13). As an indication of validity, several studies have shown that serious life events (e.g., parental divorce) can lead to a significant HCC increase (14). While a temporary cortisol increase is an adaptive and mostly non-harmful response to stressors (15), chronic or long-term increased cortisol concentrations are presumed to be maladaptive and unhealthy (16).

It has been shown empirically that secondary school graduates from academic families are more likely to enroll at a university than their peers from nonacademic families with equal formal university entrance qualifications (17, 18). One crucial reason for this may be the higher motivation (or pressure) for individuals from academic households to maintain the social status of the preceding generation (17). These individuals or their families frequently perceive a decision against a university education as a social status loss for themselves and their families. Thus, they tend to enroll in a university, even in cases in which their academic abilities and expectations of success are low. In contrast, their peers from nonacademic families do not carry this burden because for them and their families careers aside from university studies do not suggest an aversive loss of social status. These theoretical considerations have been supported by empirical data [for a review, see (17)]. In contrast, Janke et al. (2) found that students from nonacademic families were somewhat more test anxious and identified less with the academic group during the first month of their first semester when compared to those from academic families. As these authors argue, undergraduates from nonacademic households may experience difficulty fitting in with the social environment at universities, and they may be more susceptible to the anticipation of academic failure.

The abovementioned theoretical thoughts and findings can lead to two contrary predictions:

Given these opposing perspectives, we tested the nondirected hypothesis that there is a difference between first semester students with nonacademic and academic parental educational background in their long-term cumulative physiological stress during their start at university. It was our intention to provide initial evidence on this matter on which more comprehensive studies can be based.

The present study revealed preliminary evidence that, on average, female first semester students from academic households exhibited higher physiological long-term stress (HCC) during the initial six weeks at the university than their peers from the nonacademic families. In other relevant characteristics the two groups did not differ or the control of (tendentious) differences in the analyses did not change the results. One implication of these findings is that, relative to the first semester students from nonacademic households, those from academic households are supposed to be at a higher risk for developing psychosocial and physical pathological conditions (16). This may still be the case although these two groups did not differ in self-perceived stress. Self-perceptions of stress are frequently unrelated to cortisol responses (33); thus, they seem to represent a conceptually different variable.

Our findings are in line with the theoretical and empirical work of sociologists who argue that individuals from academic families may be frightened of experiencing a social (academic) drop if they fail while attending a university (17). Based on this argumentation, we assumed that there may be social pressure for academic family members to continue the family tradition, that is, to acquire a higher education at a university. This pressure may cause them to enroll in academic studies, even in cases in which their motivation or ability are insufficient. Low motivation and/or ability may shape the perception of the transition from school to university as threatening, and the possibility of coping with the threat as low, thereby increasing the stress (7). The outlined situation of students from academic households can also be considered as strong social-evaluative threat. As described in the meta-analysis of Dickerson and Kemeny (34), tasks comprising social-evaluative threat and uncontrollability were associated with the largest cortisol increases, which would be displayed in higher HCCs.

However, another explanation for the present findings could be that individuals from nonacademic families are particularly unstressed because they (and their families, respectively) can only gain (but not lose) an academic status. Thus, in a sense, they cannot “fall down” with respect to this aspect of societal structures. Both groups reported an equally high subjective importance of their studies. Possibly this importance is fed by different motives (fear of social decline vs. hope of social rise).

The present study has some limitations. The present findings must be regarded as preliminary, as they relate to a particular group of women in Switzerland (i.e., undergraduates at one Swiss university). Thus, the findings must not be overgeneralized to all female undergraduates. Future and more comprehensive research should provide a more representative picture, and the present initial results suggest that a more elaborate study might be worthwhile. Such further research should also take into account possible differences between different study programs. We were not able to analyze such differences as we did not have sufficient data available. Moreover, it should be noted that our theoretical considerations on the psychological processes underlying the present results are speculative, as we have not collected data on this. Further research is also needed in this respect. In addition, the present study did not provide insight into what factors caused higher HCCs in 2016 equally in both groups of first semester students. We cannot enlighten this at this point. It is possible that certain societal developments or environmental conditions had a general influence on HCC. However, such considerations cannot go beyond pure speculation.

Turning to a strength of the present work, we are not aware of any other study that has applied a neuroendocrine measure of stress to the extensively and internationally investigated issue of social disparity in higher university education (in the vast majority, self-reports were used). In contrast, the usefulness of biological measures (such as hormone concentrations) to examine certain aspects of social disparity in childhood has been demonstrated in the past (35). Thus, the present findings may be a promising basis for further research using natural science methods to investigate the aspects of social disparity in higher education.

Our preliminary findings suggest that whether students come from a nonacademic or academic home may be relevant for their physiological long-term stress at the beginning of their university studies. The present study provides a basis for more detailed further research on parental educational backgrounds and physiological stress measures.

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Bern. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

AB conceived the project, designed the study, conducted the experiment, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. NM conceived the project, designed the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.