Warming Up, Cooling Out, or Holding Steady? Persistence and Change in Educational Expectations After High School

Author:

Alexander Karl1,Bozick Robert2,Entwisle Doris3

Affiliation:

1. Karl L. Alexander, Ph.D., is Chair and John Dewey Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology Johns Hopkins University. His main fields of interest are sociology of education, social stratification, and sociology of human development. Since 1982, the Beginning School Study (BSS), his collaborative project with Doris Entwisle, has been tracking the life progress of a group of Baltimore youths. The BSS panel now extends from the first grade to ages 28–29. Dr. Alexander's current research focuses on the...

2. Robert Bozick, Ph.D., is Research Scientist, Education Studies Division, RTI International, Washington, DC. His main fields of interest are the linkages between school and work over the life course, inequality in higher education, and the transition to adulthood for low-income youths. Dr. Bozick is currently working on a multimethod evaluation of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act for the Policy and Program Studies Service at the U.S. Department of Education.

3. Doris R. Entwisle, Ph.D., is Research Professor of Sociology (emerita), Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University. Her main area of interest is the sociology of human development over the life course, with a special emphasis on issues of inequality. Her current research concerns the ways in which members of the BSS panel make the transition to adulthood and how social and financial disadvantage early in life alters the life situations of adults in their early 20s. Her book (with Karl L. Alexander...

Abstract

This article examines the expectation to complete a bachelor's degree among a predominantly low-income, mainly African American, panel of Baltimore youths at the end of high school, at age 22, and at age 28. Across this time, stability is the modal pattern, but when expectations change, declines are more frequent than increases. Although disadvantaged youths and those with limited academic resources from high school are the most prone to give up the expectation to complete college, both factors recede in importance during the transition to adulthood when postsecondary enrollment becomes more salient. Clark's “cooling-out” thesis and Rosenbaum,s “college-for-all” thesis predict a downward leveling of ambition, especially among youths with high expectations and limited resources and those who attend two-year colleges. The results indicate, however, that the expectations of low-resource youths are not distinctively cooled out by the college experience, and, net of other considerations, two-year college attendance is associated more with warming up than with cooling out. Hence, the dynamics proposed by Clark and Rosenbaum do not adequately account for changes in college expectations over the years after high school. A broader framework, situated in life-course ideas, is recommended.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Sociology and Political Science,Education

Reference58 articles.

1. Adelman Clifford. 2004. Principal Indicators of Student Academic Histories in Postsecondary Education, 1972–2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Available online: http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/prinindicat/prinindicat.pdf.

2. Adelman Clifford 2005. Moving into Town—and Moving on: The Community College in the Lives of Traditional-Age Students. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Available online: http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/comcollege/movingintotown.pdf.

3. Adelman Clifford 2006. The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School Through College. Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Education. Available online: http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/toolboxrevisit/toolbox.pdf

4. The Motivational Relevance of Educational Plans: Questioning the Conventional Wisdom

5. School Reentry in Early Adulthood: The Case of Inner-City African Americans

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