Pub Date : 2021-09-24DOI: 10.1177/00380407211046053
M. Gast
Past work and college–access programs often treat college knowledge as discrete pieces of information and focus on the amount of available college information. I use ethnographic and multiwave interview data to compare college–aspiring working- and middle–class black 9th and 11th graders across almost two years in high school along with their post–high school updates. Respondents were exposed to college–going messages but faced racial constraints and unclear expectations for college preparation and help seeking. Working-class respondents drew on hopeful uncertainty—a repertoire of hope for college admissions but uncertainty in the specifics—and they waited for assistance. Twelfth-grade working–class respondents experienced the effects of counseling problems and frustrations near application time. Middle-class and some working–class respondents used a repertoire of competitive groundwork to improve their competitiveness for four–year admissions, targeting their help seeking to navigate impending deadlines and late–stage counseling problems. My findings point to the timing and process of activating repertoires of college knowledge within a high school counseling field, suggesting the need to reconceptualize college knowledge in research on racial and class inequality in college access.
{"title":"Reconceptualizing College Knowledge: Class, Race, and Black Students in a College-Counseling Field","authors":"M. Gast","doi":"10.1177/00380407211046053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211046053","url":null,"abstract":"Past work and college–access programs often treat college knowledge as discrete pieces of information and focus on the amount of available college information. I use ethnographic and multiwave interview data to compare college–aspiring working- and middle–class black 9th and 11th graders across almost two years in high school along with their post–high school updates. Respondents were exposed to college–going messages but faced racial constraints and unclear expectations for college preparation and help seeking. Working-class respondents drew on hopeful uncertainty—a repertoire of hope for college admissions but uncertainty in the specifics—and they waited for assistance. Twelfth-grade working–class respondents experienced the effects of counseling problems and frustrations near application time. Middle-class and some working–class respondents used a repertoire of competitive groundwork to improve their competitiveness for four–year admissions, targeting their help seeking to navigate impending deadlines and late–stage counseling problems. My findings point to the timing and process of activating repertoires of college knowledge within a high school counseling field, suggesting the need to reconceptualize college knowledge in research on racial and class inequality in college access.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"4 1","pages":"43 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83322772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1177/00380407211029655
A. Cox, Amy C. Steinbugler, Rand Quinn
Social capital is broadly beneficial, but parents reap particular benefits from network ties. Schools are key organizations through which parents develop ties. In this article, we examine school-based networks that provide valuable resources. What factors are associated with greater access to key resources such as child care, parenting advice, and educational information? Using network data from mothers of eighth graders, we employ qualitative comparative analysis to examine mothers’ status and network characteristics associated with two types of resource access—basic access, where resources are accessed through a single parent, and robust access, where resources are accessed through multiple parents. We find that particular combinations of status and network characteristics are critical. A wide range of mothers attain basic access, but race and socioeconomic status constrain robust access. These findings raise important questions about relational patterns and resource access for parents within a racially and socioeconomically diverse school.
{"title":"It’s Who You Know (and Who You Are): Social Capital in a School-Based Parent Network","authors":"A. Cox, Amy C. Steinbugler, Rand Quinn","doi":"10.1177/00380407211029655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211029655","url":null,"abstract":"Social capital is broadly beneficial, but parents reap particular benefits from network ties. Schools are key organizations through which parents develop ties. In this article, we examine school-based networks that provide valuable resources. What factors are associated with greater access to key resources such as child care, parenting advice, and educational information? Using network data from mothers of eighth graders, we employ qualitative comparative analysis to examine mothers’ status and network characteristics associated with two types of resource access—basic access, where resources are accessed through a single parent, and robust access, where resources are accessed through multiple parents. We find that particular combinations of status and network characteristics are critical. A wide range of mothers attain basic access, but race and socioeconomic status constrain robust access. These findings raise important questions about relational patterns and resource access for parents within a racially and socioeconomically diverse school.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"48 6 1","pages":"253 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81785369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-26DOI: 10.1177/00380407211017060
Biörn Ivemark, Anne Ambrose
In recent years, research has brought attention to the heterogeneity of resources that first-generation students bring with them to higher education and the factors that assist in these students’ social and academic adjustment to university life. However, few studies have focused on how these students’ early socialization and experiences over the life course influence their adjustment experiences to university. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus concept to explore the life histories of first-generation students at a midranked Swedish university, we identify three types of adjustment profiles—Adjusters, Strangers, and Outsiders—and highlight five key factors over the life course that explain why they differ: family resources, early social environment, educational experiences and opportunities, peers, and partners. Our findings suggest that class-related adjustment challenges in college can be traced to different levels of cultural capital acquired during first-generation students’ early socialization but also to capital acquired through sustained contact with cultural capital–abundant social environments throughout their life course, resulting in subtle but consequential habitus adaptations. This study extends previous research in the field by exploring a broader set of social contexts that can spur first-generation students’ cultural capital acquisition before college and facilitate their adjustment to higher education.
{"title":"Habitus Adaptation and First-Generation University Students’ Adjustment to Higher Education: A Life Course Perspective","authors":"Biörn Ivemark, Anne Ambrose","doi":"10.1177/00380407211017060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211017060","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, research has brought attention to the heterogeneity of resources that first-generation students bring with them to higher education and the factors that assist in these students’ social and academic adjustment to university life. However, few studies have focused on how these students’ early socialization and experiences over the life course influence their adjustment experiences to university. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus concept to explore the life histories of first-generation students at a midranked Swedish university, we identify three types of adjustment profiles—Adjusters, Strangers, and Outsiders—and highlight five key factors over the life course that explain why they differ: family resources, early social environment, educational experiences and opportunities, peers, and partners. Our findings suggest that class-related adjustment challenges in college can be traced to different levels of cultural capital acquired during first-generation students’ early socialization but also to capital acquired through sustained contact with cultural capital–abundant social environments throughout their life course, resulting in subtle but consequential habitus adaptations. This study extends previous research in the field by exploring a broader set of social contexts that can spur first-generation students’ cultural capital acquisition before college and facilitate their adjustment to higher education.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"23 1","pages":"191 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78453129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-18DOI: 10.1177/00380407211013322
Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, A. Aylward, Adai A. Tefera, Alfredo J. Artiles, Sarah Alvarado, P. Noguera
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ([IDEA] 2004; IDEA Amendments 1997) is a civil rights–based law designed to protect the rights of students with disabilities in U.S. schools. However, decades after the initial passage of IDEA, racial inequity in special education classifications, placements, and suspensions are evident. In this article, we focus on understanding how racial discipline disparities in special education outcomes relate to IDEA remedies designed to address problem behaviors. We qualitatively examine how educators interpret and respond to citations for racial discipline disproportionality via IDEA at both the district and the school level in a suburban locale. We find that educators interpret the inequity in ways that neutralize the racialized implications of the citation, which in turn affects how they respond to the citation. These interpretations contribute to symbolic and race-evasive IDEA compliance responses. The resulting bureaucratic and organizational structures associated with IDEA implementation become a mechanism through which the visibility of race and racialization processes are erased and muted through acts of policy compliance. Thus, the logic of compliance surrounding IDEA administration serves as a reproductive social force that sustains practices that do not disrupt locally occurring racialized inequities.
{"title":"Unpacking the Logic of Compliance in Special Education: Contextual Influences on Discipline Racial Disparities in Suburban Schools","authors":"Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, A. Aylward, Adai A. Tefera, Alfredo J. Artiles, Sarah Alvarado, P. Noguera","doi":"10.1177/00380407211013322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407211013322","url":null,"abstract":"The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ([IDEA] 2004; IDEA Amendments 1997) is a civil rights–based law designed to protect the rights of students with disabilities in U.S. schools. However, decades after the initial passage of IDEA, racial inequity in special education classifications, placements, and suspensions are evident. In this article, we focus on understanding how racial discipline disparities in special education outcomes relate to IDEA remedies designed to address problem behaviors. We qualitatively examine how educators interpret and respond to citations for racial discipline disproportionality via IDEA at both the district and the school level in a suburban locale. We find that educators interpret the inequity in ways that neutralize the racialized implications of the citation, which in turn affects how they respond to the citation. These interpretations contribute to symbolic and race-evasive IDEA compliance responses. The resulting bureaucratic and organizational structures associated with IDEA implementation become a mechanism through which the visibility of race and racialization processes are erased and muted through acts of policy compliance. Thus, the logic of compliance surrounding IDEA administration serves as a reproductive social force that sustains practices that do not disrupt locally occurring racialized inequities.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"46 1","pages":"208 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91063613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0038040720982890
Corey Moss-Pech, Steven H. Lopez, L. Michaels
Scholarship on adult education throughout the life course focuses on the relationship between education and upward mobility. Scholars rarely examine how adults’ educational aspirations or trajectories are affected by downward mobility or an increasingly precarious labor market. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 job seekers in the post–Great Recession labor market in the United States, this article advances the concept of educational downgrading: returning to school in pursuit of a credential lower than the highest level of education one previously sought or attained. We explore three pathways to downgrading connected to downward mobility: occupational dead ends, career reversals, and educational inflation. In the process, we highlight how individuals adjust their practical educational aspirations as they navigate a contemporary economy in which careers are unstable and credentials are needed for many kinds of jobs across the occupational hierarchy.
{"title":"Educational Downgrading: Adult Education and Downward Mobility","authors":"Corey Moss-Pech, Steven H. Lopez, L. Michaels","doi":"10.1177/0038040720982890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040720982890","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship on adult education throughout the life course focuses on the relationship between education and upward mobility. Scholars rarely examine how adults’ educational aspirations or trajectories are affected by downward mobility or an increasingly precarious labor market. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 job seekers in the post–Great Recession labor market in the United States, this article advances the concept of educational downgrading: returning to school in pursuit of a credential lower than the highest level of education one previously sought or attained. We explore three pathways to downgrading connected to downward mobility: occupational dead ends, career reversals, and educational inflation. In the process, we highlight how individuals adjust their practical educational aspirations as they navigate a contemporary economy in which careers are unstable and credentials are needed for many kinds of jobs across the occupational hierarchy.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"21 1","pages":"143 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79106406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-22DOI: 10.1177/0038040721996004
Stephanie L. Canizales
Immigration scholars agree that educational attainment is essential for the success of immigrant youth in U.S. society and functions as a key indicator of how youth will fare in their transition into adulthood. Research warns of downward or stagnant mobility for people with lower levels of educational attainment. Yet much existing research takes for granted that immigrant youth have access to a normative parent-led household, K–12 schools, and community resources. Drawing on four years of ethnographic observations and interviews with undocumented Latinx young adults (ages 18 to 31) who arrived in Los Angeles, California, as unaccompanied youth, I examine the educational meaning making and language learning of Latinx individuals coming of age as workers without parents and legal status. Findings show that Latinx immigrant youth growing up outside of Western-normative parent-led households and K–12 schools and who remain tied to left-behind families across transnational geographies tend to equate education with English language learning. Education—as English language learning—is essential to sobrevivencia, or survival, during their transition to young adulthood as workers and transnational community participants.
{"title":"Educational Meaning Making and Language Learning: Understanding the Educational Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth Workers in the United States","authors":"Stephanie L. Canizales","doi":"10.1177/0038040721996004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040721996004","url":null,"abstract":"Immigration scholars agree that educational attainment is essential for the success of immigrant youth in U.S. society and functions as a key indicator of how youth will fare in their transition into adulthood. Research warns of downward or stagnant mobility for people with lower levels of educational attainment. Yet much existing research takes for granted that immigrant youth have access to a normative parent-led household, K–12 schools, and community resources. Drawing on four years of ethnographic observations and interviews with undocumented Latinx young adults (ages 18 to 31) who arrived in Los Angeles, California, as unaccompanied youth, I examine the educational meaning making and language learning of Latinx individuals coming of age as workers without parents and legal status. Findings show that Latinx immigrant youth growing up outside of Western-normative parent-led households and K–12 schools and who remain tied to left-behind families across transnational geographies tend to equate education with English language learning. Education—as English language learning—is essential to sobrevivencia, or survival, during their transition to young adulthood as workers and transnational community participants.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"1 1","pages":"175 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79469564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-03DOI: 10.1177/0038040721990365
Albert Cheng, P. Peterson
For decades, social theorists have posited—and descriptive accounts have shown—that students isolated by both social class and ethnicity suffer extreme deprivations that limit the effectiveness of equal-opportunity interventions. Even educational programs that yield positive results for moderately disadvantaged students may not prove beneficial for those who possess less of the economic, social, and cultural capital that play a critical role in improving educational outcomes. Yet evaluations of school choice and other educational interventions seldom estimate programmatic effects on severely disadvantaged students who are isolated by both ethnicity and social class. We experimentally estimate differential effects of a 1997 New York City school voucher intervention on college attainment for minority students by household income and mother’s education. Postsecondary outcomes as of 2017 come from the National Student Clearinghouse. The severely deprived did not benefit from the intervention despite substantial positive effects on college enrollments and degree attainment for the moderately disadvantaged. School choice programs and other interventions or public policies may need to pay greater attention to ensuring that families possess the requisite forms of capital—human, economic, social, and cultural—to realize their intended benefits.
{"title":"Experimentally Estimated Impacts of School Vouchers on Educational Attainments of Moderately and Severely Disadvantaged Students","authors":"Albert Cheng, P. Peterson","doi":"10.1177/0038040721990365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040721990365","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, social theorists have posited—and descriptive accounts have shown—that students isolated by both social class and ethnicity suffer extreme deprivations that limit the effectiveness of equal-opportunity interventions. Even educational programs that yield positive results for moderately disadvantaged students may not prove beneficial for those who possess less of the economic, social, and cultural capital that play a critical role in improving educational outcomes. Yet evaluations of school choice and other educational interventions seldom estimate programmatic effects on severely disadvantaged students who are isolated by both ethnicity and social class. We experimentally estimate differential effects of a 1997 New York City school voucher intervention on college attainment for minority students by household income and mother’s education. Postsecondary outcomes as of 2017 come from the National Student Clearinghouse. The severely deprived did not benefit from the intervention despite substantial positive effects on college enrollments and degree attainment for the moderately disadvantaged. School choice programs and other interventions or public policies may need to pay greater attention to ensuring that families possess the requisite forms of capital—human, economic, social, and cultural—to realize their intended benefits.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"9 1","pages":"159 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84596020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1177/0038040720942912
Evan Schofer, F. O. Ramirez, John W. Meyer
The advent of mass schooling played a pivotal role in European societies of the later nineteenth century, transforming rural peasants into national citizens. The late-twentieth-century global expansion of higher education ushered in new transformations, propelling societal rationalization and organizing, and knitting the world into a more integrated society and economy. We address four key dynamics: (1) Higher education sustains the modern professions and contributes to the rationalization of society and state. (2) The supranational and universalistic orientation of higher education provides elites with shared global cultural frames and identities, facilitating globalization. (3) Consequently, tertiary education provides a foundation for major global movements and sociopolitical change around diverse issues, such as human rights and environmental protection as well as potentially contentious religious and cultural solidarities. (4) Higher education contributes to the reorganization of the economy, creating new monetarized activities and facilitating the reconceptualization of activities distant from material production as economic. In short, many features of the contemporary world arise from the growing legions of people steeped in common forms of higher education. Panel regression models of contemporary cross-national longitudinal data examine these relationships. We find higher-education enrollments are associated with key dimensions of rationalization, globalization, societal mobilization, and expansion of the service economy. Central features of modern society, often seen as natural, in fact hinge on the distinctive form of higher education that has become institutionalized worldwide.
{"title":"The Societal Consequences of Higher Education","authors":"Evan Schofer, F. O. Ramirez, John W. Meyer","doi":"10.1177/0038040720942912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040720942912","url":null,"abstract":"The advent of mass schooling played a pivotal role in European societies of the later nineteenth century, transforming rural peasants into national citizens. The late-twentieth-century global expansion of higher education ushered in new transformations, propelling societal rationalization and organizing, and knitting the world into a more integrated society and economy. We address four key dynamics: (1) Higher education sustains the modern professions and contributes to the rationalization of society and state. (2) The supranational and universalistic orientation of higher education provides elites with shared global cultural frames and identities, facilitating globalization. (3) Consequently, tertiary education provides a foundation for major global movements and sociopolitical change around diverse issues, such as human rights and environmental protection as well as potentially contentious religious and cultural solidarities. (4) Higher education contributes to the reorganization of the economy, creating new monetarized activities and facilitating the reconceptualization of activities distant from material production as economic. In short, many features of the contemporary world arise from the growing legions of people steeped in common forms of higher education. Panel regression models of contemporary cross-national longitudinal data examine these relationships. We find higher-education enrollments are associated with key dimensions of rationalization, globalization, societal mobilization, and expansion of the service economy. Central features of modern society, often seen as natural, in fact hinge on the distinctive form of higher education that has become institutionalized worldwide.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"94 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84282873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-24DOI: 10.1177/0038040720960718
D. Witteveen
Existing research generally confirms a countercyclical education enrollment, whereby youths seek shelter in the educational system to avoid hardships in the labor market: the “discouraged worker” thesis. Alternatively, the “encouraged worker” thesis predicts that economic downturns steer individuals away from education because of higher opportunity costs. This study provides a formal test of these opposing theories using data from the United States compared with similar sources from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden. I investigate whether macroeconomic stimuli—including recessions and youth unemployment fluctuations—matter for enrollment decisions. Analyses rely on 10 years of detailed individual-level panel data, consisting of birth cohorts across several decades. Across data sources, results show enrollment persistence in secondary education is stronger in response to economic downturns. These patterns differ sharply for tertiary-enrolled students and those who recently left higher education. Surprisingly, U.S. youths display an increased hazard of school leaving and a decreased hazard of educational reenrollment in response to adverse conditions. In contrast, European youths tend to make enrollment decisions supportive of discouraged-worker mechanisms or insensitivity to adverse conditions. The U.S.-specific encouraged-worker mechanism might be explained by the relative importance of market forces in one’s early career and the high costs of university attendance, which induces risk aversion with regard to educational investment. The discussion addresses the consequences for educational inequality.
{"title":"Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry","authors":"D. Witteveen","doi":"10.1177/0038040720960718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040720960718","url":null,"abstract":"Existing research generally confirms a countercyclical education enrollment, whereby youths seek shelter in the educational system to avoid hardships in the labor market: the “discouraged worker” thesis. Alternatively, the “encouraged worker” thesis predicts that economic downturns steer individuals away from education because of higher opportunity costs. This study provides a formal test of these opposing theories using data from the United States compared with similar sources from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden. I investigate whether macroeconomic stimuli—including recessions and youth unemployment fluctuations—matter for enrollment decisions. Analyses rely on 10 years of detailed individual-level panel data, consisting of birth cohorts across several decades. Across data sources, results show enrollment persistence in secondary education is stronger in response to economic downturns. These patterns differ sharply for tertiary-enrolled students and those who recently left higher education. Surprisingly, U.S. youths display an increased hazard of school leaving and a decreased hazard of educational reenrollment in response to adverse conditions. In contrast, European youths tend to make enrollment decisions supportive of discouraged-worker mechanisms or insensitivity to adverse conditions. The U.S.-specific encouraged-worker mechanism might be explained by the relative importance of market forces in one’s early career and the high costs of university attendance, which induces risk aversion with regard to educational investment. The discussion addresses the consequences for educational inequality.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":"36 1","pages":"103 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2020-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88509032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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