High Hopes: Gender Trends in Educational Expectations for Graduate and Professional School, 1976-2019

ABSTRACT Educational expectations have increased over time, with greater increases among young women than men, yet research focused on expectations for post-baccalaureate degrees is limited. We investigate young men’s and women’s plans to attend graduate or professional school using Monitoring the Future data from 12th graders for 1976 to 2019, focusing on how academic performance and work and family values may be associated with post-baccalaureate expectations. We find that young women’s expectations for graduate or professional school began to exceed young men’s in the early 1990s and continued to do so afterward, although expectations for post-baccalaureate schooling declined some in recent years, especially among young men. Results also indicate that the gender gap over time is driven partially by more young women than men with B or lower average grades holding post-baccalaureate expectations. Work values may foster these high expectations, especially for lower-achieving young women. Finally, we examine whether post-baccalaureate expectations translate into higher attainments, and results suggest that higher-achieving students are better positioned to meet their post-baccalaureate expectations. Collectively, our findings suggest that sociocultural factors promoting women’s participation in the public sphere may encourage some young women to form high-level expectations that they are not academically equipped to meet.