Exploratory Methods

Recently there has been a lot of debate about the importance of college education. Students are asking if it’s worth the debt to attend a four year university or community college. Some are thinking what are the benefits of a degree is in the workforce. With college tuition increasing and state fundings lowering, low income students are struggling to attain a higher education. College institutions should have a role to provide students higher education and equal opportunity to students to increase social mobility yet intergenerational reproduction of privilege has produced inequality in education.

In October 2000, the overall picture of high school dropouts had changed little since the late 1980s (Kaufman et al. 2001): For every 100 young adults enrolled in high school in October 1999, 5 had left school without completing a program; of 34.6 million U.S. young adults aged 16-24, 3.8 million—almost 11 percent—had not completed high school and were not enrolled. Some studies have shown that students in schools with a concentration of multiple risk factors (e.g., large schools, large classes, high poverty, inner city location) have less than one chance in two of graduating from high school; furthermore, the economic costs of dropping out have increased as time goes on (Castellano et al. 2001). Adjusting for 50

The first determinant of one’s fate is their family’s background. Almost none of the children from low-income families made it through college. With the expenses of college today, I’m actually not surprised by that statistic. Of the children from low-income families, only 4 percent had a college degree at age 28, compared to 45 percent of the children from higher-income backgrounds. "That 's a shocking tenfold

With the growing importance of higher education, more people than ever are attending college. According to a middle-class parent, “[Higher education] seen as a means of developing a career and getting secure employment.” (30, Higher Education, social class and social mobility) Moreover, “parents believe that their children need a university education to get on in life… over the past decades (parents) fearful that without a degree their children will be in danger of downward social mobility. (32, Higher

A conversation ingrained in my memory involved two adolescent boys from San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD). When asked about their future ambitions, one student casually responded that he would “go to prison like his father.” The other expressed a desire to rise above his inner city milieu, but had little sense his abilities or of his options. In stark contrast, students from Alamo Heights, an affluent neighboring district, held ambitions to become doctors, lawyers, and politicians, and demonstrated an understanding of the prerequisites for their desired career path. The graduation rate of Alamo Heights stood at 98% while SAISD’s graduation rate lingered around 60%. The contrast between these two districts grows more disturbing when considered through the lens of racial equality. While SAISD’s population is 98% minority, the Anglo population in Alamo Heights totals slightly over 55%. Yet, 74% of Alamo Heights graduates achieve a four-year college diploma, while only 4% percent of SAISD alumni attain a bachelor’s degree. An opportunity gap results from this discrepancy, ultimately proving detrimental to social mobility.

In “The Dangers of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility”, Andrew Simmons, a high school teacher who teaches in a poor area of Los Angeles, argues that higher education’s educational opportunities should be the main promotion for students to attend college. The author’s purpose is to inform and persuade his readers to accept his view on what he sees as a problem of the education system. According to Simmons, teachers focus on the economic advantages that higher education could bring instead of the actual education these institutions offer. Because of this promotion, students in poorer areas focus on their potential wealth instead of their future education while students in wealthier areas focus on their future careers

Everybody loves a good success story. When the underdog, usually a lower class high school age student, defies the odds and comes out on top, beating his circumstances to get where nobody thinks he should go, everyone goes crazy for it. So crazy that Hollywood gets in on the act, with movie productions such as The Blind Side, Life of A King, and Slum Dog Millionaire. Sadly, these stories are not commonplace, in fact, they are very few and far between. More often than not, students from lower class families struggle to get by, as a result putting school to the back burner. Less than 75% of students in lower income households graduate high school, and even fewer go onto college (http://nces.ed.gov). From this group, excuses began to come out, the main reason underlies them all; they have become a product of their circumstance. The position they were in restrained them, forcing only one path, a

In the article “Who Gets to Graduate” by Paul Tough examines a problem about low income students are less likely to graduate from college than students from middle class or wealthier families. In the United States, school systems are not created equally. Middle and upper class students have access to safe and modern schools equipped with everything they possibly need to stay in that high rank because they came from a family who has the money to support their studies. Students from low-income families don’t have a lot of the support, stability, and money from home that higher-income students can take for granted.

The Danger of Telling Poor Kids that College is the Key to Social Mobility While reading the text "The Danger of Telling Poor Kids that College is the Key to Social Mobility" it helps the reader to identify many issues on why students want to attend college. Andrew Simmons stated that “Higher education should be promoted to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening, not just increase their earning power which I am in favor of. College promotion should be used to motivate students in a critical thinking way instead of a financial advantage. The author’s purpose was to identify the separation between how college can be an educational opportunity instead of a financial opportunity to grow from poverty. The main idea

In the article, “For the Poor, the Graduation Gap Is Even Wider Than the Enrollment Gap” by Susan Dynarski explains how the lower and upper class enroll in college at different rates, as well as graduate. A program was started known as the Educational Longitudinal Study. A study of dividing quartiles based on their parent’s educational background showed that parents with lower incomes were more likely to contain unskilled jobs compared to the higher income family containing manager positions. However, after 13 years, studies showed that only 14 percent of the less fortunate students and 60 percent of the fortunate students achieved their bachelors. By their late 20s tests also showed that 74 percent of wealthy students achieved their four-year

Today in society the determination for a college degree lies beyond education towards future financial security. While college debt seems to be ever increasing, students from low-income families are less likely to attend college due to the financial hardship. The social class that a student’s family falls into shows correlation on whether that student will or not attend college (Peske & Haycock, 2006). However, looking at this issue from my own prospective it seems as though no matter the social class students are attending college. What more so seems to have an affect on outcomes for individuals is how there family’s social economic status effects how well a student performs in college. For a student from a low-income family nothing can seem more daunting than the overwhelming amount of debt we have to pay after college.

Since urban areas, and subsequently urban high schools, have a high population of low-income residents, it is important to explore how this aspect of their social status has affected these individuals historically. According to Mantsios (2006) a majority of the United States (60 percent) hold less than 6 percent of the wealth. What is more, one in eight people live below the federal poverty level Mantsios (2006). This is important, because class level is strongly correlated with educational outcomes and success, which can be explained by class domination Mantsios (2006). Essentially, people who are born into wealthy families versus poor families have more opportunities provided to them on the basis of their class status or familial connections Mantsios (2006). Take for instance the example Schmidt (2007) given of white students with mediocre grades getting into Ivy League

Kathleen Blanco, the 54th governor of the U.S. state of Louisiana, once pointed out that “ Every educated person is not rich, but almost every education person has a job and a way out of poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to poverty.” It is almost gratuitous to say that everyone desires a higher education. And why not? It is perhaps the best way to avoid a life of poverty; a life in which one must struggle to meet the basic necessities of life. Unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to receive a higher education, especially students living in poverty, who are often forced to live on a day-to-day basis, let alone even think about school. Poverty deprives these students the quality education they are entitled to, thus inhibiting their potential for future success. This predicament has contributed to a widening racial wealth gap that is not only a threat to the individual’s themselves and the economy, but also a significant threat to upward mobility, which is defined as the ability of an individual to climb up the socioeconomic ladder. One particular factor that has and continues to contribute to this widening racial wealth gap is the lack of a college education among these low-income students. More importantly, this lack of college education is the direct result of a poor-quality K-12 education, especially in poverty-stricken neighborhoods. To mitigate the prevalent racial wealth gap, each

In “Inequality by Design”, the argument is made that social environment affects where individuals end up, not individual talent or market capitalism (Fischer et al 1996). This social environment includes advantages and disadvantages we get from our parents, the resources our friends share can share with us, quantity and quality of schooling, and the historical era we are born in (Fischer et al 1996). The argument made in “Inequality by Design”, is closely related what shapes one’s trajectory into college. Though college may not be the final destination in “where we end up” as stated in the argument, college is a large contributing factor to where we end up and the social environment affects has a large effect on one’s trajectory into college. When looking back on my trajectory into college, I can see that my social environment had a large part in shaping my path to college, however some factors of the social environment had a larger role than others. In Gregor Aisch and his colleges article “You Draw It: How Family Income Predicts Children’s College Chances” (2015), it is shown that this is true not only for myself but also for children who were born around 1980. The income percentile of children’s parents, which is a factor of the child’s social environment, is closely related to whether or not the children attend college. Within this paper we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages that my social environment gave me on my trajectory to college and how parent’s income

The dropout problem is not only an individual problem, but it is costly to society as a whole. Warren & Halpen-Manners (2007) explained, “high school dropouts is of fundamental social, economic, and political importance and has major implications for educational policy and practice, patterns of economic and racial/ethnic inequality, and the quality of America’s workforce” (p. 335). Coupled with that, Neild et al (2008) further argued going through the portal into adult life without high school credentials carries severe economic and employment penalties. Also, Kennelly (2007) explained “When students drop out…. the toll of the quality of life and the prosperity and competitiveness of the communities where they live and collectively across