High School Socioeconomic Composition and Student College Choice: Multilevel Mediation via School Organizational Habitus

• In Event: 46.078 - Effects of School Climate and Composition

Abstract

Qualitative research has identified college choice organizational habitus (CCOH) as an important mediating mechanism through which high school socioeconomic composition influences students’ college choice, perpetuating educational inequity and social reproduction. This study reexamines that framework using large-scale survey data and multilevel mediation analysis. The mediation effects of two general forms of CCOH are tested: normative structures (i.e., practices) and the collective post-secondary attitudes of school peers and staff. The results indicate that socioeconomic composition influences college choice directly and indirectly via mediation by the peer and staff college choice attitudes, but not by school normative structures. By far, the largest mediating effect was peer attitudes. These findings suggest that socioeconomic segregation of adolescents in schools perpetuates social reproduction.

Author

• Gregory J. Palardy, University of California - Riverside