Familiar Perils and Rising Parallels: Tracking in Postsecondary Education

• In Event: Tracking Through the Life Course of Education

Abstract

Purpose
Given a significant lack of attention to deepening levels of stratification within many of our nation’s most “accessible” postsecondary institutions, and given the concern for parallel inequalities within the K-12 system, the purpose of this presentation is to examine the structure and social consequence of three distinct academic tracks (honors, developmental, and traditional), within one “accessible” public four-year university.

Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
This paper is informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s (1990) theoretical/methodological tools to make sense of the practices that have contributed to perpetuating the same race- and class-based inequalities evident within the secondary system. Specifically, I employ Bourdieu’s concepts field, capital, and habitus because they offer explanatory power for the reproduction of inequality through higher education.

Methods and Sources of Data
This research employs an embedded case study approach (Stake, 2006). Specifically, this research examines three distinct tracks within one public university: the honors track, the developmental track, and the traditional track. Methods for data collection include 58 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with students, faculty and staff, non-participant observations, and the collection of documents. All data were coded and analyzed using NVivo and a two-stage coding process.

Results/Substantiated Conclusions
Findings from this research supports the existence of a complicated postsecondary tracking structure (e.g., tracks within tracks) that serves to reproduce class and racial inequality by determining who has access to the highest quality educational opportunities. Data indicate a level of “selective excellence” (Bastedo & Gumport, 2003) on campus, wherein students who occupy the highest level of honors (those accepted upon admission to the honors program) are predominantly White and from middle-class backgrounds, were products of the “high” track within the secondary tracking system, and are provided with a more rigorous, engaged college experience.
Students within the developmental track are predominantly of color and from low-income backgrounds. As an alternative admissions program offering few supports for students, the developmental program on campus appears to exacerbate existing challenges students. For example, the university and the program itself conceal the program’s identity to the degree that many students in the program are unaware they are part of it. Although there is some movement across tracks (e.g., general track to honors track), the “highest” and “lowest” tracks are seemingly durable and supported by a number of interrelated factors. These factors include recruitment efforts, admissions practices, and differentiated opportunity structures across tracks – all of which function to undermine university efforts to increase access and equity.

Significance
Despite the increasingly stratified structure of higher education wherein differentiated “tracks” have emerged, nearly all research on tracking remains limited to secondary education. If the secondary system is at all instructive, it stands to reason that the postsecondary system also draws artificial lines between students based upon the secondary tracking structure. We must seriously question if and how postsecondary tracking produces the same or similar consequences for students of the same or similar social backgrounds in order to reconsider educational policies and practices that obstruct or limit educational opportunities for some while preserving the privilege of others.

Author

• Amy Elizabeth Stich, Northern Illinois University