Explaining the Decoupling between College Expectations and Enrollment

• In Event: 311 - Regular Session. Impact of Hard Times

Abstract

The decline of blue collar work has been accompanied by rising expectations of college attendance among youth from all socioeconomic backgrounds. While expectations were predictive of enrollment among all youth four decades ago, the relationship between expectations and enrollment has become decoupled for working-class youth today. This historic decoupling of expectations and enrollment among working-class youth poses two puzzles for scholars of education, culture, and inequality. First, while expectations of college attendance by social class are quickly converging over time, enrollment is lagging only among working-class students. This divergence suggests that the relationship between expectations and enrollment is increasingly mediated by class-based resources. Second, as expectations of college-going were more predictive of enrollment among the working class three decades ago than they are today, these class-based resources seem to have emerged recently and become increasingly central to college enrollment over time. Drawing upon survey data and in-depth interviews with three generations of middle- and working-class parents and young adults, we explain this decoupling by developing and testing the concept of “savvy” as a mediator of expectations and enrollment. We suggest that expectations of college without savvy serve as a driver of class inequality in the college-for-all system.

Authors

• Kaisa Elina Snellman, Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires

• Carl B. Frederick, Harvard University