Schooled by the Great Recession: Education as a Coping Strategy after Downward Mobility

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Educational Attainment and Outcomes

Abstract

How do people cope with unemployment? Research on coping behaviors distinguishes between “emotion-oriented” coping, which mitigates the stress of negative events, and “problem-oriented” coping, which directly addresses the cause of distress. Furthering one’s education is a problem-oriented strategy for coping with unemployment, yet we know little about how decisions to pursue education are made, or what types of credentialing the unemployed seek. This paper addresses these gaps, drawing on 82 in-depth interviews with individuals who were unemployed during the Great Recession or its aftermath. We present a typology of pathways to explain how pursuing education can be used to cope with involuntary job loss: Individuals may pursue a higher educational level, a pathway we call collecting credentials. They may go back to school at a lower level, seeking a reverse transfer. Finally, individuals may eschew further education, a pathway we call school skepticism. Student loans and the perceived cost/benefit of education are paramount in individuals’ decisions, making these respondents qualitatively different from previous generations of unemployed workers. The processes we uncover will be relevant even as we move further away from the recession, as employment remains volatile, the length of unemployment spells remains elevated, and education costs continue to rise.

Authors

• Corey Pech, Ohio State University

• Steven H. Lopez, Ohio State University

• Laurie Ann Michaels, The Ohio State University