Ivy League as New "SKY": Changing Dynamics of Capitals

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 9. Expansion of Higher Education

Abstract

Despite both increasing number and heterogeneity of international students in the United States, their study abroad choice has not been paid much attention. This study aims to explore the Ivy League boom among elite Korean students since 1990s. By challenging ideas of institutionalists who suppose convergence of the global higher education and human capital theories which explain the transnational college choice as economic actions, this research is grounded in the theoretical perspective that the higher education as institutionalized cultural capital and its dynamic relationship with economic capital is crucial to understanding the global college choice. Using a mixed qualitative research method, the study finds that the Ivy League boom started with the prestige of the American tertiary education as cultural capital, a new way of distinction in Korea, but began to decline as the importance of tangible economic return (“Return on Investment”) predominates the abstract cultural aspiration (“prestige”) in the 2010s. Also, the finding suggests that institutional change in the Korean higher education influenced the elite Korean students’ international college choices. In other words, undergraduate study abroad is not a simple college choice but a complex phenomenon where the consideration of the dynamics between diverse capitals interlocks with the local-global link in the era of globalization. Therefore, additional attention should be paid to understanding transnationality as the new context to the higher education and its role in stratification.

Author

• Hong Jin Jo, University of Chicago