Religious Stratification in Higher Education: The Case of American Jews

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 3. Religion and Stratification

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the narratives of American Jews to illustrate how cultural context, informed by both religion and ethnicity, shapes students’ postsecondary pathways. We utilize 10 years of longitudinal interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion to analyze the educational and life trajectories of 66 youth from adolescence into emerging adulthood (15 self-identified as Jewish; 51 identified as non-Jewish). We take a cultural approach, drawing on theories of self-concept congruence to show how aspirations for occupational and academic prestige, combined with an openness to new ideas, align with elite higher education institutions to give rise to the high educational attainment of Jews. First, Jewish adolescents see college as a step, not an endpoint, in an academic journey that will culminate in a prestigious career. Jewish women, in particular, see a prestigious career—not parenthood or altruism—as central to their lives’ purpose, which drives them to attend the most prestigious college to which they can gain admission. Second, Jewish adolescents demonstrate openness and intellectualism, dispositions that are particularly valued by elite colleges. Meanwhile, non-Jewish respondents have more of an instrumental orientation to education, viewing it as necessary for securing a job after college but indicating little interest in academic subjects in and of themselves. We argue that an essential step in advancing our understanding of stratification in the educational system is to examine the role of cultural systems that shape youth’s beliefs about their academic and professional selves.

Authors

• Ilana Horwitz, Stanford University

• Kaylee Matheny, Stanford

• Krystal Smith, stanford