Equal Incomes, Unequal Pathways: Family Background and the Transition from College to Employment

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Education and the Labor Market

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the divergent experience of first-generation and continuing-generation college students (the latter defined as having at least one parent with a four-year college degree) as they transition from college to the labor market. Findings are based on my longitudinal qualitative study of the college to labor market transition in which I follow a cohort of approximately 100 college seniors through their job searches and the year post-graduation. In keeping with the “great equalizer” finding in quantitative studies, the students I follow have similar post-graduation rates of employment and median earnings across class background. However, in keeping with the largely qualitative literature on class, race, and ethnic differences in experience of college itself, the post-college transition period for first generation and continuing generation students also differs in key ways.

I find that continuing-generation students have more access to economic, cultural, and social capital through their personal networks. These forms of capital help continuing-generation students avoid financial hardship and gain employment information and opportunities. In contrast, first-generation students have much more limited access to these forms of capital through their personal networks. As a result, they suffer higher levels of financial hardship in the post-college years and their job searches are not as eased by information and connections through family or other personal ties. First-generation students do, however, access social capital through professional ties. Often, these professional ties grow out of mentorship relationships forged while in college with professors, career center staff, internship supervisors, and employers.

A major implication of these findings is that universities should recognize the important role they can play as sources of cultural and social capital for students with lower levels of such capital in their personal networks. This may, indeed, be a key way in which universities achieve their status as “great equalizers”.

Author

• Judith A. Levine, Temple University