A Game of Strategy: Unpacking Heterogeneity in Undergraduate College to Career Pathways

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8. Pathways and Returns to Higher Education

Abstract

Two pivotal transition periods in students’ lives are from high school to college and college to the labor market. Students’ negotiations along these pathways have broader and long-term effects on their status attainment. With so much riding on these decisions, the question then becomes, how do these students navigate their college to career pathways across field of study in a time when the “college for all” model is not one size fits all. Through in-depth interviews with undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, this paper details the preliminary findings of an active study on how college students navigate these pathways relative to their academic and professional motivations. Drawing from Goffman’s Dramaturgical Approach, I identify four Student Typologies: Passive, Practical, Proactive and Persistent Performers – characteristics and roles that students embody relative to their fields of study, and Pathway Strategies, mechanisms that students employ along their college to career (C2C) pathway, as mutually reinforcing concepts that serve to better position them toward their academic and professional goals. Across the sample, students both describe and embody a host of different archetypes and strategies as high school students and in preparation for continuing their education and entering the workforce. As college-going increases, so too does the competition upon entering the labor market. This, coupled with the rise of artificial intelligence, creates an environment of scarce and protected resources and opportunities within and between fields of study and their related professions, forcing students to navigate their pathway with concerted calculation.

Author

• Cameron Rua-Smith, University of Texas-Austin