Cultural Motivations for College-going among Adult Undergraduates

David Monaghan, Ph.DSenior ResearcherWisconsin HOPE LabUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Mass college-going and diversification of higher education 66% of recent high school graduates transition to college (NCES 2014) 75% of recent American cohorts will attend postsecondary education in their lifetimes (OECD 2014) Today’s college-goers are the most diverse ever in terms of SES, race/ethnicity, and academic preparation 40% of degree-seeking undergraduates are at least 25 years of age

Adult undergraduates: Some basics Two-thirds of adult undergraduates first enrolled in “traditional” ages (18-23) Compared with younger students, adult undergraduates: Are disproportionately female, African-American, and from lower-SES

backgroundsHave less rigorous academic preparation on averageAre disproportionately enrolled at community colleges, for-profit colleges, and

non-selective four-year collegesAre much more likely to combine college-going with full-time work and child-

rearing

Why do people go to college?1) Rational actor model

◦ Individuals act rationally to maximize utility◦ College-going increases earning potential substantially◦ People who stand to earn more by going to college will do so

2) “College-going habitus” (Bourdieu)◦ The orientation to college as the “next step” after high school is inculcated

(or not) in the family◦ Privileged youth are both selected for college-going and are disposed to

see the symbolic games of academia as “worth the candle” (“illusio”)◦ College-going habitus is class-graded

Class and college motivations Working-class students are expected to be more likely to attend college for narrowly economic reasons (Clark & Trow 1966; Horowitz 1987; Goldthorpe 1996) College-going is presumed to be valued as a means of “securing a good job”, thereby attaining upward mobility

Presumed motivations of older undergraduatesAdult undergraduates are generally expected to enroll for near-exclusive reasons because:1) From lower-SES backgrounds2) Have prior labor market experience3) Have external obligations (work and children) which make college-going

more costly

Why do adults go to college? Common-sense answer: money While economic motivations are certainly apparent, adult college-goers’ motivations for attendance are far richer and more complex than this Reflections on motivations for college-going tell us much about the broader cultural meaning of college and college-going in contemporary society Adult students are uniquely positioned to have a nuanced perspective on college-going Have lived and worked as an adult without a college degree College-going is being chosen in the face of difficult circumstances and is not

simply “the next step”

An alternative approach Inductive rather than deductive investigation: what motivates college-going is an open question Verstehen method: Social action as meaningful, and task of social science is to understand it as such My approach to this question is informed by a theory of action sketched by both Bourdieu (1972) and Giddens (1984)

Framework for interpreting meaningful action

1) Actors are knowledgeable agents who actively interpret the world and whose actions are made (and must be understood) in reference to these interpretations

2) Actors encounter the social world as given, and dominant interpretations of the social world are also experienced as given.

3) Dominant interpretations of social phenomena constitute real structural conditions structuring agents’ understandings and behavior.

4) The meanings of complex social phenomena are indeterminate, and as such are only understood in approximate, indeterminate

Sample & Methods 36 subjects Eligibility: age 25+; enrolled in postsecondary education; intending to earn a BA Recruited from public 2- and 4-year colleges in a major Northeast city Purposive non-random recruitment to obtain gender and racial/ethnic diversity Recruited in 2013-14; paid $20 for hour-long interview Semi-structured life-history interviews focused on schooling Interviews transcribed and hand-coded according to iteratively modified coding scheme

Sample characteristics (N=36)Female 55%Latino 33%Black 25%White 25%Multiracial/other 17%Foreign-born 22%Married 25%Has children 36%Older than 34 39%Employed full-time 48%Need-based aid 58%Attending community college 39%Attended multiple institutions 75%

Sample Descriptive Findings (N=36)

It is difficult to get a good job without bachelor’s 83%Struggled to make ends meet recently 50%My desired job requires a bachelor’s 64%Expect more money after degree 78%Expect different job after degree 86%Reason for enrollment: better job 94%Reason for enrollment: interest in learning 71%Reason for enrollment: pride in accomplishment 77%

Results:“It’s a whole different type of

people”

How are people without a college degree perceived? Most, but not all respondents, agreed that people without a degree were seen as somehow “lesser” than those with a degree: not as intelligent, lazier, not as ambitious. They (mostly) disavowed feeling this way themselves, said it depended on who you asked, and said that this sort of a judgment was wrong, both factually and morally But still, the general social stigmatization was acknowledged and understood

“People look at you like you are smarter (when you have a degree), which is not necessarily the case. They look at you like you are more serious… It just gives you a level of respect from people.” Justine, White female, 30s

“I think people without a college education are looked upon as less. I want to say stupid, but I don’t believe that they are stupid, but I think people do believe that. Or they’re going to think that the person with the college education is smarter.” Samaria, Latin female, 40s

“For me, personally, to be honest I do think that if I have a bachelor’s degree or master’s degree that I am better than you, because I put in more work than you have. I deserve to be smarter than you.” Coryn, Black female, 40s

How are educated people different? A number of respondents discussed behavioral differences they perceived between college-educated people and others. Their comments reveal notions of education effecting arbitrary changes in codes of expression, as well as changes in how people perceive the world and the knowledge they have of it The educated are people who speak differently about different things, and learning to do this allows one to effectively become one of them

How are the educated different?“Education is like another language. You can’t talk to intellectual people and join their conversations unless you are exposed to certain ideas and knowledge yourself, unless you learn to speak the way they do.”James, White male, late 20s

“Sometimes it’s etiquette. Sometimes it’s just the way you speak that you can tell…somebody has a degree. The way they speak, the way they carry themselves. Most people who don’t have a degree, they have an attitude, they talk a certain way and they act in [a] certain [way]; they don’t know certain things. Like you ask someone about something… somebody who actually has a little bit of an education, they will tell you, ‘You know, I don’t know about that, but I will find out for you.’ To me, I feel like [if] you don’t have a degree, you be like, ‘No, that’s not how it is, that’s not how it goes, and that didn’t happen in my way.’”Joselyn, Latin female, late 20s

Joining the group For some respondents, going to college was explicitly motivated by a desire to join the class of the college educated The desire was sparked by social contact with specific people who seemed to be exciting, more culturally savvy, who had more options and more energy than people they grew up with

Describing a group of college-educated friends:“They were just so smart and I would find myself getting just so jealous of how smart they were, and I would also feel a little dumb around them. …And then around that time I started dating this guy who graduated from [elite private college], and he was studying for his LSAT at the time. And I was also really jealous of how smart he was and also feeling a little dumb in our conversations. …And then he would also tell me, ‘Oh you’re smart, you should go back to school, you should go back to school.’ And then I all of a sudden got the drive and I did it.”Alena, White female, late 20s

“I think it’s all age, growing up. Your mind starts to develop, you start looking toward the future, like, ‘Damn, this is not it, this is not what I’m going to do.’ My friends started changing; I started getting new friends, and well, those friends were in college. So I was like, ‘Wow, I want to do this too.”… Look at this. You won’t find this in my neighborhood. You don’t see this, smart people talking to each other, finding things out, you don’t get that. I mean, not to say that the people in my neighborhood are not smart, but you’re in the institute trying to make yourself better. So I wanted to be in that group. I wanted to be part of that.” Chris, Black male, 30s

Moving on up: Disaffiliation and symbolic violence For Bourdieu, symbolic violence is “the particular kind of constraint which can only be implemented with the active complicity… of those who submit to it.” (Bourdieu, 1989). It is the representation of a social group as inferior, when this characterization is internalized by members of the group itself. British sociologist Diane Reay notes that for some working-class college-goers, going to college involves disaffiliation from their own social origins through a negative characterization of these origins. “Acts of symbolic violence, the engagement in processes of disidentification, are pivotal to their thinking themselves into other, more privileged spaces.” (Reay 2001)

Disaffiliation “The people from my church, a lot of them still didn’t go to college... They are kind of, like, stuck in the same box that they’ve always been, and I can sit there and have conversation with them and feel weirdly back 8 years ago and nobody has grown. …They are stuck in this little town [that] they won’t get out of. They’ve been there, they go to church there…; this is what they’ve always known. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with that. …But I definitely see a difference in the way we interact in different types of people that I surround myself with now.” Alma, Latin female, late 20s

Self-transcendence “When I go to school, David, and I hit the campus and I start to walk, I feel like, ‘Oh my god, look at what I’m doing, look at where I’m at, look at what I’m trying to accomplish.’ I get this feeling that I belong to this secret society of college students and that’s kept me in school.… To be a college student, you’re part of this – I want to say smart people for a lack of a better term – but you’re just part of a people that are learning new things, that are experiencing new things; you’re just accomplishing something. You’re going to be part of the people with diplomas on the walls, the master’s degrees. It’s a whole different type of people. People who are in college versus people who are not. I experience that every day here.” Samaria, Latin female, 40s

Conclusions

The symbolic and psychic rewards of college Older students do not simply attend college in order to get better jobs and earn more money

There are substantial rewards in terms of one’s conception of one’s own social status, a moral feeling of self-betterment, self-regard, vindication and validation

Such rewards do not exist apart from the complex and multi-faceted symbolic significance of education, college and a college degree in contemporary society

This symbolic import, in turn, must be understood in terms of higher education’s import in social stratification, the inculcation of cultural capital, and knowledge generation

This complex significance is grasped, albeit indistinctly, by social agents, and their participation or non-participation is a meaningful action in reference to this understanding.

Thank you!

Belonging For others, exposure to the more highly educated only made them feel their own lack, and they internalized a negative valuation of themselves:

“My two sisters, my brother, my dad, my stepmom, my cousins, they all have an education…like two of [them] are lawyers…. So I wanted to do it for myself, because I wanted to feel like I fit in…. Like when they all talk about it, ‘I have a [bachelor’s ] in this,’ ‘So my degree is [in] this,’ ‘So my master’s [is] in this.’… Like I always hear all [these] things, and I am like, ‘Oh me? I’m a case manager. I haven’t completed my degree.’ Like I didn’t feel comfortable with myself.”Vilana, Latin female, 30s

Desirability Completing a degree is seen as raising one’s position in the eyes of others:

“I’m also going to feel comfortable as a person. When I meet my next boyfriend, and he asks me what I do or what I went to school for, I can tell him I have a degree in sociology…. But when you are 30-something and you don’t have an education, I think society seems to judge you as lazy and somebody that doesn’t have any goals.” Vilana, Latin female, 30s