Mind Over Money? How Socioeconomic Factors Influence a Student's Career
The first topic that I am interested in exploring further is how a parent's demographic (class, age, income, ethnicity) affects his or her child's higher education experience. This is something that seriously interests me, as we've discussed in class how the further privatization of universities is affecting people from different backgrounds in very different ways. It may be difficult to find a large amount of research on this, but it would be a very interesting topic for me to present.
(To expand on this topic, I would look into how the characteristics of the parents affect the child's social mobility post-college)
The second topic I am interested in researching, is how the privatization of college affects and, if further privatization continues, continue to affect the freedom of low income students. By freedom, I mean the choices that a low income student can make, during and after college. I know this is similar to my first topic, but I would like this one to be focused on how privatization jeopardizes freedom.
These are definitely topics that grow out of the class readings and they are very possible to research. You are also welcome to draw upon the readings for this class, some of which deserve a much deeper analysis than the 5-page paper allows.
ReplyDelete1) Demographics and Destiny
Armstrong and Hamilton's work definitely raises some troubling questions about how much college can help students overcome inequality, especially swimming against the strengthening current of privatization. There is definitely more research in this area, including the recently published Paying the Price, which you can find excerpted on Sakai under Resources --> Supplemental Course Readings --> Paying the Price. I link you directly to it, which will require a login to Sakai. I was going to use it in place of Armstrong and Hamilton this term, but I think A+H offer a much more interesting analysis of their findings. The excerpt starts with the methodology so that you understand that the author focused on poor students. The findings were stunning and troubling. I can loan you the book if you find the excerpt useful or interesting. And I am sure there is lots more research out there along the same lines. Privatization is definitely widening the divide between the haves and the have-nots, and college may be the wedge that helps reinforce inequality.
2) Privatization and Freedom
This is interesting, and you can go a lot of ways with that. I think Ken Ilgunas's Walden on Wheels is a fascinating exploration of that question and deserves deeper analysis. He has, in my view, a rather deeply libertarian approach to freedom which speaks to what seems an expanding philosophy among college-age students. He does it on his own and does not look for help from society, because he doesn't expect any. (I wonder if there are similar "get out of debt" memoirs like his?) An alternate approach to the topic is the question of "delayed" (pessimistic, half-empty) or "emerging" (optimistic, half-full) adulthood caused by the growing economic challenges affecting young people, and the related changes in societal expectations that accompany them. Whereas college used to be a rite of passage into full adulthood (my father graduated college with no debt, immediately got his career job as a CPA, got married, bought a house, and started a family all by the time he was 25) has now become a long slog for less affluent college grads -- many of whom do not even complete an undergraduate degree by 25 and don't pay off their debt until much later, slowing their passage of the traditional "adulthood" markers of career, house, family, etc. I have had a few students explore this topic and have some older books on the subject and can give you some direction.
A couple delayed/emerging adulthood blogs (both of which did several blogs at the last minute so you have to scroll down to find their last and most useful blog with abstract and bib):
Deletehttp://ryanbuttone.blogspot.com/
http://maryananikolin.blogspot.com/