Chapter 7

1. Chapter 7 Family, Education, and Career

2. Introduction • American political leaders have traditionally endorsed high rates of social mobility. • Though most Americans believe that some inequality in society is acceptable, they also believe in “equality of opportunity.” • Every American should have the opportunity to compete in the various social arenas based on their own merits and talents. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

3. Introduction, cont. • This does not necessarily imply that all Americans believe in “equality of results.” • Most Americans feel the educational system is the great equalizer providing everyone with the opportunity to transcend whatever social class they were born into. • But, is educational opportunity currently distributed in a way consistent with it being labeled as the “great equalizer”? © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

4. Blau and Duncan:Analyzing Mobility Models • The study of social mobility is complicated due to the frequency with which relevant variables are correlated. • Additionally, the nature of the relationship among these variables makes it even more difficult to interpret. (See Figure 7.1.) • Understanding the causal influence of the multiple variables related to social mobility is quite challenging. • Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan (1967) conducted a methodologically innovative study that analyzed the complex multivariate relationship between career success and failure. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

5. Blau and Duncan:Analyzing Mobility Models, cont. • Blau and Duncan conceptualized two key aspects of the problem: • Chains of causation: In this case, father’s occupation influences son’s education, which in turn shapes son’s career prospects. • Multiple causal pathways: In this case, father’s occupation influences son’s education and later directly influences son’s job search. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

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7. Blau and Duncan:Analyzing Mobility Models, cont. • Figure 7.2 provides us with three interesting findings: • Family background, through education, is a significant contributor to career success (14% of variance explained). • Family background, independent of education, significantly contributes to the career success of son’s SES (7% of variance explained). • Education has an independent effect on individual’s career success. • The model also suggests that total family background (1 and 2) and education independently (3) are equal in their influence on career success. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

8. Jencks on Equality • Jencks and his colleagues (1972) at Harvard attempted to integrate most of what was known about “status attainment” into one grand model that would include more variables than Blau and Duncan had studied. • They utilized secondary data and added income as the final dependent variable in the causal chain, after SES. • The new model, which used income as the final dependent variable instead of occupational prestige, reduced the measured impact of education on life chances. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

9. Jencks on Equality, cont. • Jencks and his colleagues suggested that to bring about greater equality a change had to be made in the way people are remunerated in the labor market. • For example, high level executives should be paid less, and low skilled service workers should be paid more. • They believed that discussions centering around the way the education system could be changed to bring about better opportunities for those from lower class backgrounds simply distracted Americans from the real issue. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

10. Jencks on Equality, cont. • Jencks and his colleagues also incorporated a measure of “cognitive ability”—son’s IQ at age 11. • They estimated that barely a quarter of the variance of the incomes of adult men could be predicted by combining all the usual predictors: family background, IQ scores, years of education, and even job title. • Jencks and his research team suggested that though these factors are still related to career success, luck and other unmeasured factors seem to be more important. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

11. Jencks on Equality, cont. • Although methodologically sound, Jencks’s research was severely criticized; many were upset by the implications of the word “luck.” • A second round of later studies by Jencks simply confirmed his earlier estimates, which had, in fact, become more accurate. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

12. The Stratification of Higher Education • A college degree is becoming increasingly necessary in our postindustrial labor market. • The income gap between high school and college graduates is growing. • Two studies conducted during the mid-1970’s found that IQ, SES, and gender strongly influence who attends college. • 25 years later the findings are very similar except that the gender gap has all but disappeared. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

13. The Stratification of Higher Education, cont. • A more recent study titled “High School and Beyond” conducted during the 1980’s considered the impact of IQ and SES on college attendance. • Nearly all the high-ability graduates from high-status families but very few low-ability graduates from low-status families went to college (83% vs. 13%). • The findings at the extremes like this are entirely predictable. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

14. The Stratification of Higher Education, cont. • What about those students with average IQ scores and class standing? • 57% of top SES high school grads with just below-average abilities were in college compared to 33% of bottom SES kids with just above-average abilities. • Mental ability and social class are strong independent determinants of educational attainment. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

15. The Stratification of Higher Education, cont. • Despite overall increases in the proportion of Americans attending college since 1970, there remains a significant income gap in terms of who attends college who does not. • Class disparities in rates of completion are even greater, and the gap has grown wider since the early 1970’s. • Two-year community colleges tend to draw their students from the lower half of the income distribution. • Private colleges and universities recruit disproportionate numbers of students from high-income families. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

16. The Stratification of Higher Education, cont. • Patterns of U.S. college attendance and graduation support one of two views of higher education: • It is large enough to provide sufficient opportunities to youths from lower- and middle-class families to gain the training and credentials necessary for them to improve their social class standing relative to their parents. • It is sufficiently stratified that its main function is to reproduce for each generation of children the status positions held by their parents. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

17. The Stratification of Higher Education, cont. • Both views are true. • The system is relatively open to the ambitious and talented, but it is remarkably successful at reproducing the privilege of the privileged. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

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