2.) Key terms that I found helpful through this process was, social class and college opportunity, low income opportunity, high class opportunities in college. I found a variety of information. The issues I found is that not many low income students had a lot of opportunity in the past. However, with times changing it looks like that will be a different story soon.
3.) I did not find many articles yet; however I found this book which I'm interested in pursuing,
Choosing Colleges: How Social Class and Schools Structure Opportunity, by Patricia M. McDonough. Seems like the perfect fit to what I am looking for in my final project.
4.) Ideas for my topic is that now since the economy is changing there may be more opportunities for the lower class. I want to explore how those students handle being in college since they are receiving help from the government, if they act the same way students that have to take out loans do.
5.) Resources I want to use are Armstrong and Hamilton's Paying for the Party paints a clear picture of what I want to explore in my final project. Within the introduction they illustrate exactly what I want to explain to readers. They talk about two girls, Taylor and Emma, both who go to the same school, and wanted to pursue the same field. However, the two girls came from two different social classes. The authors explained that, Taylor was able to reach better opportunities for herself because of her social standing, while Emma had to settle for something she did not exactly want. I plan on going more in depth with this reading and exploring what else they have to say about social class and college. Another resource I want to use is http://www.jstor.org/stable/2775010?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents6.) Some controversies include that everyone is on the same playing field and no one has a better opportunity because of their social class. I plan on exploring this topic in depth.
One angle on this is research that Paul Tough discusses in the chapter we read for class from How Children Succeed (in section 2 titled The Finish Line) on the phenomenon often called "undermatching," whereby poor but academically gifted or motivated students choose schools that are "beneath them" academically and end up dropping out precisely because they do not find the work challenging enough.
ReplyDeleteThe phenomenon is widely discussed in academic articles, and it has influenced government policy, but recently there has been more of a backlash against the idea:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/01/15-undermatching-higher-ed-chingos
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/10/analysis-questions-assumptions-behind-undermatching-theory
In any case, this phenomenon might fit with what you are trying to explore. Look at Paul Tough again and check out the work he cites. You might also look at work by Vincent Tinto, who is the leading expert on why students drop out of school, which often has more to do with a lack of social integration than a lack of academic ability.