Literature Review Blog #3

2. Goldrick-Rab, Sara. "Following Their Every Move: An Investigation of Social-Class Differences in College Pathways." Sociology of Education. (2006): n. page. Print. <http://search.proquest.com/sociology/docview/216499114/141238DBA9A136AFD1A/4?accountid=13626>.

3. This article assesses the different college pathways and how students achieve success, and if ethnicity /background/social class is involved in these decisions. Many students attend college and all outcomes seem to turn out different, and this could be based off of how a student was raised and how they achieved success in high school. This study looks at advantaged and disadvantaged students to determine if their social class had anything to do with the choices they made in college and if it affected their success.

4. The author of this article is Sara Goldrick-Rab. From her personal biography on the University of Wisconsin's School of Education's website, it states "Sara Goldrick-Rab is associate professor of educational policy studies and sociology at UW-Madison. She is also the Founding Director of the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, opening in EPS in 2014. Dr. Goldrick-Rab is Senior Scholar at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty, Center for Financial Security, LaFollette School of Public Affairs, and Wisconsin Center for Educational Research. She is also the Project Director for the What Works Clearinghouse's expansion into postsecondary education. As a scholar-activist and sociologist with a deep commitment to bringing research into policy and practice, Dr. Goldrick-Rab's research explores policies aimed at reducing socioeconomic and racial inequalities. She was named a 2010 William T. Grant Scholar for her project "Rethinking College Choice in America." She was also a 2006 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellow. She is the co-author of Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First Idea Eroded College Access the Poor (Russell Sage, 2006), which was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills award. Her research has been published in journals such as Sociology of Education and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and been financially supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Spencer Foundation, American Educational Research Association, William T. Grant Foundation, and many others." She is a professor at the school, has published other scholarly works, and received numerous academic awards. 

5. Social Class: Groups of individuals who occupy a similar position in the economic system of production This includes: Upper Class/Elite, Upper Middle Class, Lower Middle Class, Working Class,  and Poor. ((http://udel.edu/~cmarks/What%20is%20social%20class.htm) )

College Pathways: This is a term that describes the "path" that a student will take throughout college. This can include party oriented or career oriented, or various other ways of attaining success/failure in college. The pathway chosen usually directly impacts success because of the choices made within that pathway. 

6.As an article in the New York Times (Leonhardt 2005) observed, there are enormous social-class differences in college completion. Among 1992 high school seniors who began college at four-year institutions, 84 percent of those in the top fifth of the socioeconomic distribution finished their bachelor's degrees by age 26, compared to barely 39 percent of the students from families in the bottom fifth (author's calculations using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study, NELS). Variation in facets of postsecondary pathways may contribute to some of these differences. Research has demonstrated that engaging in nontraditional pathways has a negative effect on students' chances for completing bachelor's degrees. 

Family background may shape how a student attends college by introducing both opportunities and constraints into the attendance process. A large body of research has demonstrated that family background is associated with the social, cultural, and economic resources (or capital) that are needed to further educational attainment (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Coleman 1974, 1988; DiMaggio 1982). In the case of higher education, students from families with higher incomes and those whose parents attended college are more likely to have access to critical information and financial resources that enable them to follow more "traditional" college pathways. The quantity and quality of information that students have at their disposal when entering and proceeding through college is essential to their decision-making processes. To make effective decisions in an environment with a plethora of choices, actors need both more and better information (Rosenbaum 2001).

These findings imply that students with greater access to financial resources are better able to take advantage of the new higher education marketplace. Given the significant link between social class and interrupted schooling, it seems reasonable to conjecture that low-SES students who change schools interrupt their schooling not because they are shopping, partying, or choosing to take time off to "find themselves," but because they have suffered academically or financially in school.21 Thus, while some analysts have suggested that competition among institutions will benefit disadvantaged students, who theoretically should enjoy greater opportunities to assess and compare their multiple options (Levine 2001; Newman and Couturier 2001), these results indicate otherwise.

7. This material will aid in my research because I will be able to read and find out how and why different social classes are affected when attending college. Privileged students seem to graduate more easily and their decisions are less impacted by the issue of money. Students who are in a lower social class may find it harder to maintain their path in school, and their choices are very much affected by their socioeconomic standing. I think this will help me support my argument that social class affects college choices and ultimately success by providing statistical evidence of such cases.