Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Research Blog #7
My "case" or most important area to explore is the overarching theme of how choice affects success in college. There are many choices a student will make throughout their career as a student, but some important ones include choices in debt, socializing, and choice of major. Being aware of debt can ease the lives of students, choice of friends that have similar interests affect success, and choice of major directly impacts the job one will obtain after graduation.These can all directly affect success or failure, and each student is different, therefore some choices may be easier for some or have less of an impact than others. It speaks to the debate in my proposal because these specific examples will help me to argue my overarching theme of choice in college. These three examples have been studied and written about, and I have found a theme among all. There is an overwhelming amount of information regarding choice of major, awareness of debt, but not much on socialization. However, form the sources such as Armstrong and Hamilton, it is clear that socialization has an impact on success.
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I think the real problem for students is they have to make too many choices without sufficient knowledge or information. Even the choice to go to school in the first place and take out loans is a risky choice for many, made with little information -- as our readings in the first half of class showed. And choice of major is another. I think students have been socialized to follow their bliss, and that bliss does not always lead them down the right paths. It may be worth looking at some way of framing "choice" -- how people decide, and the irrational choices they often make. Dan Ariely's work -- like Predictably Irrational, or his Ted Talk:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html
Start about 2 minutes in to skip silly intro.
I'm sure some things have been written about applying decision making theory to academic advising, including choice of major. In fact, a moment's Googling turns up this item:
http://dus.psu.edu/mentor/old/articles/080604jl.htm
Finding some models for decision making with which to frame your analysis might help.