Public discourse often frames the value of undergraduate education in financial terms--credentialing and increased earning power. Students must prepare to be self-supporting, but are financial prospects their only important goals? We asked 1,500 students from 11 U.S. colleges to write about their goals, the reasons their goals were important, and…

Prior research shows that rural students' education expectations and aspirations, as well as their postsecondary enrollment and persistence rates, tend to be lower than those of nonrural students. However, much of that prior research may not apply to today's students because it uses old data or focuses on individual states or purposive samples.…

This report provides a first look at selected findings from the first follow-up of the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09). HSLS:09 focuses on understanding students' trajectories from the beginning of high school into higher education and the workforce. The core research questions for the study explore secondary to postsecondary…

This First Look presents findings from the base-year survey of the newly launched High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), the first round of a study that will follow a ninth-grade cohort through high school and into their postsecondary years. HSLS:09 is the fifth in a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) high school…

Using data obtained from recent cross-national and longitudinal studies, the link between family influences and the traditional patterns of school achievement were assessed in terms of rural educational mobility and sex differentials within the context of the "sponsored" system of Norway's schools and the "contest" system…

Examining the normative and regulative effects of parental influence on the educational mobility of high school youth and the changing patterns of educational mobility, rural high school seniors in Ontonagon County, Michigan were surveyed in 1957/58 (N=254), 1968 (N=193), and 1974 (N=201). The key variables examined were: (1) college plans; (2)…

The effects of participation in school-to-career (STC) on subsequent educational and career opportunities were examined in a longitudinal study of 1999 and 2000 graduates of the Lansing Area Manufacturing Partnership (LAMP), which is an STC program sponsored by the United Auto Workers, General Motors Corporation, and Michigan's Ingham County…