This study examines school and work barrier beliefs about the limitations of education for future career rewards and perceived supports for attaining the educational and career aspirations of low-income, inner-city, African American, Hispanic/Latino(a), and Caribbean immigrant youth. The authors find that higher levels of school and work barrier…

This study surveyed 17,787 graduating seniors in the Los Angeles (California) Unified School District about their plans following graduation and their perceptions of the effectiveness of their high school education. Responses are summarized for the entire district, and by sex, by ethnic group, and by type of high school. The following key findings…

The factors that influence students' educational aspirations are of critical importance to both teachers and policy makers. To determine how grade eight students in Toronto make the decision whether or not to attend college, 120 inner-city eighth graders and some of their parents, teachers and principals were interviewed. In the second stage of…

The effectiveness of Upward Bound (UB), a federally funded program to assist high-ability disadvantaged youth in completing programs in higher education, is addressed in this study. The study sought to determine if participation in UB enhances high school performance and participation in postsecondary education, especially in comparison to non-UB…

Findings of a study of the attitudes, values, educational achievements, and life goals of U.S. college freshmen are summarized. The study report, "The American Freshman: Twenty Year Trends, 1966-1985," is based on the Cooperative Institutional Research Program's annual surveys of college freshmen. Major findings from the study point to…

Two studies were conducted by a New England university during the 1986-87 school year to gain a better understanding of the factors influencing individuals' decisions to attend graduate/professional school. One purpose of the two projects was to develop school-specific databases to: provide graduate school administrators with information regarding…

To advocate the work of Gregory Bateson, especially his Double-Bind theory, this paper describes how the theory can be applied to particular instances and to the general experience of black students in a predominantly white, authoritarian college setting. The paper argues that miscues on the part of black students in the classroom and in writing…

A study identified the educational needs, problems, and aspirations of older adults enrolled in traditional degree programs on community college campuses. It focused exclusively on male and female community college students, aged 55 and above, who are enrolled in degree programs of study, to discover their opinions concerning the institutions'…

This study investigated achievement attitudes of young, mathematically able adolescents in order to examine differences between boys and girls equated for ability, and to explore relationships between self-perceptions, aspirations, and extra-curricular activities related to mathematics, science, or computers. The research was guided by the…

Although sex roles seem to be undergoing substantial changes in today's society, the work and family roles of women remain quite different from those of men. Data from the Monitoring the Future project, a 2-year project focusing on high school seniors' sex role attitudes and the relationship of those attitudes to various plans for adult roles,…

As part of the ongoing process of self-assessment begun with the 1973 Graduate Follow-up Study of the 1971 graduates and continued in 1978 with the 1976 graduates and in 1983 with the 1980 graduates, it was decided to conduct a survey of the 1983 seniors of the Mesa Public Schools during the spring of 1983. The data collected and analyzed at that…

In education, considerable attention has been paid to the characteristics and prevalence of high school dropouts. However, pregnant teenagers present a special case of dropouts since many have interrupted their schooling by force rather than by choice. Additionally, the cross-sectional nature of most dropout studies precludes an investigation of…

The purposes of this study were (1) to compare educational and vocational goals of rural youth with those of their parents for these youth and (2) to determine the relationship of these goals to selected background factors. Three measures were used in the study: a questionnaire about educational and vocational goals, the Hieronymus Scale for…

The project was designed to examine the way in which institutions of higher education change, or fail to change, the educational aspirations of women students and to test the explanatory power of two dominant sociological reference group theories, environmental press and relative deprivation, when applied separately to male and female…

In the second year of a federally funded program encouraging disadvantaged youth to prepare for college, 1,955 parents and 1,520 students at 23 middle schools in southern West Virginia were surveyed concerning their perceptions of and aspirations for postsecondary education. Findings indicate that students and their parents had a generally…