Seminars

WBL Seminar Summer 2008

How uncertainty over career aspirations can affect socio-economic attainment: evidence from two recent cohorts of youth
Presenter: Jeremy Staff (Pennsylvania State University)

Wednesday, June 11, 2008, from 12pm to 1pm, in Room 101 at 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1

Free of charge.

Co-authors: Ricardo Sabates (Insititute of Education) and Angel Harris (Princeton University).

A key principle of lifecourse research is that individuals make choices in their own life based on the opportunities and constraints of their circumstances. During the transition from school to work, social psychological measures of school interest, educational expectations, and career aspirations reflect the young person's decisions and compromises with respect to their future occupational standing. These early aspirations and expectations shape longer-term educational achievement, occupational prestige, and wage attainments in adulthood.

Although over three-quarters of modern cohorts of young people aspire to attend college, lofty aspirations sometimes lead to labour-market "floundering" or the directionless pursuit of higher education. In this paper, we document the consequences of uncertainty in early career aspirations for socio-economic achievement among recent cohorts of young people. In particular, we seek to explain why the high ambitions of young people today are often not realised. We hypothesise that this may be due to uncertainty of career aspirations.

Our research is based on two major sources of data collection in the United States and the United Kingdom. We draw on longitudinal data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (U.S. Department of Education, 2002) and the British Cohort Study 1970 (Centre for Longitudinal Studies, 2007). These data sources are ideal for our research aims because they include longitudinal information on the ambitions, school-related behaviours, and longer-term attainments of nationally representative samples of contemporary young people in the US and UK.

To register your attendance, please email: info@learningbenefits.net

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