Comprehensive Exam
Sociology of Education (General) / Transition to Adulthood (Specialty)
Spring 2011
Day 1—General
A. CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS:
1. Much has been said about how the long-term returns to educational attainment (i.e., what
people get from pursuing more education) have risen dramatically in recent decades. Typically,
such returns are thought of in terms of lifelong earnings or other socioeconomic indicators across
the life course. Summarize this general trend in long-term socioeconomic returns to educational
attainment, including discussing the factors driving this trend and the implications of this trend
for students today. What about other kinds of long-term returns, such as health or marriage, and
how might trends in such socioemotional returns to educational attainment be related to the
aforementioned trend in socioeconomic returns? What do social capital, ecological, OR life
course perspectives (pick one) tell us about both kinds of returns as well as the links between
them over time.
2. Like many policy discussions of issues involving children, adolescents, and young adults,
educational policy often presents a dilemma. This dilemma is rooted in the fact that some of the
things that are most powerfully related to academic outcomes and disparities in these outcomes
are very difficult to manipulate from the outside. Thus, potential forces of change are not often
easily translated into policy intervention. Pick one area of students’ lives that illustrates this
policy dilemma, lay out evidence that this area of their lives is related to academic disparities
(e.g., socioeconomic, race/ethnic, immigration related), and discuss why this area is so hard to
change through policy means to reduce these disparities. Do theory, past research, or related
literatures suggest ways around this policy dilemma? How does/has a failure to address this
policy dilemma potentially undermine/d major educational movements or reforms now or in the
past?
B. CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS:
1. Sociologists of education have focused on schools as (1) formal organizations in our modern
society and/or (2) collections of students and teachers that comprise a community. In either case,
the school is viewed as influencing individuals’ opportunities, behaviors and attitudes, but
through very different mechanisms. Choose three of the following theorists and discuss how each
views the role of the school, as a formal organization and a community, in shaping students’
outcomes. (1) Emile Durkheim; (2) Max Weber; (3) James Coleman; (4) Pierre Bourdieu.
2. The issue of racial/ethnic inequality in schooling can be viewed through several different
lenses; some literature discusses it as an issue as differences between individuals, while other
work privileges the school context or organization as the key issue, and still other research points
to the family, home, or neighborhood as central in understanding racial/ethnic educational
inequality. First, discuss how researchers from each of these three different perspectives view
the sources (and possible solutions) of racial/ethnic inequality in education. Second, make an
argument for which perspective you find to be the most informative or powerful for explaining
General
1
inequality and why.
C. CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS:
1. Exploring Cultural and Social Capital in Education. First, identify and discuss major
theorists in the literature on cultural capital and social capital, being sure to explain similarities
and differences between the two concepts. Second, discuss specific contributions of literature on
these concepts towards understanding either race or social class inequality in educational
outcomes. Finally, offer a critique of the shortcomings or limitations of work in this area.
2. Parental involvement in education has been identified as a valuable resource for students and
schools alike. Discuss whether parental involvement simply reproduces social inequality or if it
disrupts social reproduction. Are there any education policies that facilitate the positive effects
of parental involvement for students who are traditionally disadvantaged by the system and give
these students and families a greater advantage? If so, describe the policy and evidence and any
debate surrounding the policy. If not, discuss why not.
General
2
Comprehensive Exam
Sociology of Education (General) / Transition to Adulthood (Specialty)
Spring 2011
Day 2—Transition to Adulthood
A. CHOOSE TWO OF THE FOLLOWING THREE QUESTIONS:
1. In recent decades, secondary and higher education in the U.S. have been characterized by an
inefficient balance of supply and demand. The economic demand for well-trained individuals
with higher education degrees has grown, but the supply of such students has not kept up with
this demand because of other obstacles, such as rising costs of higher education. How is this
supply/demand imbalance changing the nature of the transition to adulthood—norms, values,
expectations, aspirations, behaviors—in the U.S. within and across groups defined by
socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and immigration status?
2. Attached are two pieces that came out in the New York Times several years ago. The first is
an op-ed piece by David Brooks about the “odyssey years”, and the second is a critique about the
generalizability of this odyssey idea by the sociologically-oriented psychologist Larry Steinberg.
In many ways, this back and forth captures current debates in the social sciences, including
sociology, about changes in the transition to adulthood in the U.S. in the late 20th and early 21st
Centuries. Explain what these changes are, assess how universal they are across diverse
segments of the population, and discuss the implications of these changes for young people of
different backgrounds. Is there a new stage of development (i.e., emerging adulthood) arising, or
is something else going on? How does life course theory help to make sense of the different
viewpoints in these debates and of the transition to adulthood more generally?
B. CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS:
1. To what extent do inequalities observed at the postsecondary level represent either a departure
or a continuation of inequalities observed from K-12? Answer this question with regard to 1)
gender inequality and 2) racial/ethnic inequality.
2. Given the importance of attending and graduating from college for individuals’ future life
chances (including occupational status, income, and health), postsecondary education can
provide a crucial opportunity for social mobility, or alternatively, function as a key mechanism in
social reproduction. Based on your readings, do you think that postsecondary education has
contributed more to the former or to the later? And do you think that the role of postsecondary
education in promoting either social mobility or reproduction has changed over time? If so, why?
And if not, why not?
3. Recently, some scholars have argued that a college education is not in the best interest of all
students, especially if they must go into debt to attend college. On the other hand, the cost of not
completing a college degree is likely to continue to increase in the years to come. Discuss
whether the notion of “college for all” is advisable for (1) all individuals and (2) as a policy goal.
Transition to Adulthood
3
Attachment for Day 2 Question B.1.
New York Times Op-Ed Column October 9, 2007
David Brooks
There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now,
there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age.
Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs
between adolescence and adulthood.
During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with
friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try
another.
Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a
transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown
children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even
detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that
are being delayed.
They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children.
They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define
adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially
independent, getting married and starting a family.
In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40
percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.
Yet with a little imagination it’s possible even for baby boomers to understand what it’s like to
be in the middle of the odyssey years. It’s possible to see that this period of improvisation is a
sensible response to modern conditions.
Two of the country’s best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life phase.
William Galston of the Brookings Institution has recently completed a research project for the
Hewlett Foundation. Robert Wuthnow of Princeton has just published a tremendously valuable
book, “After the Baby Boomers” that looks at young adulthood through the prism of religious
practice.
Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young
people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a
world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t
apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less
permanent version of itself.
Transition to Adulthood
4
Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church
attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49
percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it’s at 21 percent.)
The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them jobs that will
guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy
options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.
Social life is fluid. There’s been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six
percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of
male workers. Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.
This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married.
Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without
marriage, while they find it harder (or, if they’re working-class, next to impossible) to find a
suitably accomplished mate.
The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result
of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that
people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more
highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
Rather, what we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being
a century ago. It’s a phase in which some social institutions flourish — knitting circles, Teach for
America — while others — churches, political parties — have trouble establishing ties.
But there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the coming years.
European nations are traveling this route ahead of us, Galston notes. Europeans delay marriage
even longer than we do and spend even more years shifting between the job market and higher
education.
And as the new generational structure solidifies, social and economic entrepreneurs will create
new rites and institutions. Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes
wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by “Friends” and
later by “Knocked Up.”
Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Oct. 9, 2007
Laurence Steinberg, Temple University
For young people from the upper-middle class, whose parents can afford to bankroll them while
they experiment with careers, relationships and identities, the period between adolescence and
adulthood may in fact be an odyssey of the sort that David Brooks has described. But research
shows that this trend is far from universal, and before we accept the notion that a new stage of
human development has emerged, it is informative to ask just how widespread it is.
Recent empirical analyses indicate that about 40 percent of American young people follow this
pattern. Poor inner-city and rural youth, as well as young people who live in the so-called red
Transition to Adulthood
5
states, are far less likely than their advantaged, suburban and blue-state counterparts to delay the
transition into conventional work and family roles, both because they choose not to and because
they simply can't afford to. Perhaps over time, the odyssey stage will come to characterize the
life course of the majority of young Americans, just as adolescence began as a middle-class
institution and spread to less affluent groups, but it hasn't happened yet.
Transition to Adulthood
6