Undergraduate Aspirations and Career Choice: Effects of ...



Выходные данные статьи:

Reitz, Jeffrey G. Undergraduate Aspirations & Career Choice: Effects of College Selectivity, Sociology of Education, Vol. 48, Issue 3 (Summer, 1975), pp. 308-323.

Undergraduate Aspirations and Career Choice: Effects of College Selectivity*

Jeffrey G. Reitz

Department of Sociology University of Toronto

In studies of the effects of college selectivity on undergraduate aspirations, data both on educational aspirations and on career-field choice have been reported as relevant. Aspirations and career-field choice should not be treated as interchangeable measures, because college selectivity has a different effect on each. Selective colleges reinforce preferences for educationally high level careers within each field, thereby increasing the desirability of career fields with lower overall educational levels, for reasons other than effects on aspirations. Support for this hypothesis is found in a reexamination of two previous studies and in a secondary analysis of data on aspirations and career-field choices of science freshmen. The negative net effect of college selectivity on career-field choice is not really a "relative deprivation" effect, as previously argued.

Theories about the effects of college selectivity[1] on undergraduate aspirations have been examined in several empirical studies (Davis, 1966; Thistlethwaite and Wheeler, 1966; Werts and Watiey, 1969; Drew and Astin, 1972). In these studies, data on career-field choice, as well as data on aspirations, have been treated as relevant. These two variables are highly correlated, but they are not the same. If there is a good theoretical basis expecting college selectivity to affect career-field choice, other than because of its effects on aspirations, then such effects should be examined not only to establish new knowledge about the determinants of career-field choice, but also to distinguish more clearly between evidence which bears directly on theories of aspirations and evidence which does not.

The career-field options facing undergraduates – science, medicine, law, business, secondary education, and so on – may be ranked according to the level of educational attainment typical among persons entering careers in each field. For example, the field of science has an overall educational level higher than the field of business, because persons entering science more often possess advanced degrees. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of variation in the educational level of specific careers within broad fields. For example, the field of science includes both university professors of physics and laboratory technicians in industry. Likewise, the field of business includes persons with advanced training in modem management techniques and others having more prosaic backgrounds. Conversely, persons having a given level of educational attainment may be found in fields with very different overall educational levels. The following discussion will maintain a sharp distinction between the educational level of the particular careers individuals choose, which is a reflection of their educational aspirations, and the overall educational level of the career field in which the particular careers are located.

Suppose that college selectivity has a positive effect on student preferences for careers, which are at the highest educational level within each career field. The basis for this hypothesis will be discussed presently, but first note one logical implication. College selectivity would have a negative effect on career-field choice.[2] For students at a given level of educational aspiration, those choosing careers at the highest educational level relative to their field will be those whose career fields have the lowest overall educational level. And the stronger the preference for top careers within fields, the greater the tendency to choose fields in which the overall educational level is low. Therefore, if college selectivity strengthens this preference, it would negatively influence career-field choice.

Consider an example. Two students with comparable academic aspirations want to become scientists. One attends a selective college and the other attends an unselective college. The student in the selective college may find that science students are encouraged to seek a Ph.D. and become university professors. By the same token, they may be led also to view the less academically demanding science careers as unworthy. If the student decides he could not become a successful science professor, he might be inclined to abandon science altogether, and enter another field in which he could aspire to a favored position. This might well mean choosing a field in which the overall educational level is lower than it is in science.

The comparable student attending an unselective college may encounter a less insistent preference for academic science careers over non-academic science careers. Finding it easier to live up to local norms defining success in science, he might be more inclined to remain in the field. His educational aspirations might not differ from those of the first student attending the selective college, even though he remained in science while the first student shifted to a field, which is, in the aggregate, at a lower educational level.

One premise of this "within-field preferences" hypothesis is that career fields constitute social frames of reference in terms of which students make career decisions. Career field groupings, such as science, are not simply statistical categories. Students choosing careers in the same fields share many of the same interests, take many of the same courses, are exposed to many of the same faculty, and face similar futures. These common characteristics may give rise to a group identity like that of professional colleagues. As a result, students may think of careers in each field as being at the top, middle, or bottom of their field in terms of educational level. To the extent that they prefer careers at the top of each field, the attractiveness of fields having a relatively low educational level in the aggregate may be increased, other things being equal. Of course, the precise boundaries of these socially defined fields would be an empirical question.

A second premise is that college selectivity affects the standards, which students apply within career fields. The more selective the college, the more selective the context within each career field, and the higher the standards governing the acceptability of specific careers within those fields. In science, for example, selective college students would more often think of science as academic science, and less often have a positive image of the laboratory technician. In medicine, they would more often prefer surgery or bio-medical research, and less often think highly of general practice. In secondary education, they would more readily consider teaching mathematics or history, rather than physical education. These within-field preferences may influence between-field career choices.

Previous Research

Some light is shed on the within-fields preferences hypothesis by a comparison of two studies which were designed to test theories about the effects of college selectivity on aspirations. Davis (1966) used career-field choice as the measure of aspirations, and Drew and Astin (1972) used educational intentions. Drew and Astin regarded educational intentions merely as a minor improvement over Davis' measure.

The specific criterion variable in the Davis study was future occupational field, which was interpreted as a reflection of aspiration, whereas the present study used a more direct measure of educational aspirations (Drew and Astin, 1972: 1155n).

The two studies reached different conclusions: Davis found a negative net effect of college selectivity on career-field choice; Drew and Astin found a slightly positive effect on educational intentions. These findings both may be valid, and consistent with the within-fields preferences hypothesis, in which case the implications of Davis' findings for the theories of aspirations require reassessment.

Two theories of aspirations are at issue in these studies. The "environmental press" theory predicts a positive effect of college selectivity on aspirations, because students may set higher academic goals for themselves in contexts in which high academic standards and expectations prevail (Thistiethwaite and Wheeler, 1966). The "frogpond" or relative deprivation theory predicts a negative effect of college selectivity on aspirations, because of a negative effect of college selectivity on grades (Davis, 1966). The argument is that student aspirations are in part a function of assessments they make of their own academic ability, and that these self-assessments may be formed relative to classmates in the same institution, using the grading system, rather than relative to the age cohort as a whole. Students in highly selective institutions would experience "relative deprivation" because at a given level of academic ability, they compare less well with their classmates.

Davis examined choice of "high performance career fields" among college men[3] during four years of college. The data were from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of 1961 college graduates (cf. Davis, 1965). "High performance career fields" in his study were broad career-field categories attracting students of highest ability on the average. Physical science, biological science, social science, humanities, medicine, and law were classified as high performance career fields (data supporting this classification are presented in Davis, 1965:258). The negative net effect of college selectivity was inferred indirectly from the fact that the partial effect of grades (controlling for college selectivity) is greater than the partial effect of college celectivity (controlling for grades). Davis summarized his findings and methodology this way:

Among men (but not women) choice of a high-performance career field (save for recruitment to law among men originally choosing "other") is more strongly associated with GPA [grade point average] than with school quality [i.e., selectivity], a pattern which cannot be explained by Freshman year scholastic aptitude (which is equally associated with both variables) or by the students' career preferences at the beginning of college (which are controlled in the tabulations) (Davis, 1966:24).

Career-field choice was interpreted as reflecting aspirations, and Davis argued that the relative deprivation effect is stronger than the environmental press effect.

Drew and Astin's (1972) data were from an American Council on Education (ACE) panel study of freshmen in 1966. High educational aspirations were indicated by stated intentions to pursue advanced degrees, such as the Ph.D., M.D., M.A., and so on. In a multiple regression analysis they controlled for a variety of student "input" variables, including academic ability, before examining the effects of college selectivity.[4] The relative deprivation theory was supported, since college selectivity was shown to have a negative effect on college8 grades, which in turn have a positive effect on aspirations. But the environmental press effect was more than strong enough to offset the relative deprivation effect. An earlier ACE study also shows a positive net effect of college selectivity on educational aspirations (Astin, 1969).[5]

Taken at face value, the findings imply that college selectivity has a negative effect on career-field choice, after effects on aspirations have been taken into account. Davis' finding of negative net effect of college selectivity on career-field choice may not reflect merely a relative deprivation effect on aspirations. Instead, the relative deprivation effect may be offset by an environmental press effect, and there may be an additional negative effect on career-field choice due to within-field preferences.

Conclusions based on a comparison of studies using different samples and methodology must be provisional. However, in this case they are not easily refutable. Take the question of sampling. The NORC sample covered all college graduates, while the ACE sample covered only freshmen, many of whom never graduate. However, Drew and Astin did intend their study to test ideas growing out of Davis', and their use of a freshmen sample could be justified because theory predicts the same effects for all college classes. Drew and Astin questioned Davis' treatment of the independent variable. Nevertheless, a close reading of Davis' paper leads to the conclusion that despite limitations in his methodology, the objections raised by Drew and Astin really do not invalidate his findings on college selectivity and career-field choice.[6] But in the end, definite conclusions can be reached only by examining effects of college selectivity both on aspirations and on career-field choice in the same sample, using the same methodology.

Data Analysis: the Case of Science

The data analyzed here are drawn from Davis' study. They come from questionnaires returned to NORC by a national sample of 33,782 June, 1961 graduates from 135 U.S. colleges and universities. As in Davis' study, and for the same reasons,[7] only college men are included (N = 21,687).

College selectivity, grade point average, and career-field choice are operationally defined exactly as in Davis' study. A measure of aspirations is based on within-field career choices, rather than on educational intentions as in the Drew-Astin study. Science student expecting academic employment in science are distinguishable in the NORC data from others expecting non-academic (primarily business or government) employment. Employer expectations in science can be interpreted as reflecting within-field preferences, and choice, because all science students could elect to choose alternative careers outside science. Students expecting academic employment in science also can be regarded as having high aspirations, relative to those expecting non-academic employment. The availability of this measure is one reason why the career field of science has been selected as a test case for analysis here.[8] A subsample of male college graduates who chose science careers as freshmen was drawn (N = 1,894).

It is reasonable to suppose that science is a field with social boundaries as well as intellectual boundaries. Science majors form a readily identifiable social group in most colleges, and appear to •interact more frequently with one another than with non-science students. If science is a field within which differential career preferences exist, then our within-fields preferences hypothesis predicts that college selectivity has a positive effect on choice of academic science as opposed to non-academic science, and that when aspirations and grades are controlled, college selectivity has a negative effect on career-field choice. College selectivity also should have a significant positive effect on aspirations in the NORC sample when a better measure of aspirations is substituted for career-field choice.

Effects of College Selectivity on Career Choice

Among seniors in our NORC subsample who choose science careers, college selectivity is positively related to expectations of academic employment. In the most selective colleges, 66 percent (N = 296) of the science seniors expect academic employment, as opposed to 42 percent (N = 523) in the less selective colleges, and 31 percent (N = 156) in the least selective colleges. The contingency coefficient (C) for this relationship is +0.24. (All the C’s reported in this paper are based on raw frequencies in 2 × 3 tables. The maximum value of |C| for a 2 × 3 table is 0.707. C may be normalized by dividing by 0.707; Caverage = C ÷ 0.707; so that – 1≤Cav≤1. Thus Cav = + 0.34 for the relationship reported above.)

The relation between college selectivity and within-field career preferences of science seniors does not conclusively prove that science students who attend selective colleges more often choose academic science as a result. There is no control for choice of academic versus non-academic science in the freshman year (because it was not measured). However, the academic/non-academic distinction may not be salient for students just entering college. Most freshmen probably have a rather undifferentiated image of the career “scientist”. Astin and Panos (1969:89, 91) show in a large panel study that college freshmen rarely think in terms of becoming college professors. Only 0.6 percent of all college freshmen choose such a career. Preference for this career increases substantially, by over 400 percent, during college. Since science students are among the relatively few groups likely to choose academic careers, the increase in preference for such careers among science student must be considerably greater than 400 percent. Astin and Panos attribute this increase in part to the fact that freshmen who hope to become "scientists" later change this label to "college professor" as they learn more about opportunities to pursue scientific work in academia. Thus, the data suggest that college selectivity has a positive effect on the decision to pursue academic science.

A positive effect of college selectivity on choice of academic science could reflect a positive effect of college selectivity on (1) aspirations, (2) preference for the educationally high level careers within science, or (3) both. Our immediate interest is in the second possibility. As argued earlier, this hypothesis specifically implies that at each level of aspiration, college selectivity should be negatively associated with the career-field choice.

Comparisons of students at the same level of aspirations can be accomplished in the following rather crude way. In the NORC subsample, two groups have relatively low aspirations as seniors. One group consists of students who choose non-academic science. The other consists of students who switched to one of the low level career fields outside science (Davis' "low performance" career fields). In these two groups having approximately the same (relatively low) level of aspirations, the hypothesis may be tested by examining the relation between college selectivity and the decision to remain in the career field which has a high educational level overall (science).

How low are the aspirations of students who choose non-academic science, relative to those who choose the low level career fields? One indication comes from a comparison of the average academic ability of students choosing various careers. Davis used a similar procedure to rate the "performance levels" of career fields. In Table 1, male seniors choosing academic and non-academic employment in science can be compared with those in "high performance" and "low performance" career fields, according to the proportions having very high academic ability (i.e., the Proportions recognized in the National Merit Scholarship competition). Academic science is definitely a very "high performance" career, far exceeding the standard existing in fields so rated by Davis. Non-academic science has an academic performance level well below this standard. Non-academic science (with five percent of its male choosers recognized in the Merit competition) cannot be unambiguously classified either as a high performance category (for which the overall proportion is eight percent), or as a low performance category (for which the overall proportion is two percent). In terms of performance level it is closer to engineering than to academic science, and engineering was classified as a low performance field. Non-academic science should be considered a relatively low performance career, compared to academic science and the high performance fields outside science.

The fact that non-academic science does have a somewhat higher performance level than Davis' "low performance" career fields means that a comparison of students choosing such careers will be biased against the hypothesis. Selective college students tend to have higher aspirations and for this reason alone would be expected to prefer non-academic science to the low level career fields outside science. Table 2 shows that, among students who choose science careers as freshmen and have relatively low aspirations as seniors, college selectivity is negatively, associated with choice of non-acadeM; science (C = – 0.09; Cav= – 0.13). The table also shows that this association holds at each grade level, indicating that it is not a "relative deprivation" effect.

TABLE 1

Academic Performance Levels of Various Careers

|Career Choice of Male College Seniors |Percent Who Had Been Merit Scholarship Finalists or |

| |Semi-Finalists |

|Academic Science |20 (566)1 |

|Non-Academic Science |5 (737)1 |

|Science, Total |10 (1734) |

|Engineering |3 (3644) |

|Davis’ "High Performance" Career Fields2 |8 (6221) |

|Davis’ "Low Performance" Career Fields3 |2 (14966) |

|N = 21187 |

|NA, Senior Career 500 |

|Total N 21687 |

1For convenience, the academic and non-academic science seniors reported here include only those who also had indicated a preference ror a science or engineering' career in their freshman year.

2 Includes physical science, biological science, social science, humanities and fine arts, medicine and law.

3 Includes engineering, business, secondary 'and primary education, and all other fields.

The negative effect of college selectivity on career-field choice is not large, but if aspirations could be more adequately controlled, a stronger effect possibly would appear. Note in Table 2 that grades are positively associated with choice of non-academic science (C = + 0.13; Cav = + 0.18). Students may (correctly) perceive non-academic science to be a somewhat higher level career than the average for all "low performance" fields outside science. This reinforces the suspicion that the results in Table 2 are biased against our hypothesis. If anything, the negative effect of college selectivity on career-field choice is stronger than indicated by the size of the relationship in Table 2, for reasons unrelated either to aspirations or to grades.

While, plausibly, these results are due to differential within-field preferences, proof would entail measurement of student attitudes toward particular careers within fields. Unfortunately, the necessary data are not available.

TABLE 2

Percent of Seniors with Low Aspirations* Who Choose Non-Academic

Science Careers, by College Selectivity and Grade Point Average

(College Men Who Choose a Science Career as Freshmen)

| |College Selectivity |

| |High |Medium |Low |

| |38 (253) |47 (660) |60 (212) |

|Grade Point Average | | | |

|High (≥ B +) . . . . . . . |44 (34) |63 (106) |58 (36) 57 |

|Medium (B, B –) . . . |40 (110) |48 (258) |(77) |

|Low (≤ C +) . . . . . . . |34 (109) |41 (296) |42 (99) |

|N= |1125 |

|Choosing Academic Science or a High-Performance Career Outside Science | |

|NA, Grade Point Average |752 |

|NA, Senior Career Field |4 |

|Total N |13 |

| |1894 |

* See text.

Effects of College Selectivity on Aspirations

The effect of college selectivity on aspirations cannot be accurately assessed in data on career-field choice, because when aspirations are controlled, the effect of college selectivity on career-field choice is nonzero. Since this effect on career-field choice is negative, the actual net effect on aspirations should not be as strongly negative as was suggested by Davis' study, and might even be positive.

In Table 3A, Davis' analysis of career-field choice for freshmen choosing science careers is repeated. He assessed the net effect of college selectivity by comparing the correlations of college selectivity and of grades with the dependent variable. Ability was not controlled, but it was found to be equally associated with both college selectivity and grades. Table 3B follows the same assumptions, but the dependent variable is modified so that it more closely reflects aspirations. Students who choose non-academic science careers have relatively low aspirations, so they were moved into the low category of the dependent variable.

Table 3A shows, as Davis indicated, that college selectivity is much less strongly associated with career field choice (C = 0.06; Cav = 0.08) than is grade point average (C = 0.24; Cav = 0..34). This indicates a negative net effect of college selectivity on career-field choice. In Table 3B, the positive direct effect of college selectivity is relatively greater (C = 0.20; C = 0.28 versus C = 0.30; C = 0.43). This indicates that the net effect of college selectivity on aspirations may in fact be somewhat negative, but that it is less strongly negative than the effect on career-field choice. Perhaps it would even be positive if a better measure of aspirations was used.

TABLE 3

Career-field Choice and Aspirations in the Senior Year, by College Selectivity and Grade Point Average (College Men Who Choose a Science Career as Freshmen)

A. Percent Choosing High Performance Career Fields (i.e., non-academic science classified as being in a high performance field)

| |College Selectivity |

|Grade Point Average |High |Medium |Low |

|High (≥ B +) . . . . . . . |88 (163) |86 (259) |78 (65) |

|Medium (B, B –) . . . |71 (229) |65 (386) |71(111) |

|Low (≤ C +) . . . . . . . |66 (162) |56 (394) |48(108) |

B. Percent With High Aspirations (i.e., non-academic science classified as a low performance career)

| |College Selectivity |

|Grade Point Average |High |Medium |Low |

|High (≥ B +) . . . . . . . |79 (163) |59 (259) |45 (65) |

|Medium (B, B –) . . . |52 (229) |33 (386) |31(111) |

|Low (≤ C +) . . . . . . . |33 (162) |25 (394) |9 (108) |

|N= |1877 |

|NA, Grade Point Average |4 |

|NA, Senior Career Field |13 |

|Total N |1894 |

A Digression on Student Self-Assessment of Ability

One way to pursue the analysis is to look for additional indications that a positive "environmental press" effect of college selectivity on aspirations, which offsets the negative effect via grades, does exist u the NORC sample, as well as in the ACE sample. A focus on intervening variables is useful. Drew and Astin suggest that normative reference group theory may be needed to account for environmental press (Drew and Astin, 1972:1163). They would agree with Davis that students' assessments of their own ability are not involved. Both studies found that self-assessments are related to grades much more strongly than to college selectivity (Drew and Astin, 1972:1156-1157; Davis, 1966:26).[9] Both studies also found that when self-assessments are controlled, the effect of grades on the dependent variable is reduced significantly (Drew and Astin, 1972:1159-1160; Davis, 1966:23, 28).[10]

The possible relevance of self-assessments of ability as an intervening variable has not been excluded, however. Consider two types of self-assessment. Relative self-assessment refers to the way individuals assess their ability relative to others. They may see themselves as relatively bright or relatively dull, and correspondingly feel encouraged or discouraged. Absolute self-assessment would refer to the way individuals assess their ability to meet objective requirements. They may see themselves as able to become accountants, unable to become doctors. Both previous studies focused exclusively on relative self-assessment. Yet presumably, career decisions are affected most directly by absolute self-assessments. There is no evidence that college selectivity has a negative net effect on absolute self-assessments.

TABLE 4

Percent with High Absolute Self-assessments of Ability as Seniors, by College Selectivity and Grade Point Average

(College Men Who Choose a Science Career as Freshmen, but transfer to a Career Outside Science and Engineering by the Senior Year)

| |College Selectivity |

| | |

|Grade Point Average |High |Medium |Low |

|High (≥ B +) . . . . . . . |80(61) |74 (81) |53 (17) |

|Medium (B, B –) . . . |67 (98) |61(166) |63 (43) |

|Low (≤ C +) . . . . . . . |65(77) |55(203) |41 (58) |

|N= |794 | | |

|NA, Grade Point Average |4 | | |

|NA, Senior Career Field |13 | | |

|Science or Engineering |1083 | | |

|Total N |1894 | | |

College grades may affect absolute self-assessments, and aspirations, because of their effect on relative self-assessments. But college selectivity also may directly affect absolute self-assessments, to some degree offsetting the negative effect via grades and relative self-assessment. Contagion or labeling processes could give rise to this effect, by encouraging higher career success expectations in the more selective colleges. There is no reason not to think of this as a normative reference group effect, if self-assessments are influenced by group norms.

Some evidence on absolute self-assessments is available. Respondents were asked whether they felt able to become an engineer. Engineers often and increasingly do work like that done by non-academic scientists. Responses to the question probably reflect absolute self-assessments of ability in the scientific area.[11] The responses of students not in science or engineering in the senior year are probably most valid, since such students are relatively less likely to rationalize about their abilities. Table 4 shows that these responses are as strongly related to college selectivity (C = 0.13; C = 0.18) as they are to grades (C = 0.14; C" = 0.20). College selectivity evidently has no substantial net effect on absolute self-assessments, despite its previously reported negative effect on relative self-assessment. Since our measure cannot be applied to all science students, we cannot introduce it as a control in Table 3B. The interpretation remains tentative, to be investigated further in future studies.

Discussion and Conclusions

The effect of college selectivity on career decision depends upon which aspect of career decision is being considered. When level of aspiration is considered, the net effect is near zero; a negative effect via grades is largely offset by a residual positive effect. When career-field choice is considered, the net effect is negative; in addition to the effect via aspirations, there is a direct negative effect on career-field choice. These statements are consistent with the results of earlier studies by Davis and by Drew and Astin. In this paper it was shown that, for the case of students in science as freshmen, college selectivity has a negative effect on career-field choice in the senior year, after aspirations (and grades) have been controlled.

An effect of college selectivity on within-field preferences was suggested as a plausible interpretation for the negative effect of college selectivity on career-field choice for students in science as freshmen. This idea could be pursued in two directions. First, the interpretation should be tested directly with evidence on attitudes toward specific careers within science. Second, implications for career choices in fields other than science should be explored. What career field boundaries are important in influencing career choice? The socially relevant boundaries may not always agree with conventional labels. For example, it may be that engineering is in effect part of a science field, at least in some colleges. Consequences for career choice would depend upon the internal structure of each field. Some career fields, such as law, may encompass considerably less internal variation in educational levels than exists in science. College selectivity would have no effect on choice of sub-fields in law, and we might expect the net effect of college selectivity on choice of law to be near zero. As a matter of fact, Davis (1966:23, see also the quotation above, p. 312) did find this to be true, in his sample of college graduates. In his analysis, this fact appeared to be an anomaly, but it is now a predictable finding on the basis of the analysis presented here.

Reference group interpretations for effects of college selectivity of course are provisional until tested empirically. In the sociological literature, reference group interpretations frequent!" are applied ex post facto with no direct evidence that individuals make particular reference group selections, but only that they behave as if they do. Caution is warranted in such cases; a cavalier attitude is not justified by experience. Everyone agrees that college classmates are reference groups. But particularly normative reference group theory is quite malleable, and can be made to fit a variety of findings. Davis acknowledged that colleges may be normative reference groups, but then he suggested that normative reference groups influence only career preferences, not (relative) self-assessments, and therefore not aspirations. Drew and Astin's data led them to suggest that colleges as normative reference groups may indeed influence aspirations, but they neglected to say how. Data analyzed here suggest that they may do so in part because colleges as normative reference groups influence absolute self-assessments. Careful measurement of and control for theoretically predicted intervening variables should be carried out before definite conclusions are drawn.

A relative deprivation effect of college selectivity on self-assessments and aspirations has been found in two large-scale studies. However, these relative deprivation effects must be seen in the context of other effects. These include a positive effect on absolute self-assessments (which largely offsets the negative relative deprivation effect via relative self-assessments) and also a positive effect on aspirations (which largely offsets the negative relative deprivation effect). These other effects do not disprove the theory of relative deprivation but they do mean that relative deprivation is not decisive in the determination either of self-assessment of academic ability, or of aspirations.

At a minimum, this paper has shown that future studies of the effects of college selectivity on career choice must be rather complex. They must measure career field, academic aspirations, both absolute and relative self-assessments of ability, plus attitudes toward specific careers. All these variable should be measured through time. There is also a need to see how academic selectivity affects career choice at other educational levels, including primary, secondary, and graduate.

Policy implications have not been far from the minds of previous researchers on this topic. Davis cautioned both students and educational administrators against always favoring the most selective academic programs (but see Gagnon, 1969, who emphasizes positive consequences for society of relative deprivation in college). Drew and Astin felt that their data do not justify this warning, when the concern is with effects on aspirations. Our own analysis tends to support Drew and Astin, but adds a new complication. Students who attend the more selective schools may find themselves more likely to move into career fields in which the average educational level is relative low, such as business, education, and many professional fields. The broader consequence of this should be assessed in light of the fact that students in selective colleges tend to select the higher level careers within each field. The higher aspirations of selective college students could favor their domination of top positions in fields at many educational levels.

References

Astin, A.

1969 "Comment on a student's dilemma: big fish - little pond or little fish - big pond." Journal of Counseling Psychology 16 (1): 20-23.

Astin, A., and R. J. Panos

1969 The Educational and Vocational Development of College Students. Washington: American Council on Education.

Daviapfti A.

1965 Undergraduate Career Decisions: Correlates of Occupational Choice. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

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Drew, D. E., and A. Astin

1972 "Undergraduate aspirations: a test' of several theories". American Journal of Sociology 77: 1151-1164.

Feldman, K. A., and T. M. Newcomb

1969 The Impact of College on Students, v.1 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass).

Gagnon, J. H.

1969 "The uses of failure." Change in Higher Education (May-June): 27-31.

Reitz, J. G.

1972 Choice of Science Careers among College Men: An Analysis of Selected Problem Columbia University Ph.D. Dissertation, available from National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia.

Reitz, J. G.

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Thistlethwaite, D. L., and N. Wheeler

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Werts, C. E. and D. J. Watley

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* This research was supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, Manpower Administration. The author wishes to thank Raymond Breton, Jonathan R. Cole, Stephen Cole, James A. Davis, Jos. Lennards, and John H. Simpson for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. The National Opinion Research Center generously granted permission to use data from their files.

[1] "College selectivity" refers to the academic ability of students attending an institution, and not necessarily to its admissions policy. The interest in effects of college selectivity is motivated primarily by theoretical considerations, not by any prospect of explaining large proportions of variance in career decisions. Everyone agrees that, in terms of explained variance, all contextual variables are probably less important than many individual characteristics (such as sex, socioeconomic background, race, and academic ability).

[2] To save space, the term "career-field choice" will be used to refer to the overall educational level of the career field in which a specific chosen career is located.

[3] Women were excluded because the hypotheses assume a uniform and rather high degree of commitment to career success goals, and women are less committed to such goals than men. College women in 1961 tended to choose primary and secondary education careers regardless of their personal characteristics (Davis, 1966:22).

[4] In the Drew-Astin linear regression analysis, sex is introduced as a control variable, and effects for men and women are averaged. Davis found his results on career choice to hold only among men.

[5] Werts and Watley's (1969) study concluded that the effect of college selectivity on educational aspirations is negative. However, a simultaneously published critique by Astin (1969) indicated several reasons why their analysis must be considered inconclusive. Detailed discussion of problems in the Werts-Watley analysis would take us too far afield here.

[6] 'Three objections were mentioned. (1) Drew and Astin (1972) object to Davis' measure of college selectivity, based on the average scores of entering freshmen on scholastic aptitude tests. All students did not take the test, and some colleges were classified using supplementary information. Yet Davis' measure of college selectivity is strongly associated with his measure of ability (the gamma coefficient is approximately +0.6 for both men and women). (2) Drew and Astin object to Davis' measure of academic ability – status as finalist or semi-finalist in the National Merit Scholarship competition. This is a reasonably valid and reliable measure, but it identifies only a small fraction of students (roughly 4 percent) as highly able. Hence it cannot be used as a control variable in computing partial correlations between college selectivity and career choice. However, since Davis found that ability was equally associated* with both college selectivity and grades, any difference in the relations of these variables to career choice would have to be attributed to factors other than ability (as Davis argued). And college selectivity was much less strongly related to career field performance level than were gradfflPS) Drew and Astin object that Davis did not control for a number of student "input" variables. This suggests that, in Davis' analysis, some input variables may have suppressed the effects of college selectivity. However, input variables which suppress these effects would have to be negatively associated with college selectivity, as well as positively associated with the dependent variable (or vice versa). No such "suppressor" variables are suggested by Drew and Astin.

[7] See above, footnotes 3 and 4.

[8] Another reason is practical rather than methodological. This study is part of a larger study of career choice of science (Reitz, 1972; 1973). Funds for expensive computer analysis of the entire NORC data set were not available.

[9] Davis measured self-assessment with a questionnaire item asking students about their "flair for coursework" in various academic subjects. Drew and Astin used an item asking students to compare their own academic ability with that of "the average student" of the same age. The latter measure is perhaps best, because it does not even implicitly suggest to students that they compare themselves with classmates.

[10] The fact that grades are related to aspirations even after self-assessments are controlled means that an additional interpretation is needed. One possibility is that students who lose interest in academic study get lower grades, and this loss of interest in itself affects career decisions. A relation between grades and interest in academic study could run in either direction; grades could still be the independent variable.

[11] Students were asked whether they agreed that "I don't have the ability to do this kind of work" (engineering). Failure to agree is taken to reflect relatively high absolute self-assessments of ability.

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