Keywords

Education, college, degree, higher education, social mobility, status attainment, millennials, importance, value

Abstract

For more than a half a century the role of education and its influence on social mobility and status attainment has been a subject of research. Further more, education has been shown to be an important contributor for success over the life course. Much of the research surrounding status attainment and higher education has dealt with the Baby Boomer cohort. The purpose of the study is to examine education from a perspective that is less talked about to this point. This study uses data gathered by the Pew Research Center and examines a specific age group, current 18-30 year olds (Millennials), to gather a better understanding of their attitudes towards the value of higher education within the current era of the economy, education, and job opportunity. According to the analysis, females report higher odds of feeling that a college degree is important to success later in life. Equally important, results indicate that Blacks have greater odds of perceiving education to be important for success in life. Results also demonstrated that in this particular study, other factors such as income and employment status did not significantly affect respondent's perceptions on the importance of education.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2014

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Gay, David

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Sociology

Degree Program

Applied Sociology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0005263

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0005263

Language

English

Release Date

May 2014

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences; Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic

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Included in

Sociology Commons

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