Gender-Related Trends in Educational Expectations

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

SES-0137050 John Reynolds Florida State University The past thirty years have witnessed considerable change in the gender norms surrounding men's and especially women's work and family roles. More women work full-time than ever before, and even in the most traditional families, two biological parents with young children, women are more likely than not to work for pay. On many work-related dimensions women still lag behind men, including lower median earnings, slimmer chances of being promoted, and a higher average share of household duties. In the area of education, however, women have surpassed men at many levels. Girls today are more likely than boys to plan to attend college, to graduate from high school, to attend college, and to complete a college degree. These trends suggest that the basic processes underlying educational attainment have shifted within recent decades. This research examines changes in girls' and boys' college expectations from 1972 to 1997 in an attempt to identify the most important forces behind women's advances in higher education. College expectations are students' subjective assessments of the odds of completing a college degree in the future, and they have been shown to be an important cognitive link between family background, school performance, and eventual educational achievements. In addition, college expectations among high school girls have risen faster than boys since the 1970s, and girls today are significantly more likely to expect to complete a college degree or plan to attend graduate or professional school. The proposed research hypothesizes the faster rise in college expectations among girls is due to changes in, and gender-specific effects of, parents' achievements, family structure, and local job opportunities. The data come from four national longitudinal surveys of pre-college age youth: the 1972 National Longitudinal Survey, the 1980 High School and Beyond Survey, the 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study, and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Probit models for each survey estimate the effects of parents' achievements, family structure, and local job opportunities on the probability that girls and boys expect to complete a college degree. Characteristics of parents, families, and local job markets may help explain the gender-related trends in college expectations if the factors that have a more positive effect on girls' expectations become more positive over time (e.g., mothers' educational attainments), or if the effects of these characteristics become more positive for girls over time than for boys (e.g., job opportunities). The findings will suggest how changes in gender norms are impacting a major institution in society, higher education, and they will provide a much-needed update to our understanding of gender differences in the process of educational attainment. The study will also contribute to the current debate over whether girls or boys are more likely to underachieve relative to their talents, a debate that has relevance for educational policy at the secondary and post-secondary levels.