Forming Identities in College: A Sociological Approach

Kaufman, Peter Iver; Feldman, Kenneth A.

doi:10.1023/b:rihe.0000032325.56126.29

Cited by 87 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Stanford, a young elite institution at 130 years old, couples a stellar international standing with a reputation for quirkiness and innovation. The two universities also differ by more quantifiable characteristics in their subenvironments, or the formal and informal organizational features of each campus (Kaufman and Feldman 2004). Some organizational differences that most directly influence career formation include the number of undergraduates majoring in humanities, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and social science disciplines on each campus; the types of policies encouraging student entrepreneurism; the assortment of preprofessional student organizations; and how career advising is delivered.…”

Section: Case Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies suggest that college campuses should be viewed as generative systems of meaning and action that have the power to transform students' orientations in the world (Kaufman and Feldman 2004)-not just reflect and reproduce students' earlier dispositions. Whether transforming students' overall sense of self and merit (Khan 2011); their academic, extracurricular, and social activities (Grigsby 2009;Stuber 2012); their political styles of engagement (Binder and Wood 2013;Dodson 2014); or their racial identities (Willie 2003), educational settings may substantially change students' ideas, emotions, and practices as they move through college.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Career Funneling

2015

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Elite universities are credited as launch points for the widest variety of meaningful careers. Yet, year after year at the most selective universities, nearly half the graduating seniors head to a surprisingly narrow band of professional options. Over the past few decades, this has largely been into the finance and consulting sectors, but increasingly it also includes high-tech firms. This study uses a cultural-organizational lens to show how student cultures and campus structures steer large portions of anxious and uncertain students into high-wealth, high-status occupational sectors. Interviewing 56 students and recent alumni at Harvard and Stanford Universities, we found that the majority of our respondents experienced confusion about career paths when first arriving at college but quickly learned what were considered to be the most prestigious options. On-campus corporate recruitment for finance, consulting, and high-tech jobs functioned as a significant driver of student perceptions of status; career prestige systems built up among peers exacerbated the funneling effect into these jobs. From these processes, students learned to draw boundaries between ''high-status'' and ''ordinary'' jobs. Our findings demonstrate how status processes on college campuses are central in generating preferences for the uppermost positions in the occupational structure and that elite campus environments have a large, independent role in the production and reproduction of social inequality.

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Section: Case Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Career Funneling

2015

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“…Baxter and Britton, 2001;Kaufman and Feldman, 2004). A parallel experience can be found among churchgoing Christian students, many of whom emphasise social challenges associated with the sexual promiscuity and heavy alcohol consumption among their peers .…”

Section: Classed Aspirations and Choice Of Universitymentioning

confidence: 92%

Students’ Constructions of a Christian Future: Faith, Class and Aspiration in University Contexts

Guest

Aune

2017

Sociological Research Online

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Economic uncertainties have unsettled the status of higher education as an assured means to social mobility, raising questions of how students orient themselves to life after graduation. In this context, how does religion (a neglected aspect of student identity) shape students' attitudes and plans? This article examines the future aspirations of Christian students, theorising Christian identity as an intersubjective resource through which 'alternative' futures are imagined, a resource variously framed by classed assumptions about propriety. It analyses data from 75 interviews with undergraduates at five English universities, and explores emerging aspirational paradigms structured around hetero-normative domesticity, the formation of Christian counter-narratives to contemporary capitalism and positive submission to God.

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“…Previous research on professional learning in higher education shows that students expect that there is a certain value associated with their studies culminating in their entering a professional field. This occurs via studies related to a specific discipline, or via their preparation to enter any professional field through a focus on more generic professional skills (Kaufman & Feldman, 2004, Abrandt Dahlgren et al, 2007. In this sense, the manner in which students approach their studies -their engagement with the studies -may be related to the way in which they appreciate their progression as novice professionals through their development of professional identities The quality of their preparation for professional work depends on the essential ways in which they understand the relations between their own academic learning and the way in which they perceive their future professional work Reid & Solomonides, 2007;Abrandt Dahlgren et al, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning for professional life: Student teachers' and graduated teachers' views of learning, responsibility and collaboration

Dahlgren

Chiriac

2009

Teaching and Teacher Education

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The focus of this study is on how final semester students and newly graduated teachers experience the formal objectives of teacher education, with a particular view of the concepts of learning, responsibility and collaboration. The ways of experiencing these concepts varied from conceptions in which only one dimension is discerned from in the student teachers group to conceptions in which several dimensions of the phenomena are discerned in the graduate teachers group.

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Forming Identities in College: A Sociological Approach

Cited by 87 publications

References 42 publications

Career Funneling

Career Funneling

Students’ Constructions of a Christian Future: Faith, Class and Aspiration in University Contexts

Learning for professional life: Student teachers' and graduated teachers' views of learning, responsibility and collaboration

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