Working Title: Does College still Serve as the Transition Toward Adulthood?
Topic
I plan to research the question of whether college is still the transitioning factor toward adulthood for young adults. It was the way of passage into maturity and I want to see whether this road still leads to the same destination as it once did.
Research Question
With student loans and debts on the rise, college is not as affordable as it once was, and may also not be as rewarding. With respect to the sacrifices being made, is college still the rite of passage toward adulthood?
Theoretical Frame
The 21st century has given rise to the highest percentage of college enrollment in degree-granting institutions. Between 1990 and 2000, there was an 11 percent increase in enrollment. Between the years of 2000 and 2010, enrollment increased even further by 37 percent, from 15.3 million to 21 million students. There is no doubt in the fact that college enrollment is on the rise, but is it worth the costs in terms of student loans when balancing the reward of maturity? The current economy has made it difficult for graduating students to settle down comfortably. College once prepared students for a job they could succeed in, which would allow them enough financial support to start a family and settle down. A college education was once the equivalence of a tribal ritual that declared an individual as an adult. This current day ritual has lost its value because it no longer leads a student to maturity. With the privatization of higher education, the price of a college education has become exceedingly too high. College students have resorted to student loans to pay through school. After graduation, those student loans have held graduates back, keeping them from starting their adult life of having a stable job, settling down, etc. This economic immaturity has held graduates back from an adult life. Their dependence on material goods has also played a key role in their maturity development. Young adults have the understanding that they are in need of cars, technology, etc. This "need" serves as a distraction from their way into become adults, through the traditional way.
Research and Plan
The concept of psychological maturity is well defined by Ellen Greenberger and Aage B. Sorensen in Toward a Concept of Psychosocial Maturity where maturity is a comprehensive educational goal. Here, current maturity of college students is rated on a scale that identifies its level of strength. This is in relation to the Argis Maturity Theory where the points of maturity are identified and college students can be judged according to these points.
Tamara Draut, author of Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30- Somethings can't get Ahead, writes about current day young adults and their delay in transitioning toward adulthood. I am interested to see what these delays consist of.
I am also interested in researching into Emerging Adulthood by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett who writes about the inability for young adults to move on due to the economic stresses them possess due to high student loans. He also speaks of the "emerging adulthood" as being the time for exploration and understanding oneself. This causes for the delay in adulthood because of this time period used to understand the individual as opposed to settle down and live the typical adult life.
The mentioned change in ritual ceremonies is further described by Arnold Van Gennep in “The Rites of Passage”, where he explores today’s importance of college in the coming of maturity. The importance of college did not always resemble the coming of adulthood. It was seen as overachieving effort in the 60’s, which caused much of the young adult population to reject college. People were able to find a job and buy a house without a college degree. Unlike today, college was not a necessity, but an extra to their already satisfying lives.
On the topic of the economic struggles, Barbara Ehrenreich describes in “Fear of Falling” how the middle class has become somewhat of a product of the 21st century due to corporate powers. The middle class is constantly in the “fear of falling” from its place in society. College education becomes a means of stabilizing their position by providing them with somewhat of a safety net. Though the student debt from college puts the middle class in an even worse positing and give them an even stronger fear of losing their place in society. This incapability of progressing further in society due to the struggles of college debt if the reason for college no longer being the road to adulthood.
Bibliography
Arnett, Jeffery Jensen. Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens
Through the Twentie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print
Draut, Tamara. Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30- Somethings can't get Ahead.
New York: Anchor Books, 2005. Print.
Ehreinich, Barbara. Fear of Falling, The Inner Life of the Middle Class. Pantheon Books. 1989
“Fast Facts.” Institute of Education Science, 2012. Web. 25 Mar. 2013
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98
Gennep, Van Arnold. The Rites of Passage. University of Chicago Press. 1961
Greenberger, Ellen, Aage B. Sorensen, and Baltimore, MD. Center for the Study of Social
Organization of Schools. Johns Hopkins Univ. Toward A Concept Of Psychosocial
Maturity. n.p.: 1971. ERIC. Web. 26 Feb. 2013.
Greenberg, Ellen, and Baltimore, MD. Center for the Study of Social organization of Schools.
Johns Hopkins Univ. Psychological Maturity Or Social Desirability?. n.p.:1972. ERIC.
Web. 26 Feb. 2013
“The Swinging 60’s.” Slideshare, 2013. Web. 1 Mar. 2013.
http://www.slideshare.net/leeeea/60s-presentation-for-college
This is a good summary of what I told you in class, but it does not connect with the readings you cite... :-)
ReplyDeleteI suggested you look at Van Gennep not because he discusses anything to do with college (I doubt he does) but because he coined the term "rite of passage" to talk about the ways cultures construct "coming of age" rituals. So he'd give you a way of asking if college is still serving that function in our society. Certainly the two anthropologists who have most famously studied college students -- Rebekah Nathan and Michael Moffatt -- thought that college was a rite of passage and they both use that language. Nathan writes: “Cross-culturally, rites of passage have universal characteristics marked by severance from one’s normal status, entrance into a ‘liminal’ state where normal rules of society are lifted, and finally reintegration into society within a new status. This jibes well with the nature of the undergraduate college experience” (Nathan 146). (I have excerpts from her book and Moffatt's in the "Supplementary Readings" folder under "Resources" on Sakai, but those selections are probably not the most useful for you, unfortunately, so you might look at them directly if you want to pursue this point).
More in another comment -- there is a word limit.
I'm intrigued by the Ellen Greenberg references, which suggest a functional way of defining "adulthood." However, I doubt you have looked at these pieces since they seem impossible to get through the libraries or ERIC. Also, they are from the 1970s, so they really seem like "ancient" history.
ReplyDeleteI suggest you look at some of the more recent work on the delay in transition to adulthood among college-age people. I mentioned "Strapped" to you already, and you found it at the Rutgers libraries. Here are some other interesting works:
Lost in Transition
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Transition-Dark-Emerging-Adulthood/dp/019982802
Not Quite Adults
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Quite-Adults-20-Somethings-Adulthood/dp/0553807404
Emerging Adulthood
http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Adulthood-Winding-through-Twenties/dp/0195309375
These suggest together that there are both upsides and downsides to the longer period that college-age people stay in a pre-adult limbo: from a societal perspective, it does make it harder to reproduce adults; but it also leads to more creative ideas for ways of living. In any case, any of these books would give you more relevant information about the delays that young people are experiencing in the transition to adulthood, suggesting that college is becoming less of a "rite of passage."
I think you should add more information about how you are going to come up with your theory. I really like your topic but I think it's going to be difficult to find factual information about this topic. Maybe you can use some different sources that are not as old as Mr. Goeller suggests above my comment. So are you saying that since college is getting so expensive that it is considered a way into adulthood since many students are paying for it themselves? Maybe make your theory more clear.
ReplyDelete