Visual

    I chose this image because it depicts how the road to adulthood has been elongated. There have been delays in common life events that used to signify adulthood. Such events are buying a home, marriage, starting a family, etc. There has also been dependence of parents to assist in paying off college debt. With the cost of higher education on the rise, young adults are not able to fully pay off their debt on their own, so they look toward their family for assistance. This cartoon shows just that. Young adults borrow an average of $38,000 from their parents to pay off college debt and for living expenses. Part of these living expenses may include taking care of a child, but not family. Since marriage is so uncommon for young adults just getting out of college, 40% of mothers become unmarried mothers. Marriage becomes too expensive, which is why it is delayed until about the age of 26. All of these factors create a delay in the emergence of adulthood.

Literature Review 5

    David Elkind, professor in Tufts University, is well known for his groundbreaking works on the dangers of "pushing down" during early childhood education. He states that teachers and parents could disrupt the education of children and distort their development of learning. He is well connected with the decline of social markers. His book, All Grown Up and No Place to Go, is about the pressures that society places on teenagers encouraging them to grow up into early adulthood. This leads to self disruptive behavior that has set the pattern of rushing into adulthood for the current day generation.
    On the subject of teenagers being pushed into the adult culture, Elkind states, With so many sexually active adolescents, with so many young people experimenting with alcohol and other drugs, the perception of teenage immaturity had to be abandoned” (Elkind 6). During the sexual revolution, the idea of what was acceptable and what wasn't changed drastically. Teenagers began to experiment with drugs and alcohol because it became the adult thing to do. Aside from that, sexual experimentation also became acceptable and even encouraged by the media. Teenagers slowly began to be pushed into the adult life, leaving their innocence behind. They were introduced to sex-education courses in high school which made them more aware of their nature. "Thanks in large part to television, films, magazines, and music lyrics, even young children are witness to brutality, violence, an sexuality on a scale that would have been unimaginable five or six decades ago"(Elkind 8). He goes on to say that "By the time they are adolescents, therefore, most contemporary teenagers have already been exposed to more violent and seamier sides of life than their parents and grandparents had seen or heard of in a lifetime" (Elkind 8). This concept of exposure being the utmost amount of information compared to those older (parents and grandparents) is generally very interesting. I like the idea that the youth will continuously know more and probably try more than the older generations have. This idea kicked off the pattern of ongoing experimentation that we see today. The exposure of adult content was geared toward teenagers, specifically though "soaps" and "soft porn". This rushed teenagers into young adulthood that normally deserved more time for transitioning. He describes this concept of teenagers being pushed into young adulthood and ripped away of their innocence.
This material, although dealing with teenagers as opposed to college students, connects to my research because it described the root of this pattern of society's influence on labels of age groups. Society played a key role with the teenagers after the 1960's. It forced them into young adulthood, but then current day society had been delaying the transition into adulthood from this state of young adulthood. These young adults are stuck in somewhat of a limbo between the two stages of maturity.

Elkind, David. All Grown Up and No Place to Go. Massachusetts. Addison-Wesley, 1998.
        Print.

Literature Review 4

    Tamara Draut is the director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, which is a public policy center in New York City. Her research primarily focuses on household debt in America. She has been covered by newspapers such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal as well as appearing on the Today Show, ABC World News Tonight, CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight and Fox News.  
    Her first book, Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30- Somethings can't get Ahead provides a look into the obstacles that young adults face after college graduation. She describes how a college degree is now the equivalence of a high school diploma and the reasons for it. Draut states that "piling up debt has become a new rite of passage into adulthood" (91). She goes into further detail of this concept by describing the jaw-dropping credit card debt accumulated in early adulthood. Quoting the Washington Post,  she says "The growth in credit card debt is about instant gratification and the inability to live within one's means" (Draut 92). Due to the popular and expensive charges such as car repair, travel, and the necessities for moving out, credit card debt has been the go-to "trust fund" for the past couple of generations. This material strengthens my research question because it explains the mentality of young adults. They pay with credit cards for items they are unable to pay off, not for a couple of months, and wind up collecting debt. This debt is what does't allow them to move ahead in life.
    As stated before, this attitude of piling up on debt through credit cards is one of the reasons why there is a delay in adulthood. She goes on to say, "Although debt-for-diploma is preferable to no diploma at all, heavy doses of student loans are causing more grads to report serious side effects" (Draut 98). These "side effects" include the delay of marriage (14% of students reported in 2002 compared to 7% in 1991), the delay of having children (20% as opposed to 12% is 1991), and buying a home (40% as opposed to 25% in 1991), all of which typically define the emergence into adulthood (Draut 98). Her concept is that this delay is due to student loan debt, which has dramatically risen in the 1990's.  This is due to Congress's establishment of a federal loan program that was open to all students, regardless of their household income. This was made to support the middle class, where families were unable to pay increasing college costs. In the long run, this led the middle class into serious debt. This information directly supports my research because it shows the percentage changes in graduates waiting until they move on with their lives to proceed to the typical "adult" steps. Buying a house, getting married and settling down is the epitome of emerging adulthood, or at least the traditional idea of adulthood. This describes the delays young adults and in and gives a direct reason why they are there.

Draut, Tamara. Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30- Somethings can't get Ahead. 
          New York: Anchor Books, 2005. Print.

Literature Review 3

 
     Authors Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum have written about the quality of college education in  "Academically Adrift". Together, they tackle the problems of current-day college students' struggles when dealing with the transition into adulthood. Change is a magazine that deals with contemporary issues with higher education. Its writing is geared toward students and faculty members who are both educated and willing to learn about societies' patterns and problems in higher education.
     This reading does a good job of depicting the troubles of college graduates and the reasons for them. It describes a study performed on college students who finished college "on time", which means within the four year time span, and searches to find what those students did with their lives two years after graduation. The shocking statistics show how graduating from college does not necessarily place a person in a guaranteed successful lifestyle. The study used the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) which measures the academic growth of a students through their skill levels in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing. Students who performed in the top quintile of the CLA had more successful lives after two years of graduation. "Graduates who were highly academically engaged and demonstrated growth on the CLA task were slightly less likely to be unemployed than those who exhibited low levels of academic engagement/growth" (10). We are taught that the better we perform in school, the more successful we will be in our future. The CLA seems to support this statement. The bottom quintile had three times the chance of unemployment possibility when compared to the top quintile. College seniors of 2009 had an average of $24,000 in student-loan debt, which supports the thought brought up by the authors; "Debt has thus become a part of the American higher education land-scape" (10). Not surprisingly enough, 52% of students from highly educated families took out loans, compared to 75% from not highly educated families. The statistics show that "(students at the upper quintile of the CLA)..at the end of college faced much smoother transitions to adulthood" (14). This shows that rigorous college education should be enforced and raised at a higher standard to expect graduating college students to have successful lives. It will give them the right preparation for a successful future.
   This reading helps me explore my research question by providing me statistics that show how unprepared students are when they are released into the real world. The study on that group of students showed the importance of the CLA and the factor it plays in career development. It stated that about 2/3 of college graduates had borrowed money to pay for college, averaging a debt of $27,200. This debt, along with unsatisfactory education, is holding graduates back from entering adulthood.


Roksa, Josipa & Arum, Richard. "Life After College: The Challenging Transitions of the
          Academically Adrift Cohurt." Change. 2012: 8-14. Print.

Literature Review 2

 
   "Lost in Transition" by Christian Smith is another book I will use to further develop my thesis on college no longer being the rite of passage toward maturity. Smith is a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame where his research focuses on adolescence and emerging adulthood. He received his MA and PhD from Harvard University. This recently written book captures the current struggles of college graduates and how they fit into Smith's five major problems that young people undergo; confused moral reasoning, consumerism, intoxication, sexual liberalism, and disengagement from civic and political thought. Smith investigates the views of young adults through numerous qualitative interviews. Although he concentrates on the idea of soaking up their freedom while they're young, he also discusses their struggle in finding a meaningful place in the world.
     He has discovered through his intensive interviewing that struggles of emerging adulthood does not root from the current age period or from any of their moral failures, but from what their society supplies them with, or fails to supply them with, then it comes to resources needed for adulthood. Smith explains the concept of increased consumerism not being the fault of current emerging adults because they are simply following the teachings of society. He said, "Emerging adults have simply been good learners and now are eager to enjoy the benefits of their material abundance and consumer choice" (108). This excessive consumerism is due to the mainstream American culture.
    To further defend the current pace of young adults, Smith goes on to say how positive the effects of college education are on students. "Higher education serves a crucial common good in fostering breadth, depth, complexity, and richness in all social, cultural, political, and economic life" (Smith 101). He also goes on to say "What is ultimately the most important question about college education, is therefore, not what students can 'do with it,' in immediate and practical terms, but rather what college education does to its students deeply and broadly" (Smith 101). In this concept, he goes on to explain that college education expands people's horizons and helps them think about the big questions that face them. Rather than using a college education as a product or service for the future, he emphasis attention on how that education affects the individual's understanding. In connection to my thesis, I believe that this is the reason why there is a delay in the emergence of adulthood. Students are encouraged to get as much knowledge as they can. This idea of experimenting and broadening knowledge takes time to accomplish. This is the time that used to be used for settling down and starting a family. Now, it is used for self discovery and personal enhancement.
   

Smith, Christian. Lost in Transition.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Literature Review 1

    A literature piece that will give me further insight into my topic of college no longer being the rite of passage toward maturity is "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties" by Jeffry Jensen Arnett. Jeffry Jensen Arnett has a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His primary field of study is the age of emerging adulthood, where he concentrates on a wide array of topics such as ethnicity. He also studied emerging adulthood in Denmark as a Fullbright Scholar in 2005. His research on emerging adulthood gives him the right credibility for the use of my research paper.
    I chose this book because Arnett writes about the lives of young adults and how their transition into adulthood has dramatically changed when comparing its status now to how it used to me. He has given a name to this change, which is emerging adulthood, another stage in itself. This is when young adults delay starting a family and settling down due to "self-focused exploration" (Arnett 8). This is the age of independence and separation from the dependence of family. This concept is now delayed through one specific way. Arnett writes how this is one of the reasons why this stage has developed between adolescence and adulthood. Marriage used to be the determining factor of whether an individual has entered adulthood or not, but in today's time, that understanding has changed. "It is meaningful in in other important ways, of course, but its status as a marker of adult status has passed (Arnett 208). This is due to the reason that marriage is no longer a strong dramatic transaction like it used to be. Divorce rate has risen to 50% in America, which explains how it is taken less seriously. As said by Chalantra, a 20 year old woman, "When I decided to get divorced, I made that decision on my own, and I feel like that makes you an adult" (Arnett 211). She went on to say that balancing out the pros and cons and making the decision of whether to stay or leave is the new meaning of adulthood. The concept very accurately defines current day adulthood. This idea of dropping out of a committed relationship due to understanding of oneself shows the new adulthood. It is the ability to make life changing decisions according to personal likes and dislikes. Adulthood is now knowing who you are and what you prefer. Since fully understanding yourself takes so much time, adulthood, in that sense, is obviously delayed.

Arnett, Jeffery Jensen. Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens 
          Through the Twentie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print

Research Proposal

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