From college community to career path

"When we write our college admissions essays, we often talk about wanting to change the world, which suggests a whole array of career paths," says Ph.D. candidate in sociology and education Joyce Kim. "But I wondered how it is that students end up getting funneled into these very specific careers." That question informs Kim's current research, which examines the college-to-career transition, with a focus on how race and class affect students' decision-making.

When she first applied to Penn's doctoral program, her plan was to study cross-racial student activism on college campuses-an interest that stemmed from her involvement with student minority coalitions when she was in college-but her earlier questions about career choices kept bubbling up. Ultimately, those questions set her on her current path. Her dissertation, which she is just beginning, will examine the different ways inequality can factor into the college-to-career transition.

Kim interviewed 62 students at a highly selective college she calls "Eastwood" (a pseudonym) about their career plans. About half the students in the study identified as first-generation and low-income (FGLI) and half as middle class. And, Kim says, because most research on FGLI students has focused on white, Black, and Latinx students, she intentionally sought out Asian students as part of the FGLI group.

She identified, for instance, what she calls "objections based on a value of social good," such as the desire to avoid working for companies perceived as responsible for some kind of social harm. But she says it was primarily those in her study who identified as Asian and Black FGLI students whose interview responses cited these objections.

For some FGLI students, however, financial considerations took precedence, pitting their social objections against a sense of obligation to family or to their ethnic or racial community. "I found that the Asian and Black students more often cited these familial and ethnoracial obligations as part of why they wanted to pursue certain careers," Kim says.

Kim's dissertation fieldwork, beginning this fall, will expand on the Eastwood and club studies to look more deeply into various mechanisms of inequality in the college-to-labor market transition and how they differ by students' backgrounds-particularly race, class, and gender-and institutional setting. She'll conduct interviews at one private, highly selective institution and one public, broad-access institution.

"It's a big umbrella," she says. "I'll be looking at what factors either facilitate or impede upward mobility in the college-to-career transition."

Kim says she hopes her research will have tangible applications. She would like campus staff, faculty, and administrators to be more cognizant of considerations beyond "finding a passion," such as family needs and other motivations, when advising students. She also hopes that her research can encourage policymakers to take a holistic approach in national conversations about the college-to-career transition.

This story is by Jane Carroll. Read more at Omnia.