Passing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations?

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments P articipation in American higher education has grown with especial rapidity during the last thirty-five years. One of the key events in this growth was the program of open admissions initiated in 1970 at the large multicampus system of the City University of New York. Although the CUNY experiment has sometimes been viewed as a unique event in American higher education, this book shows that by 1980, open access to college was the rule in the United States, rather than the exception. The great expansion in college going has been accompanied by controversy. Some have argued that too many students cannot profit from college, that efforts to accommodate them have led to a decline in academic standards, and that the value of college degrees has declined. As a result, college graduates have been getting less payoff from their questionable credentials. This book takes a detailed look at two major aspects of college going. First, over the long term—that is, over a thirty-year period—how well have students done in terms of graduation and in terms of the returns to college degrees in the labor market. Second, what has been the influence of educational attainment on the educational chances of the second generation—that is, on the educational careers of the children of those who started college decades earlier? Analysis of these topics yields little to support the criticisms aimed at colleges and their students. Over a thirty-year period, graduation rates are considerably higher than shown for periods of four to six years and payoffs to degrees are quite robust. Moreover, college completion by parents has many positive effects on the educational careers of their children. Various sources of support have enabled us to complete this work. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation provided generous funding so that we could collect new data, conduct analyses and complete the drafting of this book. Harriet Zuckerman at Mellon provided not only substantial funding but gave a number of strategic suggestions that helped us to successfully complete a large new data collection. Alison Bernstein at Ford originally helped us with funding for a pilot study that allowed us to assess whether we could locate and interview former students, thirty years after beginning college. Ford later made a substantial grant that helped us to make great progress in data analyses. Spencer support allowed us to complete these analyses and to make major progress in completing the write up of results. xvii A number of graduate students made important contributions. Aviva Zubida did much of the initial work in setting up our historical data sets and in generating a method that allowed us to sample former CUNY students to interview. David Adox conducted a number of special, in depth interviews. Amy Adamczyk also helped with interviews. Roderick Graham provided assistance in compiling bibliography, and Josh Howard did a great deal of work in editing the bibliography and checking page proofs. The editorial board of the American Sociological Association’s Rose Monograph Series gave us much thoughtful feedback that improved the quality of the manuscript . We especially want to thank Robert Zussman for all his help. The staff at Shulman, Ronca, and Bucevalas ran a highly professional and effective case finding survey operation so that we were able to attain a high response rate for our interviews. Our two main research assistants Thurston Domina and Tania Levey conducted often complex data analyses with a high degree of initiative, and provided excellent editorial assistance that clearly improved the quality of our written work. Consequently, we have included them as junior authors of the book. Finally, we want to thank our almost 2000 respondents who were so generous in giving their time to be interviewed. xviii Acknowledgments ...