After Admission: From College Access to College Success

CHAPTER SIX. THE SOCIAL PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS

113 CHAPTER SIX THE SOCIAL PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS The information problems that individual community college students encounter extend beyond the obvious and involve a disjuncture that occurs when students must respond to institutional procedures. Colleges demand a certain level of social know-how, a set of skills and knowledge that help students understand school procedures and navigate these institutions . Students must know something about the paths of progress through colleges. This knowledge includes awareness of enrollment, registration, and financial aid procedures. They must also know how to initiate information gathering, acquire sound and useful advice, avoid costly mistakes, and manage conflicting demands. Although many middle-class students have such know-how—often gleaned from family members and peers with college experience—many lower-income students, who make up a large portion of community college populations,donot.However,thecommunitycollegestaffmembersweinterviewed were only vaguely aware of these information deficiencies, and often assumed that students gather the necessary social know-how from outside sources. Because these assumptions are often incorrect, these information demands of college constitute a hidden curriculum of social prerequisites that many students are not prepared for and that colleges often do not address. Obstacles in Community Colleges Based on our studies in these fourteen public and private two-year colleges, we find that the implicit information requirements of community colleges present seven key obstacles for students who have little exposure to college knowledge: • bureaucratic hurdles • confusing choices • student-initiated guidance • limited counselor availability • poor advice from staff • slow detection of costly mistakes • poor handling of conflicting demands Navigating and Reducing the Obstacles These seven obstacles are observed at the community colleges in our study, but they are not inevitable. Just as chapter 5 showed that occupational colleges create alternative procedures to reduce the information demands, here we find that they also take steps to create procedures that reduce the need for social know-how. These practices specifically address the needs of disadvantaged students who face difficult decisions, strong competing pressures, little availability of crucial information, and large risks from even small mistakes. The many information problems students report in community colleges that pose serious obstacles to their timely degree progress are much less common in occupational colleges that use these procedures to reduce social know-how requirements. Although many community college students may only be experimenters testing whether college is appropriate (Manski 1989), these findings raise questions about whether community colleges could provide alternative procedures that would be more likely to produce successful outcomes from these experiments. Perhaps the procedures described here help explain why private colleges have much higher degree completion rates than their public counterparts. If community colleges are to serve nontraditional students, they must address this emerging issue of social know-how. Through examination of the information requirements at public and private colleges, we expand on the sociological concept of cultural capital presented in chapter 5. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) contend that schools have implicit requirements of certain knowledge and skills (cultural capital ) that low-SES students often lack, and these hard-to-see requirements interfere with their educational attainments. Building on this research, we 114 After Admission examine the specific procedural requirements at community colleges and their consequences for lower income students, as well as demonstrated alternatives that seem to remove cultural capital obstacles. DATA AND METHODS As described in chapters 2 and 5, the sample used here and in following chapters includes fourteen two-year schools: seven public community colleges and seven private occupational colleges. They are located in and around a large midwestern city, and all offer two-year accredited programs leading to associate’s degrees in similar occupational fields. Our research includes qualitative methods, including one-hour, semistructured interviews with students and staff, as well as an extensive review of college materials and repeatedly conducted observations at the colleges. SOCIAL KNOW-HOW REQUIREMENTS As discussed in chapter 1, community colleges offer a vast array of programs for students to choose from. Although more options sometimes lead to better decisions, they can also increase the need for information and may create confusion and mistaken choices on the part of the students. Multiple options also put a strain on the institutions, making it more difficult for the colleges to coordinate offerings while allocating fixed resources. The career dean at one community college said, “It’s a balancing act, and we have these external pressures on us to do 14 million things.” A dean of...