College and Career Ready? College Ambivalence and the Postsecondary Strategies of Low-Income High Schools
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21407095 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joseph Sageman (0000-0003-0284-4365, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2026-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Urban Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-0972 • E-ISSN: 1573-1960 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11256-026-00834-3 |
| OpenAlex | W7167715201 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 51 |
Low-income students and their educators confront conflicting evidence about the risks and rewards of college as a financial investment. Through 80 in-depth interviews, this article examines how urban high schools define their postsecondary strategies and advise students on their future plans. First, I document that schools with vocational missions and college-for-all philosophies are converging on a message of college ambivalence . Their staffs are eager to support students’ ambitions but are wary that college may not always represent a reliable route to economic mobility. Second, I show how college ambivalence is socially produced by the student debt crisis, low college persistence rates, and a tight labor market benefiting less educated workers. Third, I find that college ambivalence has major implications for students’ postsecondary decisions, including how they think about the purpose of college. High schools’ turn to college ambivalence exposes the limits of both college-for-all and career-based education as social mobility strategies
Ambivalence · Debt · Persistence (discontinuity) · Postsecondary education · Student debt · Vocational education · Higher Education and Employability · Higher Education Governance and Development · Higher Education Research Studies
Choosing Colleges
Bankers in the Ivory Tower
Paying the Price
Broke
The Privileged Poor
The Missing "One-Offs"
Gains and Gaps
Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”
The Effects of Career and Technical Education
Salvation or Safety Net? Meanings of “College” among Working- and Middle-Class Young Adults in Narratives of the Future
Debt and Graduation from American Universities
Predatory Inclusion and Education Debt
Mediators of Opportunity
What we have learned
On Being College Prep
Examining an Urban District’s College-Going Culture
You’re Supposed to Help Me”
What Do Test Scores Miss? The Importance of Teacher Effects on Non–Test Score Outcomes
Schooling as a White Good
I Just Didn’t Want to Risk It”
Who Benefits Most from College
Have Adolescents Become Too Ambitious? High School Seniors' Educational and Occupational Plans, 1976 to 2000
A Social Capital Framework for the Study of Institutional Agents and Their Role in the Empowerment of Low-Status Students and Youth
Other Duties as Assigned
Why Wait Years to Become Something?' Low-income African American Youth and the Costly Career Search in For-profit Trade Schools
The Paradox of Success at a No-Excuses School
Do Differences in School Quality Matter More Than We Thought? New Evidence on Educational Opportunity in the Twenty-first Century
Potholes on the Road to College
School Strategies and the 'College-Linking' Process
Racialized Horizontal Stratification in US Higher Education
Advising through Adversity
Help-Seeking Behaviors as Cultural Capital
Is a College Degree Still the Great Equalizer? Intergenerational Mobility across Levels of Schooling in the United States
College for some to college for all
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |