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RACE, CLASS, AND CHOICE IN
LATINO/A HIGHER EDUCATION
Pathways in the College-for-All Era
SARAH M. OVINK
Race, Class, and Choice in Latino/a Higher
Education
 Sarah M. Ovink

Race, Class, and

Choice in Latino/a
Higher Education
Pathways in the College-for-All Era
Sarah M. Ovink
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

Portions of Chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5 are adapted from the forthcoming article,

“‘In Today’s Society, It’s a Necessity’: Latino/a Postsecondary Plans in the
College-for-All Era.” Social Currents, (2016). doi: 10.1177/2329496516663220.
Chapter 6 is adapted from “‘They Always Call Me an Investment’: Gendered
Familism and Latino/a College Pathways.” Gender & Society 28, no. 2
(April 1, 2014): 265–88. doi:10.1177/0891243213508308.
Figure 7.1 is adapted with permission from the State Higher Education
Executive Officers (SHEEO). These data were sourced from SHEEO’s State
Higher Education Finance Fiscal Year 2013 Final Report, which can be found
at www.sheeo.org.
© 2016 by Sarah M. Ovink

ISBN 978-1-137-51885-9 ISBN 978-1-137-51886-6 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51886-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016947444

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image © Zoonar GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Cover design by Samantha Johnson

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America Inc. New York
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research that forms the basis of this book has benefited from a large
circle of friends and supporters. Undertaking a project of this scope—eight
years and counting—is impossible to do alone, so there are many to thank.
First, my deepest gratitude is to my respondents. These 50 young peo-
ple gave me their time and energy in exchange for three movie tickets and
a listening ear. Later, when the movie tickets ran out and all I could offer
was the listening ear, most of those I could get a hold of still kept on talk-
ing. For eight years I have kept the stories of their dreams and aspirations
at the forefront of my thoughts. I hope that this book does justice to the
depth and breadth of all that they shared with me.
This project has been supported by a number of funders over the years.
I gratefully acknowledge support from the UC Davis Consortium for
Women and Research, the UC Davis Institute of Governmental Affairs, the
UC Davis Department of Sociology, and two UC Davis and Humanities
Graduate Research Awards. In 2008, I was awarded a National Science
Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, which funded data collec-
tion for the first three waves of interviews, from 2008 to 2009, as well as
transcription services for the 134 interviews collected during that time
period. This research was also supported by a grant from the American
Educational Research Association, which receives funds for its “AERA
Grants Program” from the National Science Foundation under Grant
DRL-0941014. Finally, the collection of 2012 fourth-wave interviews
was supported by a Niles Research Grant from the College of Liberal Arts
and Human Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

(Virginia Tech). Opinions reflect those of the author and do not necessar-
ily reflect those of the granting agencies.
Authors often observe that writing a book is a lonely endeavor, and
indeed, I spent many hours alone at my desk, wrestling with data and
concepts. However, I am lucky to have a supportive community of friends,
colleagues, and family members who helped make this process both more
joyful and less solitary. Thanks go first and foremost to my graduate advi-
sor, Dina Okamoto, who was enthusiastic about this project from the very
beginning. Without her positivity and support, it would never have got-
ten off the ground. The rest of my committee also contributed excellent
advice and trenchant comments: Vicki Smith, Eric Grodsky, and Claude
Fischer. My community at UC Davis sustained me through the hard work
of data collection and analysis over the first three waves of data collection.
These were the folks who read early drafts, talked things through on long
car rides, helped with coding, offered advice and commiseration, made
me take shopping breaks, shared ridiculously expensive conference hotel
rooms, took me out for drinks, or just generally cheered me on: Melanie
Jones Gast, Jane Le Skaife, Radha Kamir Richmond, Demetra Kalogrides,
Kim Ebert, David Orzechowicz, Brian Veazey, Julie Siebens, Jesse Rude,
Lina Mendez Benavidez, Cassie Hartzog, and Daniel Herda.
My Bay Area community sustained me through the ups and downs of
early parenthood and graduate school. I will be forever grateful for the
friendship of Kerry Abukhalaf, Amy Bradley, Amiee James, Amy Haines,
Kay Worthington, Anna Roberts, Kerry Doherty, Corinna Guerrero, Kim
Selders, and Andrea Cultrera. To my parents, Jennifer and Roger Ovink,
and my sister, Katie Ovink: I cannot put in words how much your support
has meant to me. From rental fix-ups to trailer comparison shopping; from
dishwasher installation to inflatable bed provision; from affordable child-
care to late-night frozen yogurt runs—you three really outdid yourselves.
I am particularly privileged to have a sister like Katie in my life—without
the six months of nearly free nannying that she provided while I recruited
and completed the first wave of interviews, this project could not have
been possible. Special thanks also to Karen and Tom Sindelar, my parents-
in-law. I cannot forget one particular visit, when I was in the throes of
analysis and sleep deprivation, and Karen held our sleeping baby for three
straight hours while I frantically composed what would later become the
bulk of the chapter now entitled “ ‘Getting It Over With’: Choosing a
Four-Year College.” Karen, I still owe you for that one. Consuelo, te
extraño mucho. Gracias para todo. Besos y abrazos a toda la familia.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

In 2011 my family took an incredible leap, moving from Alameda,

California, to Blacksburg, Virginia, where I accepted the position of assis-
tant professor of sociology at Virginia Tech. I could not have asked for a
better transition, or a warmer, more congenial place to begin my career.
Many thanks to all of my colleagues and especially to department chair
John Ryan, who has been generous with both advice and support. That
support has included teaching leaves and a pre-tenure sabbatical semes-
ter, without which I would not have had the time or intellectual space to
write this book. My colleagues and friends Petra Rivera-Rideau, Rachelle
Brunn-Bevel, and Minjeong Kim have helped keep me accountable virtu-
ally, as co-organizers of our online writing group. They supported me
through the final stages of completing this manuscript as we completed
daily “check-ins” and made sure to show up for our writing. In-person
colleagues David Brunsma, Claire Robbins, Danna Agmon, Christine
Labuski, Nick Copeland, Petra Rivera-Rideau, and Katie Carmichael kept
me company at “write-ins” held at fine coffee establishments all over
Blacksburg. This manuscript also benefited from thoughtful chapter read-
throughs and comments by Carson Byrd, Jenn Bondy, Melanie Jones
Gast, David Brunsma, Barbara Ellen Smith, Rachelle Brunn-Bevel, and
the anonymous peer reviews—I cannot thank you enough. Moira Killoran
and the rest of the team at Academic Coaching & Writing pushed me
to not just meet my goals, but to enjoy every step of the journey. Sarah
Nathan, former education editor with Palgrave Macmillan, deserves credit
for pushing me to develop a book proposal from a kernel of an idea we dis-
cussed back in 2013. I thank her for her persistence, and for the support I
received from Mara Berkoff and the rest of the staff at Palgrave. I am grate-
ful for excellent research assistance from Virginia Tech sociology graduate
student Yun Ling Li, who created the figures that accompany Chapter 3
entitled “Limited Options: Choosing a Two-Year Transfer Pathway” and
the conclusion. Last but not least, I received stellar advice on book writ-
ing and publishing from Annie Martin, Elizabeth Branch Dyson, Matthew
Hughey, David Embrick, and David Cline. Beyond those who are named
here, there are yet more who have helped, cheered, and shoved me along,
in ways both big and small. It would take another book’s worth of pages
to thank them all, so I trust that they know who they are and what they
did, and that they know how grateful I am.
Finally, I cannot close without acknowledging the profound support of
my husband and partner in all things, Eric Sindelar. Eric has been there
for me since before the beginning, when a career as a sociologist seemed
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

like a fantastical pipe dream for this former seventh-grade teacher. Eric
helped make it happen, shoring up my confidence when I needed it, pro-
viding a helpful sounding board, tactfully questioning my incomprehen-
sible jargon, and, of course, providing emotional support throughout all
our years together. Eric is also my partner in raising our two wonderful
children, Kiely and Atticus. Kiely, who was a newborn when I began col-
lecting these data, and who will be nine when this book is published, is
always quick with a hug and the kind query, “How is your book going,
Mommy?” Atticus, who was a newborn during my last term of graduate
school, and who is now five, can be counted on for snuggles and welcome
distractions—literally pulling me away from my computer—whenever they
are most needed. These three comprise my most ambitious and sustaining
lifelong project, and it is to them that this book is dedicated.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction: Pathways in the College-for-All Era 1

2 California Dreams: Higher Education in the Golden State 23

3 Limited Options: Choosing a Two-Year Transfer Pathway 53

4 “Getting It Over With”: Choosing a Four-Year College 93

5 “I Try Not to Think About It”: College-Bound

without Citizenship 127

6 Gendered Meanings in College Choice 161

7 Conclusion: The Meaning of College and

the Economics of Choice 193

ix
x CONTENTS

Appendix A: Notes on the Field 221

Appendix B: Interview Sample Demographics, College

Pathways, and Career Interests Across Interview Waves 227

References 233

Index 247
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.1 Respondent aspirations and enrollment over time 55

Fig. 3.2 California community college transfer velocity 2007–2013:
Median and five sample colleges 59
Fig. 3.3 California community college transfer velocity 2007–2013:
Gender differences and median across five sample colleges 59
Fig. 3.4 California community college transfer velocity 2007–2013:
Median differences by financial aid received across all colleges 61
Fig. 3.5 California community college transfer velocity 2007–2013:
Median differences by race/ethnicity across all colleges 61
Fig. 7.1 Public US Full-Time Enrollment (FTE) and Educational
Appropriations per FTE: Fiscal 1988–2013 208

xi
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Sample demographics across five waves 2

Table 3.1 Wave 3 enrollment by institutional category 54
Table 6.1 Interview sample college enrollment numbers
and percentages by gender at wave 3 162

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Pathways in the College-

for-All Era

This is a study of 50 Latino/a college aspirants who were high school

seniors in San Francisco East Bay Area in the fall of 2007. They attended
three different high schools: a total of 20 graduated from Valley City or
Plain High, located in upper-middle-class Valley City; and 30 from Inland
High in working-class Inland City, just a few miles away.1 They aspired to
attend a variety of postsecondary institutions, including public two-year
colleges, for-profit institutions, and public and private four-year colleges
(see Table 1.1).
At first glance, it might appear unusual that all 50 of the mostly second-
generation Latino/a youth who agreed to take part in the study aspired
to attend college. But, as I will demonstrate, their attitudes and outlook
are increasingly common to all high school students in the United States,
regardless of family income, class status, gender, and race/ethnicity. In
fact, in 2013, the Pew Hispanic Research Center reported that, for the first
time, 69% of Hispanic high school students expected to attend college,
surpassing whites (at 67%). How can such optimism coexist with some
other, more familiar realities: the lagging US economy, stalled compre-
hensive immigration reform, rising college tuitions, and waning financial
support in the form of need-based grants and loans from both universities
and the federal government?
I planned to focus my research on individual decision-making; that is,
how and why Latino/a students decide whether to attend college, and

© The Author(s) 2017 1

S.M. Ovink, Race, Class, and Choice in Latino/a Higher Education,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51886-6_1
2 S.M. OVINK

Table 1.1 Sample demographics across five waves

Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3 Wave Wave 5
(2007–2008) (2008) (2008–2009) 4 (2015)
(2012)

Gender Female 27 24 23 8 2
Male 23 18 19 6 8
Community Valley City 20 17 16 6 5
Inland City 30 25 26 8 5
Class status Working 40 32 32 11 7
Lower 10 10 10 3 3
Middle/
Middle
Initial Trade/Art – 1 4 1 1
college level Two-year – – 20 8 6
of controla Four-year – – 24 5 3
TOTAL 50 42 42 14 10

a
Two students, Blanca and Caden, are left out of the Wave 3 Initial College count. Though Blanca did take
classes at Valley City College while a high school student, it is unclear whether she also enrolled there fol-
lowing high school. Caden did not enroll in any postsecondary classes until Wave 4.

how their pathways to college or the world of work varied. This line of
inquiry led me to examine two interrelated questions: how do Latino/a
students formulate and manage their educational and occupational aspi-
rations? More specifically, how do college aspirants make sense of the
varying, and sometimes conflicting, pressures of individual ambition and
family and network influences to make decisions about college and career?
Second, how and why do East Bay Latino/a college aspirants progressively
revise their educational and occupational expectations? As I followed these
50 students over a two-year period, and, later, caught up with subsets of
the original 50 in 2012 and 2015, it became clear that, though a pervasive
“college-for-all” culture2 contributed heavily toward the ubiquity of their
college plans, another set of factors made “college-for-all” an unfunded
mandate for many of these low-income Latino/a students. What I came to
realize is that the basic premise of my initial line of inquiry no longer made
sense. That is, while previous research has focused on whether students go
to college,3 my respondents assumed that everyone goes to college—the
more relevant questions are where (community college or 4-year), when
(right away or while working full-time), and how it will be paid for (parents,
loans, or self-paid).
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 3

While on balance these changes represent positive development, we

cannot ignore the still very relevant challenges facing Latino/a, low-
income and other underrepresented minority groups with college aspira-
tions. In an era of increased economic insecurity, decreased funding for
college counseling, and receding support for subsidized or low-cost col-
lege tuition, many of my respondents entered a kind of limbo of part-time
employment and part-time college attendance that promised to stretch
out over many more than the expected four years of commitment to col-
lege enrollment. “Going” to college, for these students, could be mea-
sured on a sliding scale. At one end of the scale were students attending
one or two classes per semester at community colleges; at the other, the
few respondents who managed to fulfill the “classic” college ambition of
moving away from home, living in a dorm, and attending classes full-
time. College enrollees at the bottom of the scale could not be said to be
foregoing college, but many of them expressed dissatisfaction with their
stop-and-start progress, which did not seem to be delivering the path to
mobility they expected that “going” to college would illuminate.

STALLED AMBITIONS
Dorota might seem at first to be an unusually determined young woman,
but in many ways she was typical of the mostly working-class Latino/a
students I interviewed. She had decent but not outstanding grades, with
a self-reported GPA of 2.9 at high school graduation. She aspired to
become a pilot, possibly to join the military, and later, to become a politi-
cal writer. While attending California State University – East Bay (CSU
East Bay), she had an 80-hour per week job at a cellular phone provider,
while keeping up with a variety of friends and a steady boyfriend. When I
asked, bemused at her list of commitments, if she ever slept, she responded
crisply, “Of course I sleep. I come home and I nap. I do sleep.”
Always poised and punctual at the Starbucks where we met for each
of her three interviews, Dorota made her points emphatically, often tap-
ping on the table for effect—in sum, she projected an air of efficiency,
certainty, and businesslike self-possession. For nearly 30 minutes following
our first interview, she peppered me with questions about the University of
California – Davis, where I was then a graduate student, and affirmed that
she would definitely accept my offer of college counseling (offered to all
students as a benefit of participating in the study). And yet, in the end, she
decided to attend CSU East Bay, a lower-ranked California public four-year
4 S.M. OVINK

college located close to her home. She did not take up my offer of college
counseling. Moreover, according to Dorota, her SAT scores, which were
high enough to exempt her from taking CSU’s placement exams, were not
forwarded to CSU East Bay as expected. As a consequence, she missed the
fall placement exams, and the university required her to enroll in reme-
dial classes in math and English. CSU’s remedial courses do not count
for credits toward graduation. She was disdainful of peers in her remedial
English class, many of whom skipped classes and did not seem to put forth
much effort when they did attend. These classes bored her, and she herself
stopped putting forth much effort, telling me, “I’m in a classroom with
dumb people and for some reason I can’t push myself to do the work. I
don’t know why. I just, I get so lazy, [telling myself] ‘Oh well, it’s so easy,
I’ll do it later.’” I asked if she had met with a college counselor, and she
reported that in her required General Education class for first-years, the
instructor had helped her sign up for a major in film, an interest she had
not previously emphasized. At the end of her third interview, when I asked
Dorota how she felt about her progress, she told me, “I feel like I messed
up … I need to start doing my work. My English class is really annoying me
and it’s remedial and I can’t believe that I didn’t turn in my essays … It’s
just, oh my God. I can’t push myself to do my work. I just can’t do it.” In
effect, Dorota’s progress seemed stalled out, arrested by inertia and lacking
institutional guidance that might have jump-started her former ambitions.

THE GROWING PRESENCE OF LATINO/AS IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
Unfortunately, as I hinted before, Dorota’s story is quite typical of the
students I interviewed. Gaps between black and white students in achieve-
ment and attainment continue to receive a great deal of attention in both
media coverage and academic research. The postsecondary pathways of
Latinos/as have received comparatively less notice, despite the group’s
status as the largest minority group in the United States, with among the
lowest levels of educational achievement and attainment. Latino/a high
school dropout rates are worse than those of blacks or whites (15% ver-
sus 12% and 8.2%, respectively), meaning a larger percentage of Latino/a
students are left out of the college pipeline altogether. Nationwide, the
number of Latino/a students enrolling in college is at an all-time high,
but these buoyant reports can mask the reality that as of October 2011,
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 5

just 56% of Latino/a college students were enrolled in four-year institu-

tions (versus 72% of white college students), meaning that the balance
of Latino/a enrollees were attending two-year community colleges and
other postsecondary institutions that do not grant a BA degree.4
Latino/a youth represent a growing share of K–12 students in US pub-
lic schools, as well as a rapidly increasing proportion of college enroll-
ees. In 2012, the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)
reported that Latino/a youth made up nearly one-quarter (24%) of all
public school enrollees, up from about one-fifth (18%) in 2002. NCES
projects that their enrollment share will increase to nearly 30% in 2024.5
On the whole, Latino/a youth are part of the largest and fastest-growing
minority group in US society; thus, our destiny as a nation is increasingly
bound up in their successful transition to adulthood. Given the strong
societal emphasis placed on higher education as the best pathway to stable
jobs and fulfilling careers, it is imperative that we assess the processes and
mechanisms that influence Latino/a college pathways in order to elimi-
nate remaining gaps.
One factor that dampens Latino/a college pathways in a context of
growing costs is the higher levels of poverty and significantly lower lev-
els of parental educational attainment as compared with other groups.6
Higher rates of poverty also partially explain another pipeline bottleneck:
because school funding structures in the United States largely depend on
property taxes and Latinos/as are more likely to live in low-income neigh-
borhoods, Latino/a college aspirants have a greater propensity to attend
underresourced and low-performing schools.7 Schools and school person-
nel can be highly influential in the development of college aspirations and
expectations. Positive school experiences can help set students on a path
to success.8 Negative schooling experiences, such as lack of respect and
student engagement,9 poor organizational practices,10 and discrimina-
tory treatment of minority groups,11 may “turn off” vulnerable Latino/a
students and depress their college aspirations and expectations. Another
factor that may negatively affect Latino/a college pathways is the phe-
nomenon known as “undermatching.” Students undermatch when they
enroll in an institution they are “overqualified” for, typically as measured
by grades and test scores. Recent research by Awilda Rodriguez suggests
that even when Latino/a students apply to selective institutions, they are
less likely to actually enroll when accepted than are similar white students.12
Rodriguez’s work suggests that having enough college information and
resources to apply to college is not enough to overcome enrollment gaps
6 S.M. OVINK

between Latino/a students and their typically more-advantaged, white

peers. Latino/a students may still lack needed resources to make enroll-
ment a reality, including being able to “actually envision themselves”
attending a selective college.13
Among students of Latino/a descent, recent immigration flows and
the subsequent racialization process that Latinos/as undergo are conse-
quential for students’ college pathways. Racialized structures construct
Latino/a youth as a category with some fluidity, but as racially, linguisti-
cally, and culturally distinct from black, white, and Asian Americans. As
Latino/a youth make their way in the world, they must also contend with
what it is to be Latino/a in the US context, which is to say, they must con-
front the often negative constructions and expectations of majority whites
of themselves as members of a “problem” group. Tomás Jiménez14 argues
that ongoing replenishment of the Latino/a immigrant population affects
both intergroup and intragroup relations. Media and political controversy
over continual flows of immigration from Mexico and Central America
helps maintain the salience of race and ethnicity in the lives of Latino/a
students, which obstructs their ability to follow the assimilation patterns
of earlier generations of European immigrants. Resentment from “native”
whites due to assumptions of undocumented status among Latinos/as
further fuels intergroup conflict. Immigrant replenishment also raises
intragroup questions of ethnic authenticity, taste, and styles that affect
Latino/a students’ ethnic identification, reference group, and educational
choices. In sum, Latino/a students’ educational decisions are likely influ-
enced by both intergroup hostility from “native” whites and intragroup
challenges to maintain or discard ethnic ties.
On the other hand, as many immigrants came to the United States
because of the opportunity to provide high-quality education for their
children, immigrant families may be particularly interested in support-
ing children’s college plans. Latino/a college aspirants report being bol-
stered by immigrant parents who are exceptionally motivated to provide
their children with educational opportunity, yet who themselves provide
a negative example of the earnings and lifestyle afforded by low levels of
educational attainment—an example that is not as readily provided for
white, middle-class college-goers. Whereas college-going is often thought
of as an individualistic decision, among Latino/a populations the will and
desires of family may hold greater sway. Familism, or a pattern of behav-
ior or belief in which family and group concerns take precedence over
the individual, may be especially influential for college decision-making
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 7

among Latinos/as and other groups with a recent history of immigra-

tion. A family-centric outlook may push Latinos/as to attempt college,
but such family fealty may also limit their college choices to those physi-
cally close to the family network.15
In the California context, a lack of information and financial resources
leads many Latino/a students—who, as previous research has shown, are
disproportionately likely to have grown up in low-income homes and to
attend underresourced schools—to prefer community colleges that often
fail to provide an adequate pathway to college attainment. The California
college system is made up of three tiers. Top-tier University of California
campuses (UCs), of which there are nine, are doctoral-level research
universities, some of which rank among the best in the nation. Mid-tier
California State Universities (CSUs) are comprehensive, teaching-focused,
BA-granting institutions with some master’s but very few doctoral pro-
grams. Both the UC and CSU systems have dramatically increased tuition
in recent years in an era of waning monetary support for public higher edu-
cation in California. When I began my study in 2007, the annual tuition
at UC Berkeley was $8383, and the annual tuition at CSU East Bay cost
$2772.16 By the fourth follow-up, in 2012, the year most respondents
expected to be completing their BA degrees, costs had risen to $14,985.50
and $5472, respectively.17 As of this writing, university officials expect cur-
rent rates to remain the same through 2016–2017, making six years in a
row without tuition increases, after which costs are expected to rise once
again.18 California’s community colleges (CCs) encompass a wide network
of institutions that grant AA degrees, as well as provide a growing transfer
pathway for BA hopefuls. CCs are widely known as cheap—just $20 per
credit at the time I was interviewing East Bay Area Latinos/as. With UCs
and even CSUs out of reach financially for many of my respondents, CCs
looked like an attractive alternative to “get some credits out of the way”
cheaply and, they hoped, quickly.
The financial aid system for California’s public college system is gen-
erous as compared with what is available in most other states. However,
a number of factors kept many of my respondents from taking advan-
tage of these benefits. A majority of respondents, despite coming from
low-income families, reported that they were “ineligible” for both the
state-based “Cal Grants” college aid program and federal financial aid.
The income ceilings for Cal Grant B, which provides stipends as well as
college expenses for very low-income students, might be hard to qualify
for in the high-cost San Francisco Bay Area: $40,200 for a family of four
8 S.M. OVINK

in 2008. However, the income ceilings were fairly generous for Cal Grant
A: $76,400 for a family of four in 2008. I suspected, though could not
always confirm, that in many cases, respondents had not filled out the
forms correctly, or on time. A number of respondents stated that they
“missed” the FAFSA deadline, and having filed a FAFSA—no small feat of
paperwork itself—is a requirement for Cal Grants. Respondents reported
that filling out financial aid forms was difficult and time-consuming, and
many had trouble getting help from their parents due to limited paren-
tal English skills and lack of knowledge about financial matters. For the
undocumented and non-citizen students in my sample, state-based finan-
cial aid was not yet available at the time of our interviews.19
Thus, the climate in which Latino/a college aspirants were making col-
lege decisions in 2007–2008 was, to say the least, troubled. My respon-
dents faced a college choice set limited by a number of factors. Financial
resources and family desires were comparatively well known and antici-
pated, but this population of college aspirants was also more susceptible to
having their hopes derailed by unanticipated disasters: deportation of close
family members, parents’ unstable employment or job losses, unplanned
parenthood coupled with low-income status or lack of health care, and
institutional indifference or neglect.

OVERVIEW OF THE ARGUMENT

I offer a detailed empirical demonstration of college choice processes
among a population that, while strongly college-oriented, faces significant
constraints due to both resource deficiencies and racialized status. All of
my respondents identified as Latino/a, making them members of a group
that is historically underrepresented among college-goers. Most—40 out of
50—were additionally categorized as low-income, and in many cases, first-
generation college enrollees. Conventional models of the college attainment
process typically fail to explain the trajectories of low-income, underrepre-
sented minority students who are not “expected” to attempt college, yet
pursue a university degree anyway. A recent study by sociologists Jennie
Brand and Yu Xie suggests that students who are “least likely” to enroll in
college—based on income, parental education, and other factors—actually
benefit most from college attendance.20 Perhaps, for students well-schooled
in the “college-for-all” ethos, the knowledge that a college degree is essen-
tial to establishing a stable, remunerative career convinces even “least-likely,”
low-income and Latino/a students to enroll in postsecondary institutions.
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 9

In essence, the “college-for-all” environment has created what I term

an optimistic rationalism among college-aspiring youth, such that the
well-known economic incentives to attempting a college degree, coupled
with, for my respondents, readily available low-cost community colleges,
erase “decision-making” about whether to attend college entirely. This
concept borrows from the Greek philosophical tradition of rationalism,
which received “an optimistic reformulation” during the Enlightenment
period of the eighteenth century.21 In the classical conception, the opti-
mistic rationalist tended to “believe that the world is orderly and com-
prehensible and that there are elements in that order which have been
fashioned for the good of man.”22
Respondents’ optimistic rationalism was based on reasonable assump-
tions about the necessity of college in attaining a middle-class, professional
career. However, the rational choice to attend college was undertaken
with an exuberantly optimistic anticipation of the ease with which they
would be able to navigate the college pathway and claim the dual rewards
of social and economic mobility. This “big picture” approach provided
plenty of evidence to conclude that college was the “right” choice—that
is, the rational pathway to a stable career—yet respondents glossed over
the importance of structural, financial, and family supports to ensure suc-
cess in the college endeavor, relying on widely shared societal messages
idealizing individual drive and ambition as the main factors predicting
success.
It is important to note that this individualistic outlook is widely shared up
and down the economic scale. As previous research has argued, Americans
are reluctant to recognize the importance of family income, wealth, and
social connections to life chances.23 Wealthy youth can espouse the same
sentiments about the importance of individual hard work and ambition,
while relying on family, networks, and financial supports to help them
get back on their feet should plans go awry. When things did not go as
planned for these mostly low-income Latino/a respondents, they seldom
had these kinds of supports, yet often blamed themselves for not working
hard enough. Nearly all respondents reported being aware Latinos/as as a
group were less likely to enroll in, or successfully complete, college; how-
ever, they were overwhelmingly optimistic about their individual chances
of success. Thus, college choices based on optimistic rationalism created
long and winding college pathways among many East Bay Area Latino/a
college aspirants that led to feelings of disenchantment, self-doubt, and
internalized disappointment. In contrast with previous literature that
10 S.M. OVINK

describes the college pathway as similar to walking the “edge of a knife,”

teetering on the edge of going or foregoing,24 East Bay Area Latinos/as’
pathways more closely resembled a never-ending obstacle course.
Universal college attendance, as we might anticipate, did not result in
universal college success for these East Bay Area Latinos/as. Real differ-
ences existed between respondents and their middle- and upper-income
peers in terms of their individual preparation for college, knowledge
about navigating college institutions, and financial and material resources.
Furthermore, significant differences exist among colleges themselves, even
those that appear to offer similar amenities, majors, and degree programs.
Though only a few of my respondents were aware of this fact, the avail-
able evidence shows that community colleges differ widely in their rates of
successful transfers to four-year colleges, and most public two- and four-
year colleges leave it up to students to request and obtain counseling that
might help them to choose high-quality classes and a purposeful course of
study. Finally, variance in the make-up of the student body also affected
Latino/a college enrollees’ sense of belonging and satisfaction with their
college experience. Enrollees at Chabot College and California State
University, East Bay reported that “everyone here is Latino/a” while the
few in the sample who enrolled in top-tier University of California cam-
puses reported the opposite, and sometimes felt marginalized or unwel-
come as a result.
Myriad articles and books have considered the influences of college
aspirations, or hopes, as well as expectations—what students realistically
expect to achieve—on college outcomes. However, much previous work
focuses on the status attainment framework, which links occupational
attainment to family socioeconomic status (SES), educational attain-
ment, and youths’ socialization process to describe the reproduction of
class status across generations.25 The model, while intuitive and useful,
nevertheless fails to adequately explain the trajectories of those who flout
its expectations, and in particular, what drives college-attending, low-SES
minorities who are not otherwise “expected” to attend college.26 In addi-
tion, most research that examines the educational pathways of Latino/a
youth focuses on what Latino/a youth lack, or how they compare unfa-
vorably to other groups27.
In contrast, the aim of this book is to examine the social forces that
contributed to near-universal college attendance among these 50 mostly
low-income Latino/a college aspirants, all of whom graduated from fairly
typical public high schools in a hybrid urban/suburban region within the
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 11

greater San Francisco Bay Area. The attempt to attain social and economic
mobility can be framed as the struggle to acquire or deploy resources
required to achieve mobility amid constraints. In the context of leveraging
higher education to achieve mobility among low-income college aspirants,
some constraints are well known and anticipated: the financial costs of
college, the challenge of university coursework, the difficulty of com-
bining paid work and study. Other constraints may not be anticipated:
feelings of alienation and inadequacy, lack of institutional support and
scaffolding, and skepticism or hostility from peers and family members.
Resources, including financial, familial, and social/emotional, may not be
up to the task of surmounting daunting constraints, or may not hold the
value expected of them. Moreover, in the context of the end of the eco-
nomic “bubble” of the early 2000s and the Great Recession that began in
2008, it became clear that, for many, tremendous resources were neces-
sary simply to maintain the status quo in a high-cost region of the country
where food, housing, and transportation costs easily outpaced working-
class earnings. In this environment, it is no wonder that the lure of higher
education became even more attractive, given the well-known correlation
between a college education and social and economic mobility. Many of
my respondents cited recent articles making precisely these links, shared
by well-meaning high school teachers hoping to strengthen their students’
resolve to enroll in college.
These circumstances contributed to respondents’ optimistic rational-
ism, guiding them to either ignore or gloss over constraints while focusing
intently on anticipated future rewards. Their optimism was at times delib-
erately exuberant; some respondents told me they knew about, but “didn’t
want to think about” potential constraints. Other times, their optimism
rested on a lack of precise information, trusting that an intent focus on
the overall goal of “going” to college would pull them through the rough
spots. When respondents chose college classes that did not seem to match
their ultimate career objectives, and yet framed their enrollment in, for
example, a jogging class, as proof that they were “moving forward” with
their education, their optimism overrode their otherwise broadly shared
sense of the rational practicality of college attendance. The desire to go to
college was framed by my respondents as wholly unnecessary to explain
to me, their interviewer. Of course I’m going to college, they would tell
me, widening their eyes at my apparently terrific naïveté. Why wouldn’t I?
Everyone knows that college is the answer. This “keep my head down and
go” attitude led all but one member of my sample to enroll in at least one
12 S.M. OVINK

college class during the study period, but did not serve the interests of an
unfortunately large number who stopped out, dropped out, or stalled out,
leading to a limbo state of neither “going” nor “foregoing.” I must hasten
to add that, though their constraints too often overwhelmed their resolve,
respondents’ anticipated future rewards were not extravagant. Their career
objectives—nurse, police officer, accountant, teacher—were for the most
part modest and some did not even require a four-year degree. That is
why, in contrast to recent studies that find that youths’ aspirations are
increasingly unreasonable, I aim to provide a more balanced focus that
gives attention to both personal choice and systemic constraints, while
pointing the way toward possibilities for change. Some of my findings may
not be generalizable to the national population of Latinos/as for a variety
of reasons, including regional variation in the availability of colleges at
different levels of selectivity. Nevertheless, these longitudinal interviews
afford an opportunity to examine the processes and mechanisms that con-
tribute to a successful transition to college for some highly disadvantaged
students, while allowing a comparison to those who fail to realize their
optimistic aspirations.
This conceptualization of optimistic rationalism takes inspiration from
two strains of social theory—one increasingly popular in studies of edu-
cational attainment, and one that has not often been deployed in the task
of understanding differential college pathways. The first, rational choice
theory, posits that respondents use rational cost-benefit analyses to make
choices that will maximize their chances of success in a given arena.28
Rational choice theory is based in economic models and has been modi-
fied by sociologists,29 most notably to relax assumptions that actors possess
“perfect information” with which to make their decisions. Rational choice
theory has the added benefit of its intuitiveness; most people approach
decisions rationally, with at least some thought as to the probable out-
comes and possible constraints. Few people make life course plans on the
basis of wild guesses. Moreover, rational choice theory is a good fit for
a society built around a capitalist economic model, where many of our
ideas about what it takes to achieve in life—hard work, determination,
intelligence, good moral values—coexist with strong beliefs in the value of
competition, entrepreneurship, and market-based solutions.
The second, Sewell’s30 theory of structure, revitalizes traditional con-
ceptions of the constraining power of structure (e.g., racialized and class-
based institutions) and access to resources (e.g., a college education) to
include a greater emphasis on agency (free choice) and the possibilities of
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 13

change and transformation. Using Sewell’s framework, we can conceive

of a college degree as a resource that an ever-increasing number of young
people want to acquire. However, the “rules” that constrain college
attendance pertaining to race/ethnicity and class status have not changed
to accommodate rapid growth in the number of underrepresented minor-
ity college aspirants, who are, not coincidentally, also more likely to hail
from low-income backgrounds. If anything, the rules are actually becom-
ing more difficult to follow—costs are increasing, federal aid is shrinking—
as growing numbers of students who were previously unlikely to consider
college are beginning, like their middle- and upper-income peers, to see
university attendance as ubiquitous. Still, these aspirational and demo-
graphic changes portend the possibility for structural change that would
make college more affordable and more inclusive, given the increasing
enrollment of low-income, underrepresented minority students. Many of
my respondents themselves expressed the hope that this would come to
pass, helping to explain the high incidence of community college enroll-
ment even among poorly prepared students and undocumented sample
members. Staying on a college course, no matter how slow their progress,
was a means to be prepared for the hoped-for day when the obstacles
would be removed and they could see an unobstructed view of the finish
line of college completion.
A pervasive “college-for-all” culture largely ignores economic, racial/
ethnic, and gendered constraints on college attendance, to the detriment
of first-generation and underrepresented groups. Without scaffolding for
first-generation students, and without the provision of significant finan-
cial supports available to previous generations, college-for-all represents
an unfunded mandate for an increasing number of college aspirants. In
the not-too-distant past, high schools were heavily tracked, and educa-
tors often presumed that Latino/a, African American, and low-income
students belonged in vocational education rather than college prepara-
tory programs. Vocational education fell into disfavor, with good reason,
as little more than a dumping ground for low-income women, minority
group members, and “troubled” youth. Vocational education has been
replaced with the present system of near-universal college prep programs,
leaving students no alternative to college-for-all. Moreover, labor mar-
ket data suggest that the BA is quickly becoming the new high school
diploma. A 2013 report by Georgetown University’s Center on Education
and the Workforce estimates that by 2020, 65% of jobs will require a col-
lege degree or postsecondary training.31
14 S.M. OVINK

Given what we know about the changing nature of careers and the
post-recession labor market, teachers and families are not wrong to
encourage all students to go to college. College-for-all is marginally better
than the previous two-track system in that it allows more choice for stu-
dents, yet both systems fail to adequately serve Latino/a and other under-
represented students who still face disproportionate barriers to college
completion in the current system. Thus, college-for-all is implicated in
reproducing the growing income inequality we observe today. College
has been oversold as a means of lifting individuals into the ranks of the
middle class, in the absence of any significant improvements to the social
contract that would keep costs low and help students navigate the increas-
ing costs and resulting debt load. We betray first-generation Latino/a and
low-income students’ optimistic rationalism—which we are complicit in
encouraging—when we leave both the risks and rewards of college in the
laps of individuals.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

Chapter 2, “California Dreams: Higher Education in the Golden State,”
introduces the location, time period, and high schools that the respon-
dents attended. This chapter makes the case that local/regional context
is an important factor for the development of an optimistically rationalist
outlook on college prospects. Colleges’ proximity to students’ homes is
important for low-income students’ college choices. Furthermore, the
availability of nonselective proximate colleges made college attendance
nearly ubiquitous among my sample. Chapter 2, also offers an over-
view of the study respondents and how they compared to other college
aspirants in California and in the national context. Though a pool of
50 respondents cannot provide broad generalizations about the college-
going population, this comprehensive look at how respondents stacked
up against the college competition demonstrates that their experiences
are increasingly common to the population of students attending under-
resourced schools in the college-for-all culture of public high schools in
the United States.
Chapter 3, “Limited Options: Choosing a Two-Year Transfer Pathway,”
focuses on the subsample of community college attendees. This chapter
demonstrates how optimistic rationalism leads low-income students to
enroll in community college, but fails to sustain all but the most tena-
cious BA aspirants. I provide evidence from the sample that structural
 INTRODUCTION: PATHWAYS IN THE COLLEGE-FOR-ALL ERA 15

deficiencies, including a lack of high school and college counseling for

two-year college attendees, as well as economic hardship, prove difficult
to surmount even for the most determined students. I include in this
group the three respondents who chose trade or art schools (one respon-
dent attended a massage therapy program; another chose cosmetology
school; a third attended a dance academy). Some respondents who chose
a two-year transfer pathway justified the choice in terms of cost, while
others viewed it as a strategic means of raising their GPA with the antici-
pation of transferring to a prestigious UC that had not accepted them
directly after high school. Chapter 3 also notes, however, that the aver-
aged GPAs of two-year attendees were not very different than the GPAs
of those who enrolled in four-year colleges directly after high school.
Building on the overview presented in Chapter 2, this chapter delves
into the landscape of community colleges in the California context, their
costs, and differences in transfer rates to four-year universities among the
community colleges on offer.
Chapter 4, “‘Getting It Over With’: Choosing a Four-Year College,”
turns the lens to those who chose to attend four-year colleges—at least
at first. Financial stability, early college planning, and having a career
goal are the three factors that were most influential for maintaining
a trajectory toward a BA degree at a four-year institution. I assess the
resources that buoyed four-year college students and the structural bar-
riers to continuance that many still struggled with, including lack of col-
lege counseling, and the difficulty many faced in balancing classwork and
employment due to the higher costs and less flexible schedules of four-year
schools. Included in this chapter are the stories of three respondents who
“reverse-transferred”—that is, they started attending a four-year college,
and switched to two-year colleges due to a mix of finances and lack of
preparedness. Four-year attendees usually felt little need to justify their
choice; however, their responses often fell into two camps: those working
to maintain a middle-class status (status maintenance) and those hoping
to vault into it, using college as the most expedient means of doing so
(status mobility).
Chapter 5, “‘I Try Not to Think About It’: College-Bound Without
Citizenship,” shines a light on the experiences and college pathways of
the respondents in my sample who were not US citizens, of which there
were seven at the start of the study. This chapter provides background
on the scope of the problem of undocumented immigrants who were
brought to the USA as children, as well as the history of immigration pol-
16 S.M. OVINK

icy and reform attempts, including the failed DREAM Act and successfully
implemented DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Here, I
examine the apparent conundrum of applying a rational choice frame-
work to assess the pathways of non-citizen resident and undocumented
students, given that they lack the legal status required to access most jobs.
This chapter demonstrates that undocumented students indeed view col-
lege as a rational choice, given their continually replenished and strongly
education-positive immigrant and DREAMer frames of reference, and an
instrumental embracing of the “college-for-all” ideal as a means of achiev-
ing success in mainstream US culture.
Chapter 6, “Gendered Meanings in College Choice,” examines the
familism concept in greater depth, and reports on the gender differences in
college aspirations and enrollment observed in the sample. Even account-
ing for college eligibility (that is, GPAs), eligible Latina respondents more
often enrolled in four-year universities than eligible Latino respondents.
Specifically, I find that Latinas were more likely than similar Latinos to
seek a four-year degree as a means of earning independence, while Latinos
expressed a sense of automatic autonomy that was not as strongly tied to
educational outcomes.
The book concludes with an examination of what my respondents’
experiences illuminate about the dual relationship between personal
choice and structural constraints, and highlights the ironies of a cultural
mandate that encourages limitless aspiration alongside the gradual disap-
pearance of the scaffolding that, in previous generations, offered greater
structural and institutional support for students’ college ambitions. The
conclusion argues that the Great Recession exacerbated both the impor-
tance of a college degree and the financial barriers to attaining it. Increases
in tuition have made four-year universities unaffordable for many, pushing
four-year-eligible college aspirants to enroll in community colleges, where
their progress toward a BA degree often stalls. I show that this is part of a
broader trend of tuition increases rising astronomically across the nation,
outpacing inflation by a wide margin, as the share of support public uni-
versities receive from state funds has steadily decreased. At the same time,
the share of tenured and tenure-track faculty as a percentage of teaching
staff at colleges and universities is at an all-time low (about 27%, as of
this writing) and the number of administrative positions and offices has
climbed steadily. I argue that a cultural turn toward treating universities as
businesses has left the purported “consumer”—students and families—in
an increasingly compromised position. Students and families are paying
Another random document with
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 Peggy knelt down, so as to come nearer to the tub, and looked
down into it. Then she uttered a little wail. “O father, I think they’re all
looking sick somehow! Look at my flounders!”
One of the flounders, alas! was dead already, as well as the crab,
and the other looked rather sorry for himself. Colonel Roberts,
however, would not let Peggy cry.
“Look here, child,” he said; “they want to be put back into the sea
—that’s all. There are too many of them all crowded together in the
tub; we’ll take them back to a pool on the shore, and they will soon
be as frisky as ever again.”
“Not the dead ones,” said Peggy solemnly.
“No, not the poor dead ones, but the sick ones. Go and fetch me
a pail, and we’ll carry them down to the shore.”
“But then I won’t ever see them again,” Peggy objected.
“Now, don’t be a selfish little girl. You would rather they lived and
were happy, wouldn’t you?”
“Ye—s,” Peggy faltered.
“Well, go and fetch the pail.”
After all, it would be good fun to put them all back into the sea,
Peggy thought; so she ran away and fetched the garden pail from
the shed. Colonel Roberts pulled up his sleeves, and dived his arm
into the tub, and fished up the creatures one by one. They all looked
rather flabby and sick.
“Now, we must take them down to the shore,” he said.
They selected a nice large pool, and one by one placed the poor
sick creatures into it. Then Peggy sat down to watch. She had not
long to wait: the sick flounder revived in the most extraordinary
manner, the anemones began to wave their feelers about in the nice
clean water as if they too felt all right.
“See! they are all quite happy again, Peggy,” said her father.
 “Oh, I am sorry not to keep them,” said she. “Do you think I’ll ever
get anything to play with that I can love so much?”
“Well, that depends upon yourself, Peggy; but as we walk back to
the house you can guess what I’ve got for you at home.”
“Have you got something new for me—something I’ll love?”
“Yes, quite new. I fancy you’ll love it very much.”
“As much as my sea beasts?”
“Oh, a great deal more. What do you think would be the nicest
thing you could have?”
“A Shetland pony?”
“No, far nicer.”
“A big Persian pussy-cat?”
“No, nicer still.”
Peggy began to dance with impatience. “Oh, do tell me; what is
it?” she cried.
“Well, you will find a new sister at home, very small and pink, with
blue eyes and a lot of nice black hair.”
Peggy received this description dumbly; indeed, she walked on
for a few yards before she said bitterly,—
“O father, I’d have liked the Shetland pony ever so much better;
couldn’t you change it yet? Is the sister much cheaper? I’ll give you
my shilling!”
She was rather hurt by the way her father laughed at this
proposal.
“Why, Peggy, a sister will be ever so much nicer than a pony; she
will be able to play with you and speak to you soon.”
“Can’t she speak? She can’t be a very good one,” said Peggy
dolefully.
“No, she can only cry as yet—she cries a good deal.”
 “Well, I don’t want her then, father. Do please send her away, and
get me the pony instead, or even the cat.”
“I think we’ve got to keep her, Peggy. Suppose you wait till you
see her. Perhaps you won’t wish then to send her away.”
“Can she walk, if she is so stupid, and can’t talk?” Peggy asked
suspiciously.
“Oh no, she can’t walk; she is dressed in long robes, just like your
Belinda.”
“Who has been playing with her?” Peggy asked. “Has mother? It
doesn’t amuse her much to play with Belinda, and if this thing is just
like her, I wonder mother cares to play with it either.”
“Yes, mother has played with her most of the time.”
“Well, I think it’s very queer of her, for she doesn’t like Belinda a
bit,” said Peggy. Then, after a moment’s silence, she added,
“Perhaps I’ll like it too; I don’t feel as if I would. And please, father,
will you let me ride up to the house on your back?”
This ended the discussion about the new sister.
And now, if I were to tell you how precious the new sister was to
Peggy, it would take another volume as big as this to tell it. For when
Peggy’s sister grew a little older, they had such wonderful
adventures together that Peggy used to wonder how she had got on
all the tiresome years when she was alone.
 TRANSCRIBER NOTES

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