college

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports on the difficulty graduates face finding employment after completing college. Some of these students are choosing programs like the Peace Corps which are becoming increasingly difficult to be placed in.

Star-Tribune reporter Emma Carew writes:

This year, as the economy hit a downturn and employers cut jobs instead of creating them, a record number of graduates applied to programs that try to change the world — something experts believe is a top priority for today’s youth.

At Teach For America, a two-year program that places college graduates in low-performing schools around the country, the number of applicants fell in 2007 but this year jumped 36 percent to nearly 25,000 would-be teachers. Only 3,700 are placed. When the program began in 1990, 2,500 students applied. Even the Peace Corps, now in its 47th year, has had a 14 percent increase in applicants so far this year over last.

And the sociological commentary…

Teresa Swartz, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, said current college graduates are experiencing an extended period of adolescence, as the gap between high school and adulthood widens.

It’s harder for students to make livable wages right out of school, so they spend a few years exploring, she said.

Read more.

A press release this morning reports on new research published in the June issue of the American Sociological Review, which conclude that steep employment gains for women disprove the idea that more women are ‘opting out’ of full-time employment in favor of staying home.

Sociologist Christine Percheski studied employment trends among college-educated women, born between 1906 and 1975. She found that women’s employment levels had sharply increased and has especially changed for mothers with young children and women employed in traditionally male fields. She also concludes that the gap between childless women and mothers has diminished over time.

And debunking the ‘opting out’ myth…

“Despite anecdotal reports of successful working women returning to the home to assume child care responsibilities, less than 8 percent of professional women born since 1956 leave the workforce for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, according to the study.”

Full summary.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new series of studies about the trend towards young adults moving back home to live with their parents.

WSJ discusses findings highlighted by sociologist Katherine Newman…

“More upper- and middle-income parents, including many who felt pressed for time when their children were growing up, aren’t ready to be ‘finished with them’ by their 20s, says Katherine Newman, a Princeton University sociology professor and one of the project’s 20 researchers. Also, as more students attend college at older ages, parents are coming to regard the 20s as a time of self-discovery.”

And co-investigators…

“Researchers on the project set out to document economic factors driving the trend, but found it’s bigger than the financial causes usually blamed for it. To be sure, rising housing and commuting costs play a role, Dr. Yelowitz found. But neither those factors nor job-market changes fully explain the 25-year trend. The biggest increase in young adults living with parents came in the 1980s, when the labor market generally improved, he found. And rising real housing costs explain only about 15% of the drop in independent living among young adults, which started years before the sharpest run-up in housing.”

Full story.

Science Daily reports on a new study from Christine Whelan at the University of Iowa which suggests that men whose mothers earned a college degree and worked outside the home seem to have an effect on how they choose their wives.

Whelan’s study, which focuses on high-achieving men (defined as those who are in the top 10% of earnings for their age as well as those with a graduate degrees), are likely to marry a woman whose education mimics their mothers’. Of these high achieving men in the study, almost 80% of them whose mothers had college degrees married women with college degrees.

In addition, of those men whose mothers had graduate degrees, 62% of high-achieving men married other graduate degree holders, and 27% got hitched to women with college degrees.

Science Daily reports:

“‘Successful men in their 20s and 30s today are the sons of a pioneering generation of high-achieving career women. Their mothers serve as role models for how a woman can be nurturing and successful at the same time,’ said Whelan, a visiting assistant professor of sociology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. ‘One man I interviewed put it like this: “If your mother is a success, you don’t have any ideas of success and family that exclude a woman from working.” This Mother’s Day, I think we should thank those moms for leading the way toward gender equality for a younger generation.'”

Inside Higher Ed recently published an interview with Kathleen A. Bogle, assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at LaSalle University, on her new book Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus which explores the ‘hookup culture’ of college life through the study of two East Coast universities. Her in-depth interviews reveal varying effects for men and women and the relationship of this pattern of behavior to issues of alcohol use and sexual assault. Risky sex? No as much as you might think…