Blog Post #10

Abstract:

This document will test the idea of how the privatization of college and other governmental policies has shifted the overall cost of public, private, and for-profit bachelor’s degrees upwards, leading to a change in demand of more financially incentivized major choices. The main objective of this research is to test if there is a demand shift in major choice that has been created due to the rising overall price of higher education. Results suggest that changes in government funding to institutions are associated with both the price and the fields of studies that students are majoring in. Further analysis suggests how certain time periods do offer a relationship between tuition prices and major outcome, but the relationship is not consistent throughout the time of heightened college costs.

Works Cited:

Armstrong, Elizabeth, and Laura Hamilton.  “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality.”  Harvard UP, 2013.

Carnevale, Anthony, and Ban Cheah. “From Hard Times to Better Times.” Center on Education and the Workforce, 2015, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED558169.pdf.

Cooper, Melinda.  “In Loco Parentis: Human Capital, Student Debt, and the Logic of Family Investment.”  Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism.  Zone Books, 2017.  215-257.

Hurlbut, Steve, et al. “Delta Cost Project Database 1987-2015.” May 2017.

Pratt, Linda Ray. “Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.” Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. 1 Apr. 1998, Chicago.

“Salary Survey.” PayScale, www.payscale.com.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. 2019. “Average total tuition, fees, room and board rates charged for full-time undergraduate students in degree-granting institutions, by level and control of institution: Selected years, 1985–86 to 2016–17” Digest of Education Statistics, 2017 (NCES 2018-070)

Wang, Xuelli. “Why Students Choose STEM Majors: Motivation, High School Learning, and Postsecondary Context of Support.” American Educational Research Journal, SagePub, 2013, doi.org/10.3102/0002831213488622.

“Why College Is So Expensive In America.” YouTube, CNBC, 6 Feb. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWJ0OaojfiA.

Blog Post #9

If we view college education as a good, with a price level of the return of the educational level degree from tuition payment, then we should see a shift of demand from degrees with lesser financial return to degrees with a greater financial incentive. Will the student body in pursuit of higher education follow microeconomic principles when completing a college major? Or is college as an outlet of freedom and fields of study are chosen for ease of completion?

RQ: With the rising cost of college tuition, will there be a demand shift in the types of studies that students will choose to major in?

The other side of the question is that the major decision is based on factors like race, gender, socioeconomic background, and high school education level. Or that students seek college as a source of freedom and ease of completion is often chosen when choosing a degree to pursue.  

Often times people will argue that since there is gender and racial oppression, they tend to seek out different fields of study. This concept connects to Xueili Wang's studies on her paper “Why Students Choose STEM Majors: Motivation, High School Learning, and Postsecondary Context of Support.”

Blog Post #8

What is your “case” or chief example to explore in order to illustrate your argument and explain your frame? 

Since the college cost of tuition and college related expenses are increasing, in theory students should be seeking a greater return on their degree to outweigh the increased cost of college.

How does it speak to the debate you have identified in your proposal? 

Its pretty much the same point identified in the proposal.

What research have you got on the case? 

Data analysis on the chosen fields of study from private, for-profit, and public schools on the rise of tuition and the completed bachelor degrees to see a relationship and shifts in different classifications of major categories, index values of a rank system of return of major disciplines by average starting salary in the 3 most popular jobs attained with given degree, race and gender data on fields of study, and others. 


If there are online materials related to the case (including online articles, websites, or videos), please give those links in your post to help your readers and me learn more.

https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

• https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/Default.aspx?y=56

https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree

https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6005038

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWJ0OaojfiA

Blog Post #7

Research Blog #7: Frame



What theory, paradigm, term, or academic concepts help you make sense of your project?

 This is what we call an “academic frame.”  Explain how you are using academic terms and ideas to make sense of your project.  By this point you should have atleast six academic sources. 

Make reference to the most important ones that support your frame.



What theory, paradigm, term, or academic concepts help you make sense of your project?

1. Rising cost of tuition
2. Law of demand
3. Educational Pathways
4. Sociological differences in major choice

I am using these academic terms and ideas to theorize and test data to see if there is a shift in demand of certain types of degrees correlated with the effect of the rise of college tuition (IPEDS and Delta cost data).  Educational pathways could explain how students seeking higher education might not often go the route of a labor intensive major (Indebted, Zaloom), so that is an effect I would like to discuss, as well as the effect that gender, race, and socioeconomic position has on the completion of a college degree in various fields of studies.(Wang, Why students choose stem majors).

Literature Review #4

(1)Visual

(2)Citation

Wang, Xuelli. “Why Students Choose STEM Majors: Motivation, High School Learning, and Postsecondary Context of Support.” American Educational Research Journal, SagePub, 2013, doi.org/10.3102/0002831213488622.

(3)Summary.

The Research article speaks on why students choose to major in STEM fields as well as using the social cognitive career theory and other ideas to determine what kinds of students will chose this career path. They find that it is highly related to the math level the student has in his senior year of high school and his nationality to the likelihood of the student choosing to pursue a STEM major to completion.

(4)Author(s).

She is the professor of higher education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

(5)Key terms.

Social cognitive career theory - developed to explain how individuals form career interests, set vocational goals, persist in work environments, and attain job satisfaction.

postsecondary barriers to STEM entrance -  having dependent children and working long hours, may redirect them from pursuing challenging fields of study such as STEM

sociodemographic differences - differ based on race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

(6)Three Quotes.
"results from this study illuminate important racial differences in how pre-college learning and motivation exert their influence on students’ intent to major in STEM." no page #

"the first year in college can be critical, and as evidenced in this study, a number of postsecondary variables are related to entrance into STEM fields of study."

" is influenced by early math achievement to a greater extent among underrepresented minority students than among White and Asian students."

(7)Value. 

This material could help me provide a counter-argument that career paths are often times determined from effects from primary institutions, rather than an economic perspective of price levels and demand shifts.

Blog Post #6

Post at least one visual graphic that can illustrate your project.  Describe the visual and explain its significance. This can be an image found online, a graph that you have prepared in PowerPoint, or any other visual aid that can help other people understand your project.  Ideally, this should be a visual aid you might include in your oral presentation.  You are welcome to include it with the final paper as well, if appropriate.

Using data from the Delta Cost project of all Public educational institutions, I was able to create these graphs I will be using in my essay.

To obtain graph #1, I took the data into a program called Rstudio, filtered the data to only include schools that gave bachelor degrees, took the mean average of year by year prices and then divided it by the 2012 cpi scalar value in order to adjust the values into the same 2012 price level. Doing this for both In-state tuition and out of state tuition, resulted in the graph above, which I coded to save as an excel file type in order to clean it up to make it look more visually appealing.

For graph #2 and 3, I took a different method since I didn't need to adjust for price levels. Using the Carnegie2000 school classification, I was able to separate my data into different categories in order to see what types of schools students were completing at a bachelor level, by year. Since the categories "general" and "Liberal Arts" outweighed everything else, I decided to separate them into to graphs as you can see above. The data definitely surprised me, despite the increase in student body, we can see a large rise in theology schools and faith related institutions offering the largest change. Another thing of note is the rise in liberal arts, which I have some good supporting sources for as well. I will probably use these for my oral presentation, and I plan on making a few more if I can find another good source of data for another supporting idea I have.

Extra Credit Assignment #1

You can gain one point extra credit by watching one of these documentaries and posting a review on your course blog of the film, emphasizing ways it is useful for your project or connects with things we discussed in class. 
Your review must include at least one image (from the film or advertisements for it or of the director) and a link to where it can be watched. (If you embed the YouTube video or trailer, that counts for both).
It must also describe the most important scene, story, or quote from the film. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWJ0OaojfiA

This Documentary would provide useful supporting information on the types of college institutions that make up the market for higher education (non-profit, private, and public institutions), as well as providing figures for years outside of my data set, such as how state spending in 2017 for public schools is below pre - recession levels. Other important details that this documentary offers is how schools lower their academic standing in order to encourage enrollment, how for profit college students default on their college debt at a much higher rate, that Sticker price of college costs are rising and the rise of the "Income share agreement" - agreeing to pay an investor a percentage of their income for a set amount of years after they graduate. The image I chose is a self explanatory quote that shows how colleges can encourage demand by decreasing accepted scores to get more students to enroll to completion.