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Standing at the precipice: purposeful postsecondary pathways

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Content Standing at the Precipice:
Purposeful Postsecondary Pathways
by
Adam Carter
Rossier School Of Education
University Of Southern California
A dissertation presented to the
faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Education
(Global Executive)
August 2023

ii

Copyright 2023
Adam Carter
All Rights Reserved

iii

The Committee for Adam Carter certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Dr. Artineh Samkian
Dr. Helena Seli
Dr. Ruth Chung, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California 2023

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Abstract
Since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, American public schooling has
increasingly narrowed curricula and programming to a singular student outcome: full-
time four-year college or university. In the intervening years, significantly more
students have enrolled in four-year college or university, but only marginally more
early adults have graduated with a degree, and student debt has reached
unprecedented levels, nearing $2 trillion. With increasingly limited applied learning
options in high school, teens have experienced a crisis of purpose while non-degree
credentials are poised to become the most-conferred award in U.S. higher education
by 2030. This quantitative study explores the intersection of high school programming
with students’ sense of purpose, which predicts a host of positive outcomes—from on-
time high school graduation to postsecondary learning persistence to happiness,
resilience, and physical and psychological wellbeing. By analyzing the responses of
534 high school seniors across two states, the study demonstrates that factors such as
exposure to postsecondary opportunities, perceived support for postsecondary
learning, and an understanding of decision-making constraints regarding life after
high school predict a student’s sense of purpose. Additionally, a hierarchical analysis
of demographic variables including race, sex, socioeconomic status, ability status, and
English learner status demonstrated that unlike in so many other dimensions of U.S.
public education, when it comes to Purpose, demography is not destiny.

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Keywords: sense of purpose, postsecondary pathways, life after high school,
apprenticeship, occupational certification, college and career readiness, purpose,
wellbeing, fulfillment, student debt, career counseling, adolescent purpose

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Acknowledgments

So many incredible educators, students, and leaders shaped my doctoral journey and
contributed meaningfully to this dissertation. The advice, feedback, guidance, and inspiration of
this group of academics, professionals, and personal supporters have allowed me to complete this
study and to discover my own sense of purpose. First, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr.
Ruth Chung, who served as my dissertation chair. Dr. Chung was always supportive of me and
of my research, and she provided a needed critical eye at every step along the way. Beyond that,
Dr. Chung exposed me to the world of quantitative research, making the tools and methods of
quantitative research accessible to me as I sought to better understand the experiences of young
people on the precipice of high school graduation. I am also deeply indebted to the other
members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Artineh Samkian, Dr. Mark Power Robison, and Dr.
Helena Seli. Dr. Samkian ensured that equity and student voice remained central in my study,
and helped my thinking move towards what Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to as “the
simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Dr. Robison’s course readings and sharp intellect
always challenged me to consider alternatives, avoid easy conclusions, and acknowledge the
broader historical and cultural contexts in which the study took place. And Dr. Seli, thank you
for your willingness to jump into my committee as a second quantitative researcher, given how
the study evolved. I’m so appreciative for you and for your adaptability, positivity, and
feedback. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
By virtue of the USC EdD program design, I was fortunate to be a part of a small cohort
of driven professionals determined to learn together, to push one another, and to put research into
action in the hopes of making the world a better place for young people. Daisy, Fatima, Jimmy,
Lisa, Melody, JP, Omowale, Peter, Ms. Queenie, Sedda, and Susan: thank you for your insights,
support, generosity of spirit, and great discussions across two years and four continents.

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So much of the experience of this doctoral program is defined by the program director
and professors, who are responsible for experiential learning and for ensuring the cohort’s safety
and immersive programming across continents. This dissertation has been informed in great part
by my professional experiences as a teacher and public K-12 leader, but it was also informed by
the global nature of the program itself. A special thanks to Dr. Sabrina Chong and Alondra
Morales, who cared for us as scholars and as people. Additionally, thanks to Dr. Cathy Krop,
whose kindness and wisdom made a literature review across three systems accessible. Thanks to
Dr. Tracy Tambascia, who always took a deep interest in the practical implications of my
research, particularly on students positioned furthest from opportunity in the American public
education system. Thanks also to Dr. Royel Johnson, Dr. Lawrence Picus, Dr. Anthony Maddux,
and Dr. Adrian Donato for your guidance and support throughout my studies, and particularly
throughout the development of this dissertation.
The process of writing this dissertation is a testament to the professional support of my
colleagues at Marshall Street. I am proud to work with dedicated educators and educational
leaders who are not only fierce and effective advocates for young people and those who guide
young people, but who also support one another in their professional development. I am honored
to work with such an incredible team, who has made sacrifices that have allowed me to pursue
my own professional passions. Adam Black, Kevin Bock, Pam Lamcke, Stephanie Lassalle, Dr.
Casey O’Donnell, Heather Piccotto, Greg Ponikvar, Howard Shen, Diane Tavenner, and others
at Marshall Street have given me the time, grace, and space needed to complete this dissertation.
Thank you, and I hope to repay the kindness and generosity that you have extended to me in
these past years.
When I was just considering the idea of enrolling in a doctoral program, it was my father,
Kim Carter, who provided me with the encouragement and a bottomless well of love to pursue

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this direction. Although my dad passed away just as I began my doctoral journey, it is his spirit
that has kept me determined to forge this path despite the many global and local events that
could have stood in my way. Similarly, my mother, Debra Carter, offered me countless hours of
support (and childcare) throughout the past years of completing this dissertation. Thank you,
Mom, for always taking an interest in me and for always lending a hand, and an ear, when
they’re most needed.
It is my wife, Maureen Suhendra, who made my studies possible. At every step along the
way, you have provided me with encouragement and love. From handling all the drop offs and
pick-ups for weeks on end, to sharing your belief in my ability to put theory into practice, to
listening to me process new ideas and experiences, I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude.
Thank you. I love you.
Finally, I want to thank Lulu and Watson. What you may have missed in the past couple
of years is how hard it has been for me to spend time in my studies instead of with you. Although
I have always tried to protect our time together, there have been many weekends and evenings,
not to mention the weeks out of town, that I have been studying and writing rather than reading
you bedtime stories and riding bikes in the neighborhood together. I am deeply grateful for your
adaptability and for the joy you have brought, and continue to bring, to my life. I can only hope
that this dissertation journey will help me be a good role model for you as you discover and
pursue your own purpose in life.

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Table of Contents
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... vi
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... ix
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................. xi
List of Figures ..........................................................................................................................xiii
Chapter One: Introduction to The Study ...................................................................................... 1
Introduction and Background of the Problem ....................................................................... 2
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions ...................................................................... 8
Importance of the Study ..................................................................................................... 10
Overview of Theoretical Framework .................................................................................. 13
Definitions ......................................................................................................................... 16
Chapter 2: Literature Review ................................................................................................... 18
Alternative Postsecondary Pathways .................................................................................. 19
Effects of Non-Formalized Personalized Postsecondary Pathways ...................................... 31
Barriers to Matching All Young People With Meaningful Postsecondary Opportunities ..... 40
Misaligned Incentives Amongst K-12, Industry, and Higher Education .............................. 46
Emerging Trends & Partial Solutions for Increasing the Supply of High-Quality
Alternative Postsecondary Pathways .................................................................................. 51
Chapter Three: Methods ........................................................................................................... 59
Site or Organization Overview ........................................................................................... 60

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Participants ........................................................................................................................ 63
Procedure ........................................................................................................................... 65
Instrumentation .................................................................................................................. 66
Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 69
Limitations, Delimitations, and Assumptions ..................................................................... 73
Chapter 4: Results .................................................................................................................... 76
Analyses of Research Questions ......................................................................................... 76
Chapter 5: Discussion .............................................................................................................. 94
Summary and Implications of Principal Results .................................................................. 94
Limitations ....................................................................................................................... 106
Recommendations for Future Studies ............................................................................... 107
Conclusion 139
References 141
Appendix A: Survey ............................................................................................................... 140
Appendix B: Information Sheet ............................................................................................... 144
Appendix C: Administration Script ......................................................................................... 145

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List of Tables

Table 1: College Enrollment Rates of 18- to 24-year-olds by Race/Ethnicity: 2000, 2010, and
2018.......................................................................................................................................... 28
Table 2: Study Participants, Referents in Regressions, and N size ............................................ 64
Table 3: Means and Standard Deviations for Measure ofAdol Purpose Subscales and Composite
Measure .................................................................................................................................... 69
Table 4: Alphas Reliability of Psycho-social Variables ............................................................ 70
Table 5: Research Question 1 - Analytical Approach ............................................................... 71
Table 6: Significance Table for Regression Step 1: Demographic Factors Predicting Sense of
Purpose (3 subscales) ................................................................................................................ 76
Table 7: Means for Intention by Racial Demographic Group (N Total = 515) ........................... 77
Table 8: Means for Prosocial Reasoning by Sex (N Total = 526) .............................................. 77
Table 9: Means for Prosocial Reasoning by Racial Demographic Group (N Total = 515) ......... 77
Table 10: Means for Prosocial Reasoning by Ability Status (N Total = 534) ............................ 78
Table 11: Significance Table for Regression Step 2: Academic Factors Predicting Sense of
Purpose (3 subscales) ................................................................................................................ 79
Table 12: Means for Intention by GPA Group (N Total = 532) ................................................. 80
Table 13: Means for Prosocial Reasoning by GPA Group (N Total = 532) ............................... 80
Table 14: N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Sense of
Purpose (composite).................................................................................................................. 81
Table 15: N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses
Predicting Intention ................................................................................................................... 81
Table 16: N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting
Engagement .............................................................................................................................. 81

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Table 17: N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Prosocial
Reasoning ................................................................................................................................. 81
Table 18: Sense of Purpose (3 subscales) Predicted by Exposure (composite), Constraints
(composite), Support (composite), and Interest (6: BA, AA, Occupational Certification,
Bootcamp, Apprenticeship, and Gap Year) After Controlling for Demographic and GPA
Variables .................................................................................................................................. 82
Table 19: Significance Table for Racial Factors for Exposure, Support, Constraints, and Interest
................................................................................................................................................. 84
Table 20: Means for Exposure, Support, and Interest by Racial Group (N Total = 515) ............ 85
Table 21: Significance Table for Sex Factors ........................................................................... 87
Table 22: Means for Results Regarding Constraints and Interest by Sex (N Total = 525) ......... 87
Table 23: Significance Table for Socio-economic Disadvantage .............................................. 88
Table 24: Means for Results Regarding Exposure and Interest by Socio-economic
Disadvantage (SED) (N Total = 534) ........................................................................................ 88
Table 25: Significance Table for English Learner Status (N Total = 534) ................................. 89
Table 26: Means for Results Regarding Support and Interest by English Learner
(ELL) Status (N Total = 534) .................................................................................................... 89
Table 27: Significance Table for Ability Status (N Total = 534) ............................................... 90
Table 28: Means for Results Regarding Interest by Ability Status (N Total = 534) ................... 90
Table 29: Significance Table for Academic Performance (GPA) (N Total = 534) ..................... 91
Table 30: Means for Results Regarding Exposure and Interest by Academic Performance Band
(GPA Group) (N Total = 532) ................................................................................................... 92

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List of Figures
Figure 1: The Study’s Logic Model .......................................................................................... 16
Figure 2: The Fortunate Fifth: Educational and Labor Market Outcomes of 100 9th Grade
Students .................................................................................................................................... 24
Figure 3: Acceleration of Non-Degree Credentials Conferred, Historically and Predicted
(in millions) .............................................................................................................................. 52
Figure 4: Scatterplot of Purpose and Support Visualized By Risk Count .................................. 93

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Chapter One: Introduction to The Study

Since the 1990s, American high school students have faced an increasingly high-stakes
choice: attain high grades, top test scores, and substantial financial backing in order to attend
college or figure out life after high school with little structured support (Symonds et al., 2011).
While American high schools have - uniquely amongst OECD peers - narrowed their curricula to
academic subjects for all students, eviscerated career and technical education, ballooned
counselor caseloads, and stigmatized the non-baccalaureate postsecondary paths that nearly two-
thirds of their graduates ultimately take (Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019; Prothero & Riser-Kositsky,
2022; OECD, 2000; Kreisman & Strange, 2019; Gammill, 2015; Dee et al., 2013), colleges and
universities have become increasingly unaffordable (Marcus, 2022), largely unaccountable to the
labor market (Hanson, 2021), massively subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer (Sawhill, 2018), and —
at least at the elite colleges that garner the majority of media attention —politically progressive
to the point of being out of touch with the American public (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018; Anderson,
2023; Jaschik, 2023). Emerging adults have taken notice and are opting out of college and
university at rates not seen in at least fifty years (Nadworny, 2022). As a result of these trends,
high schools are beginning to reconsider the “college for all” model that has characterized
American education since the early 1990s (Putnam, 2016; Manno, 2021; Linked Learning,
2022). Instead of pushing all students towards the singular destination of full-time four-year
college or university, which has become the “traditional pathway” beyond high school, K-12
systems are beginning to support students in defining alternative, or personalized, postsecondary
pathways (Horn & Tavenner, 2022; Loyd, 2022; National Governors Association, 2023).
Personalized postsecondary training options beyond full-time four-year college and
university exist, but they require young people to be exposed to a range of postsecondary

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opportunities, and to navigate a set of misaligned systems that full-time residential baccalaureate
programs put together: constructing coherence from the disjointed world of work, world of
learning, and world of daily responsibility (Hoffman et al., 2021). These personalized pathways
also require young people to know themselves, to choose and to persist in their postsecondary
plans with the support of a community that does not exist in a dorm, fraternity, or residential
campus. As K-12 school organizations move beyond the “college for all” model, they aim to
support young people in understanding available postsecondary opportunities, in navigating such
opportunities with a sense of purpose, and by ensuring that their programs and supports serve
students equitably—lest they heedlessly return to vocational education’s segregated past
(Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019; Holzer & Baum, 2017; Policy Leadership Trust, 2022; Tucker,
2019; Putnam, 2016). Therefore, K-12 school organizations seek greater understanding of how to
awaken adolescents’ sense of purpose in light of the many postsecondary pathways available -
pathways that include, but are not limited to, full-time four-year college and university.
Introduction and Background of the Problem

Although the top three goals current high school graduates express for pursuing higher
education are related to getting a job and establishing a career (Fidelity, 2021), American
colleges and universities are highly variable in their return on investment to students (Itkowitz,
2021), resulting in a decline in the perceived value of higher education (Fishman, Ekowo, &
Ezeugo, 2017). Students from working- and middle-class families who make it into college are
leaving without degrees at increasingly higher rates and those who remain in college take longer
to finish their degrees, racking up additional debt along the way—a trend that has accelerated in
recent years (Goldrick-Rab, 2016). Degree attainment is only 43.8 percent overall in the United
States, and degree completion disproportionately favors the wealthy. Degree attainment is 32.4

3
percent for Black people, 25.5 percent for Hispanics, 25.1 percent for Native Americans, and
11.8 percent for children born to parents in the bottom 40 percent of wage earners (Lumina
Foundation, 2019). Meanwhile, 70 percent of jobs are projected to require postsecondary
education and training by 2027, and many of the fastest growing jobs will require a bachelor’s
degree by 2026 (Burning Glass Technologies, 2021). High schools—even high-performing
schools with missions of college readiness—struggle to navigate the postsecondary landscape
and provide meaningful guidance to students transitioning into life after high school (Deming et
al., 2014; Garland et al., 2018; Bankert et al., 2021). In this context, “the biggest structural
barrier to increasing college completion rates and career success is the enduring and seemingly
intractable disconnect between high school, higher education, and our workforce systems”
(Hoffman et al., 2021, p. 4).
High School Students Face a Highly Variable College Market Without Sufficient Guidance
In aggregate, attaining a college degree pays off in regards to lifetime earnings (Autor,
2014); however, not all students have the same access to college, not all colleges are equally
successful in graduating students, and not all degrees are of equal value in the labor market.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, “today, more young people from all
races and income levels aspire to attend college than in any previous generation” (Bankert et al.,
2021, p. 1). Yet “access to colleges varies greatly by parent income”, particularly for elite, highly
selective, and selective universities, and “the colleges that offered many low-income students
pathways to success are becoming less accessible over time” (Chetty et al., 2017, p. 5).
Additionally, although wealthy students are five times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree
compared to the lowest income students (Bankert et al., 2021), “low-income students admitted to
selective colleges do not appear over-placed, as their earnings outcomes are similar to those of

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their peers from higher income families” (Chetty et al., 2017, p. 41). Thus, the additional
financial and navigational barriers that low-income students face on their paths to college
acceptance, admission, and graduation are what undermine their degree attainment, not their
inability to succeed academically at challenging colleges. While the college marketplace is well-
segmented into for-profit and nonprofit colleges, four-year and two-year colleges, and colleges at
various tiers of selectivity (not selective, selective, highly selective, elite, and ivy plus), the
already complex postsecondary landscape becomes increasingly challenging for secondary
students and their supporters to navigate when considering the highly-variable programs within
colleges that will enable graduates to accomplish their post-college professional goals (Itzkowitz,
2021) and the unclear and, at times, misrepresented actual costs of college attendance (Goldrick-
Rab, 2016). Additionally, college counseling in American high schools is underfunded and
highly variable, but career counseling is almost nonexistent, with few high school counselors
even perceiving career counseling to be a part of their job responsibilities (Reddy, et. al., 2015;
Parsad et. al., 2003). Even though American high school students of all races and income levels
see college attendance as an important avenue to achieve their career goals (Fidelity, 2021), the
barrier of information asymmetry impedes postsecondary progress for many students (Schneider
and Columbus, 2017; Symonds et. al., 2011).
Supported Options Beyond Full-Time Four-Year College
If students and families value college as a means to the goal of social mobility (Saurbier,
2020), but “higher education today does surprisingly little to promote upward mobility” (Sandel,
2020, p. 168), then it makes sense that high schoolers and their supporters look to postsecondary
options beyond college — as they have in unprecedented numbers since 2020 (Saul, 2022).
While programs do exist to support career and vocational training, government subsidies for

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college attendance equaled $162 billion in academic year 2014-15 compared to $1.1 billion for
career and technical education in that same period (Sawhill, 2018, p. 114). The United States
government spends roughly one hundred and fifty times more per year on college subsidies than
on career and vocational training, yet just over one-third of Americans earn a bachelor’s degree
(U.S. Census, 2020). Other countries—particularly those in western Europe—spend five to ten
times the relative amount that the United States does on active labor market programs and have
more defined pathways into skilled work for young people as a result (Sandel, 2018). Military
service provides an alternative to full-time college as a comprehensive postsecondary option for
high school graduates, but well over one hundred times the number of young people entering the
military each year are enrolled in undergraduate programs (NCES, 2021) each fall. The well-
funded infrastructure that drives high school graduates into a wide variety of colleges and
universities is simply not in place for military, career, and vocational programs in the United
States, not to mention the social stigma that comes with non-college postsecondary options
(Sawhill, 2018; Sandel, 2020).
Full-time Four-Year Alternatives: A Brief Inventory
Given the complexities presented by the lack of alignment between American high
school, college, and labor markets, which operate as three distinct systems in terms of incentives,
alignment, governance, and staffing (Hoffman et al., 2021), school systems within America’s
decentralized education model have developed few comprehensive solutions that solve the
problem of defining meaningful, accessible postsecondary pathways that enable the success of
all young people. However, myriad solutions exist to specific problems experienced by students
as they navigate postsecondary pathways.

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In and beyond K-12, programs exist to address the need for workforce development that
enables continued, flexible postsecondary learning. These solutions include:
● Dual enrollment programs, which provide high school students the opportunity to earn
college credit. The state of Texas has been a leader in dual enrollment and early college
programs, with 65,000 students enrolled in such programs each year (Texas Education
Agency, 2020), a scale enabled by state legislation that provides equal funding to both
high schools and community colleges for dual enrollment.
● Curricular pathways, also known as guided pathways, “bridge K-12 to higher education”
and “help students stay on track and complete their programs on time” with a number of
research-based best practices for supporting students into and through community college
(Jenkins et al, 2018, p.21).
● Unbundled local and online college options provide degree and certificate access to
students interested in entering high-growth professions while working. Southern New
Hampshire University and Arizona State Local are examples of accredited higher
education initiatives used in low-cost local programs such as DVX in Los Angeles, Duet
in Boston, and Rivet School in the San Francisco Bay Area. Such initiatives are typically
aimed at providing degree access to low-income students, offering intensive advising,
and marketing professional placements (Rivet School, 2022; Duet, 2022; ASU Local,
2022).
● Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs) are an innovative financial instrument used by
colleges and programs such as Purdue University, Make School, and Robert Morris
University that offer access to highly paid fields to qualified students who require

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deferred payment for tuition and living expenses (Purdue University, 2022; Make School,
2022; Robert Morris University, 2020).
● State-initiated models such as Delaware Pathways engage “K-12 educators, businesses,
postsecondary education, philanthropy, and community organizations” to “create
pathways from school to careers aligned with state and regional economic needs”
(Manno, 2021, p.45).
● Apprenticeship programs hold the promise of “increasing opportunity by raising skills,
productivity, and wages, thereby increasing the chances for young people to find and
hold jobs providing middle class incomes (Lerman, 2016, p.360). While apprenticeship
programs are robust in many countries, including Switzerland (Hoffman et al, 2021) and
other nations in Europe (Sandel, 2020, p.190), the United States has a relatively
underdeveloped and variably managed apprenticeship sector, despite myriad advantages
to both workers and firms (Lerman, 2016).
● Occupational certificates represent the most rapidly growing segment of the higher
education marketplace (Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019) and have, for the past decade, been
the second most common award in higher education after the bachelor’s degree
(Gonzalez, 2012).
Each promising practice holds the potential for increasing access and opportunities for
young people navigating their paths beyond high school, and recent firms and philanthropic
organizations, such as Jobs for the Future (JFF), The Walton Family Foundation, and the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation have advocated for a merging of various initiatives, such as those
above, into cohesive pathways that enable young people to proactively build skills, knowledge,
social capital, and work experience without the high cost—including the opportunity cost—of

8
full-time enrollment in college programs (Hoffman et al., 2021; Manno, 2021; Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, n.d.).
Young people view higher education as a vehicle to move towards their goal of fulfilling
work. Financial independence is a primary outcome of such work (Rath et al., 2010). In broad
terms, a bachelor’s degree provides a reliable path to financial independence, but only about one-
third of Americans attain a bachelor’s degree—a fact that obscures the underlying racial and
class inequities beneath the overall degree attainment rate (Carnevale et al., 2020). While
considerable work has been done to improve access to meaningful degree and certification
programs and to support a greater diversity of young people in attending college, the systemic
gaps between K-12, higher education, and the labor market persist. Aside from some innovative
state-sponsored programs, there has been little alignment of existing systems in service of the
diverse goals of young people on a broad range of postsecondary pathways.
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions

The purpose of this study is to understand students’ perceptions of postsecondary
opportunity in the context of declining college enrollment (National Student Clearinghouse,
2022) and expanding non-degree postsecondary pathways (Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019), and to
support high schools interested in supporting students preparing for a range of purposeful
postsecondary pathways. By understanding the relationships between students’ exposure to
postsecondary options, interest in those options, perceived support for those options, perceived
choice constraints, and students’ senses of purpose (Damon et al., 2003), high schools can better
design and implement programming that prepares students for life after high school.
Additionally, by better understanding demographic group differences in such relationships—

9
particularly related to race, sex, school community, experience with poverty, ability status, and
grade point average (GPA)—schools can attend to issues of equity and access.
The intent of the study is to shed light on the problem of matching 18-year-olds,
particularly the approximately two-thirds who will not attain a bachelor’s degree (U.S. Census
Bureau), with purposeful postsecondary pathways. Understanding high school seniors’
perceptions of the influences that support and hinder their sense of purpose regarding a diversity
of meaningful postsecondary opportunities has the potential to provide valuable insight to school
organizations interested in moving beyond the “college for all” model that has dominated U.S.
public education since 1990 (Putnam, 2016). The current model has driven increased college
enrollment, but it has made limited progress in propelling young people toward college
completion—particularly for students who enter college from the lower half of the income
distribution (Chetty et al., 2017). The perceptions of high school seniors engaged in a school
organization’s shift towards personalized postsecondary pathways, and how the shift affects
students’ knowledge and motivation to pursue such personalized pathways, has implications for
K-12 educators, workforce development agencies, higher education professionals, and designers
of innovative postsecondary training models.
The study will be guided by Damon, Menon, and Bronk’s (2003) theoretical framework,
which defines adolescent sense of purpose as “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish
something that is at once meaningful to the self and leads to productive engagement with some
aspect of the world beyond the self” (Bronk, 2011, p. 2) and focuses on intention, engagement,
and prosocial reasoning as the constructs constituting the larger concept of sense of purpose.
Research questions guiding the study include:
Primary:

10
• To what extent do interest in, exposure to, perceived support for, and perceived constraints
associated with a range of postsecondary options as well as demographic variables predict
students’ sense of purpose?
Secondary:
• Are there demographic group differences in students’ exposure to, interest in, support for,
and perceived constraints to accessing a range of postsecondary options?
Exploratory:
• `For students with college-going risk factors (2.5 or below GPA, disability/IEP, and/or
poverty/FRL status), does greater exposure to, interest in, and support for a variety of
postsecondary options predict a greater sense of purpose?
Importance of the Study

American society, and America’s education system by extension, is at an inflection point.
Approximately two-thirds of American adults do not attain a bachelor’s degree despite over
thirty years of a “college-for-all” mantra guiding American K-12 education (Putnam, 2016).
Student debt, driven by the increasing cost of a college education, is at a crisis level: 43.4
million student borrowers are in debt by an average of approximately $40,000 each (Hanson,
2022). At $1.75 trillion, student loan debt is now the second-largest debt category in the United
States, after home mortgages (Friedman, 2022)—a fact that is particularly troubling since the
three decades preceding 2020 marked significant increases in college attendance rates but only
modest increases in college graduation rates (American Compass, 2022). Thus, an increasing
share of student borrowers assumed the cost of college without seeing any of the labor market
rewards conferred by the acquisition of a diploma. As a result, high school students are
increasingly wary of full-time four-year college; according to the National Student

11
Clearinghouse, the class of 2021 represented the largest decline in university enrollment in
America’s history (2022). The overall decline in college enrollment from pre-pandemic levels to
today is 9.2 percent, or nearly 2 million students (National Student Clearinghouse, 2022).
Scholars across disciplines and across the political spectrum have linked this confluence of
factors—increased enrollment in college and increased loan debt, stagnant degree attainment and
widening skepticism about the value of attending college—to increased political polarization,
growing economic and racial inequality, and the dangerous emergence of two separate and
unequal Americas (Carnevale & Strohl, 2013; Cass, 2018; Goodhart, 2020; Putnam, 2016;
Sandel, 2020).
While K-12 school systems across the United States are aware of the downsides of a
singular focus on college for all, alternatives remain elusive. In January of 2022, U.S. Education
Secretary Miguel Cardona stated that “each high school in the country should have at least one
career counselor so that every high schooler has great options when they graduate” (Cardona,
2022). While a worthwhile sentiment, there are only about 5,000 career counselors currently
working in education in the United States, and the median tenure of a career counselor is 1-2
years (Zippia, 2022). By comparison, there are roughly 26,000 high schools in the United States
(NCES, 2021). By examining the student perceptions in a leading public charter network—an
organization founded on a college-for-all model, lauded for its doubling of the national average
of alumni who graduate from college in six or fewer years, and accomplished at scaling its model
to public schools in nearly every state (Mathewson, 2020; Fast Company, 2015)—it is possible
to better understand the impact of efforts to provide greater exposure to and support for a diverse
range of purposeful postsecondary options as a school system expands their definition of
graduate success. Understanding the high school senior experience, with a particular focus on

12
those high school seniors for whom personalized postsecondary pathways are most likely to
provide purposeful opportunities, through the organizational shift from college for all to
personalized postsecondary pathways, will inform the efforts of The Heights as they undertake a
multi-year process of program improvement, while also providing actionable knowledge to
school systems across the nation engaged in the uncomfortable expansion of graduate success.
This study is meant to inform educators and leaders at the nexus of the critical and poorly
supported transition (Tucker, 2019) that each student must make from the structured world of
formal public education to the world of work and the world of academia. K-12 leaders must
proceed cautiously towards an expanded and personalized set of postsecondary pathways for
students, lest they replicate the sins of the inequitable two-tiered education system of the past
(Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019). Providers of alternative postsecondary pathways need to
understand the needs and perspectives of their future students to most effectively meet their
needs (Hoffman et al., 2021). Workforce development agencies would benefit from
understanding the ways in which young people perceive entry into the world of work, as well as
the drivers of purpose for young people experiencing access to high school programming beyond
college for all. Finally, higher education professionals being squeezed by an increasingly
competitive postsecondary landscape have the opportunity to better understand the perspectives
of the young people likely to be in the nearly 2 million students who opt out of college and
university attendance (Seltzer, 2019). If The Heights is successful in enacting organizational
shifts that lead high school students to embrace and pursue personalized postsecondary
pathways, then they could once again serve as a model for the next wave of education reform. If
the efforts sputter, and high school students at The Heights experience organizational changes as
demotivating or unclear, then The Heights could serve as a cautionary tale, or, as a set of lessons

13
for better engaging and communicating change efforts to the intended recipients of those
changes.
Overview of Theoretical Framework

This study aims to describe the relationships between high school seniors’ exposure to,
interest in, perceived support for, and perceived constraints for a range of postsecondary
pathways and their sense of purpose. The theoretical framework guiding the study is Sense of
Purpose, or “youth purpose,” or “adolescent purpose,” which is defined as “a stable and
generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the self and leads to
productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self” (Bronk, 2011, p. 2;
Damon, 2009; Damon, Menon, & Bronk, 2003). Sense of Purpose is conceptualized according
to three dimensions: Intention, Engagement, and Prosocial Reasoning (Bronk et al., 2010).
Sense of Purpose is a predictor of greater academic self-regulation, high school and college
persistence, and grades, particularly in high school STEM courses (Yeager et al., 2014),
happiness (French & Joseph, 1999), resiliency (Masten & Reed, 2002), psychological wellbeing
(King et. al., 2006), and life satisfaction (Bronk et al., 2009). Purpose can infuse adolescents’
lives with a heightened sense of motivation, relevance, and direction if they are able to view
school and community engagement as pathways to fulfilling occupational goals (Koshy &
Menon Mariano, 2011).
The emergence of sense of purpose as a psychological construct is regularly attributed to
Victor Frankl, who believed philosophical meaning is central to human motivation (Seligman &
Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The beautiful passage below is from the English edition of Frankl’s
Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he recounts a transcendent moment during his forced labor

14
in a Nazi concentration camp; it captures the essence of the original construct in narrative and
descriptive language:
I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent
protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sense my spirit piercing through the
enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from
somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an
ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on
the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in
Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness” (Frankl, 1959,
p.60).
In direct contrast to the behaviorist and psychoanalytic schools of his day, Frankl believed that
purpose is “a primary force” (Frankl, 1959, p. 121) in human life (Damon et al., 2003) and his
academic cause for a serious study of sense of purpose and its links to motivation were taken up
by Martin Seligman and Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi as part of the “positive psychology”
movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).
A range of studies have demonstrated the value to individuals and society when people
possess a sense of purpose. Studies of aging indicate purpose as a prime predictor of health and
wellbeing in old age (Baltes et al., 2006). Studies of individuals with mental health problems and
disabilities have found that helping such individuals discover purpose assists them in overcoming
their psychological struggles (Werner and Smith, 2001). Eric Erikson argued that an essential
task of human development is to emerge from childhood with a realistic sense of ambition and
purpose (Erikson, 1994). Social psychologist Carol Ryff and her colleagues have made
compelling associations between purpose and interpersonal skills, personal agency, and positive

15
self-image—all of which she claims to be essential for health and happiness (Ryff and Singer,
1998). The psychologist Dan McAdams links highly purposeful people with increased health,
civic engagement, and contentment as adults, and particularly relative to adults who do not
demonstrate purposeful behaviors (McAdams, 2001).
In adolescents, leading researchers believe that sense of purpose “plays a powerfully
generative role in development” (Damon et al., 2003, p. 120). The psychologist Bonnie Benard
posits four key characteristics of children who respond resiliently to difficult circumstances: a
sense of purpose, social competence, autonomy, and problem-solving skills (Benard, 1991). Of
those four, developmental psychologist William Damon designates sense of purpose as the most
important, since it “creates the motivation for the child to establish” the other three
characteristics (Damon, 2009, p.30). Brain researcher Ronald Dahl notes that the same passions
that can make adolescence a time of impulsivity and self-harm can also be harnessed into
healthy, prosocial, and goal-oriented pursuits (Dahl, 2004). Adolescent purpose presents an
antidote to the mental instability that comes with self-absorption, and it “endows a person with
joy in good times and resilience in hard times” (Damon, 2009, p.31).
Given the well-documented connections between the possession of a sense of purpose
and an individual’s long-term life outcomes across dimensions of physical and social-emotional
wellbeing, resilience, community and social engagement, happiness, and prosocial motivation,
this quantitative study probes the relationships between a diverse group of 534 high school
seniors’ exposure to, interest in, perceived support for, and perceived constraints to
postsecondary pathways and their sense of purpose, as captured in the logic model below (Figure
1).

16
Figure 1

The Study’s Logic Model

K-12 Programmatic Inputs Leading Indicators: Study’s
Theoretical Framework
Distal Outcomes
Predict… Predict…
● Exposure to
Postsecondary
Opportunities
● Exploration of
Postsecondary
Opportunities
● Support for
Postsecondary
Pathways
● Understanding of
Barriers to Pursuing
Postsecondary
Pathways of Interest
● Sense of Purpose
○ Intention
○ Engagement
○ Prosocial
Reasoning
● On-Time High School
Graduation
● Postsecondary
Matriculation
● Postsecondary
Persistence
● Happiness
● Resiliency
● Physical and
Psychological
Wellbeing
● Life Satisfaction
● Civic Engagement
● Interpersonal Skills
While exploring, and controlling for, Demographic Differences including Race, Sex, Socio-
Economic Status, English Learner Status, Ability Status as well as Academic Performance

Definitions

Below are definitions of key terms used within this study.
Sense of Purpose is also known as “Youth Purpose” and “Adolescent Purpose.” Defined
as “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once meaningful to the
self and leads to productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self” (Bronk,
2011, p. 2; Damon, 2009; Damon, Menon, & Bronk, 2003). Sense of Purpose is conceptualized
according to three dimensions: intention, engagement, and prosocial reasoning (Bronk et al.,
2010).
Risk Factors are associated with a lower likelihood of matriculation to and on-time
graduation from a four-year college or university and include:

17
● Poverty (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2020)
● Disability (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015)
Secondary academic performance as measured by low (2.5 or below) grade point
average (GPA) (Allensworth & Clark, 2020)
Traditional Pathway: Full-time four-year college has, over the past three decades,
become the traditional pathway advanced by U.S. public high schools (Putnam, 2016).
Alternative Pathway refers to Postsecondary opportunities available to high school
graduates beyond full-time four-year college or university, including Apprenticeships, Certificate
Programs, Credentialing Programs, Gap Year Programs, and Bootcamps.
Personalized (or Purposeful) Pathway is a postsecondary pathway intentionally selected
by an emerging adult after a process of self-reflection, exposure to and exploration of
postsecondary opportunities, prosocial reasoning focused on making a positive difference in the
world, engagement with supporters, and a consideration of realistic decision-making constraints.

18
Chapter 2: Literature Review
Nearly two-thirds of American adults do not attain baccalaureate degrees (U.S. Census,
2020), yet the formal K-12 public education system is currently engineered to support no other
postsecondary pathway aside from full-time four-year college and university enrollment (Petrilli,
2022). It has not always been this way in America: robust vocational pathways were offered to
students until the 1980s, when “college for all” became the mantra of K-12 education reform
(Putnam, 2016). The vocational education system was left underfunded, siloed, and stigmatized
(Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019). As a result, both America’s youth and American society have
suffered: the former, disillusionment and a loss of shared prosperity, the latter, political
polarization and rising economic inequality (Sandel, 2020).
There are two major barriers to matching all young people with meaningful
postsecondary pathways. First, the transition from high school to the world of academia or the
world of work is plagued by the problem of information asymmetry. High schoolers do not have
the supports needed to process the vast array of information about postsecondary opportunities
(Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Tough, 2019; Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019). Second, the three vast systems
at the center of the transition out of high school, K-12, higher education, and industry, possess
independent and often-misaligned systems of incentives. K-12 needs to get students to graduate
(Hoffman et al., 2021). Four-year colleges need to enroll students, as selectively as possible.
Community colleges need to be all things to all people. Industry needs to be efficient and
competitive. There is no group accountable for aligning these disparate systems, and little
coordination amongst them (Schwartz and Loyd, 2019; Bankert et. al., 2021).
As young people increasingly question the return on investment to the traditional
postsecondary pathway of full-time four-year college or university (Fishman, Ekowo, & Ezeugo,

19
2017), the supply of alternative postsecondary pathways—including apprenticeships,
credentialing programs, and industry certification programs—is increasing (Tesfai et al., 2018).
Many of these alternative pathways provide young people with low, opportunity cost, low, actual
cost, short programming, and a range of meaningful work and professional connections relative
to the traditional pathway (Cronen et al., 2018; Schneider & Columbus, 2017; Symonds et al.,
2011). Drawing on international and historical models, researchers note that the benefits of
expanding postsecondary pathways for all and creating a system of lifelong learning with no
dead ends results in a more egalitarian society (Tucker, 2019), a less polarized political climate
(Sandel, 2020), lowered economic inequality (Putnam, 2016), greater motivation to learn for all
K-12 students (Symonds et al., 2011), a more focused higher education sector (Hoffman et al,
2021), and a skilled workforce (Tucker, 2019a). This literature review will examine the changing
landscape of postsecondary pathways in the United States, with a particular focus on the effects
of the “college for all” focus of K-12 schools since 1990. Who participates in various
postsecondary pathways, as well as the misaligned systems of incentives between the world of
work, the world of secondary education, and the world of higher education will be explored in
some depth, as well as the impact that such misalignment and concomitant information
asymmetry has on young people transitioning out of high school. Emerging trends and solutions
will be examined, as well as an explication of a conceptual path forward that is focused on
postsecondary pathways that extend a young person’s emerging Sense of Purpose.
Alternative Postsecondary Pathways

Changes in Postsecondary Opportunity Over Time
Within two generations, the postsecondary landscape has changed dramatically in the
United States. In the 1970s, America had a “vigorous system of vocational education,

20
apprenticeship, and workforce training,” but “over recent decades, we have disinvested in such
programs” (Putnam, 2016 p. 255), with nearly 12 percent of federal K-12 spending allocated to
Career and Technical Education (CTE) in 1985 and approximately 3 percent allocated to CTE
today (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). This disinvestment is the result of a wide range of
economic, social, and political factors, and has resulted in the United States’ secondary
vocational education and training (VET), (known in the United States as CTE), system failing, in
2010, to meet even the basic international threshold of rigor required by the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development to enable programmatic data collection (Schwartz &
Hoffman, 2019). Since 1970, with the diminished investment and focus on vocational education,
four-year “college for all” has been the mantra of K-12 education in America, which has
narrowed curricula, assessments, and opportunity for young people (Putnam, 2016; Schwartz
&Hoffman, 2019). As a result, United States society “provides very few opportunities for a
smooth transition from school to work” (Tucker, 2019 p. 200) and has resulted in a
contemporary K-12 system that provides a clear destination for the approximately one-third of
young people who will go on to attain a bachelor’s degree (NCES), while postsecondary routes
are opaque for the majority of high school graduates (Goodhart, 2020). This problem is not new,
but it is urgent: in a 1988 report by the William T. Grant Foundation, young people leaving
secondary education without plans for higher education were called “the forgotten half” and the
authors predicted that these young people were “in danger of being caught in a massive bind that
can deny them full participation in our society” (p.1). In 2015, twenty-seven years after the
original report’s release, the William T. Grant Foundation released an updated report, titled The
New Forgotten Half, arguing that while college access, broadly defined, increased in the quarter
century between reports, the “new forgotten half may in fact be more forgotten” because they

21
attended some college but dropped out, saddled with debt without any marketable benefit for
their time and effort (Rosenbaum et. al., 2015 p. 6). The American economy has changed
dramatically in the past forty years, and the American education system has not only struggled to
provide access to economic opportunity for large numbers of young people; it has also presented
young people with an increasingly limited range of postsecondary options.
The clearest postsecondary path for young people, and the one best supported by
American high school, is full-time four-year college or university. Full-time four-year college or
university has come to represent the “traditional” postsecondary option, in contrast to
“personalized” postsecondary pathways (Putnam, 2016; Petrilli, 2022). Such personalized
pathways represent those pursued by young people who have conducted in-depth personal
reflection, extensive opportunity exploration, and a rigorous analysis of postsecondary
alternatives in light of their goals and values. While full-time four-year college or university
could certainly be a part of some students’ personalized postsecondary pathway, such
personalized pathways could also include part-time learning programs combined with work
experience. Indeed, previous generations of American high school graduates benefited from
access to alternative pathways such as military service, skilled apprenticeships, on-the-job
training opportunities, K-12 career education, postsecondary credentials, and occupational
certificates and certifications. The traditional pathway was not always the only one supported by
high school (Putnam, 2016).
The growth in jobs that require college degrees has accelerated rapidly since 1992
(Carnevale, Jayasundera, & Hanson, 2012), and 80 percent of middle-class jobs require some
level of postsecondary education (Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl, 2013). The “college premium” is
high and has become increasingly important over the past forty years (Putnam, 2016; Autor,

22
2014), which helps explain the significant increases in college and university enrollments.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 1980, just under half of
recent high school graduates enrolled in tertiary education; by 2019, two-thirds of recent high
school graduates were enrolled in 2-year or 4-year college. The trend towards full-time four-year
colleges and universities is even more pronounced than the overall trend towards tertiary degrees
suggests. In 1980, just under 30 percent of recent high school graduates entered baccalaureate
education; in 2019, nearly 45 percent of recent high school graduates entered baccalaureate
programs—a 50 percent increase that translates in real terms to four million additional
baccalaureate students (NCES). The significant trend towards baccalaureate education continued
in more recent years, as baccalaureate enrollment increased by 10 percent between the fall of
2009 and the fall of 2019 (from 9.9 million to 11 million undergraduates) compared to a decrease
in community college enrollment over that same period of 26 percent (from 7.5 million to 5.6
million students) (NCES).
These trends towards increased demand for baccalaureate education have emerged even
as the return on investment of higher education has come under increased scrutiny. An obvious
reason for the increased demand for higher education is the value of the degree. In terms of
average wages, a college degree was worth 50 percent more than a high school degree in 1980,
but by 2008, the college degree was worth 95 percent more (Autor, 2010). As the economic
rewards for a college degree increased significantly, the earnings of males with high school or
lower educational levels declined substantially, “falling by 22% among high school dropouts and
11% among high school graduates” (Putnam, 2016). Even with the dramatically increasing
benefits of the college degree, the costs of full-time college have ballooned, making not only the
opportunity cost but also the actual cost of pursuing a bachelor’s degree an inhibitor to

23
baccalaureate entry for many young people. American colleges and universities are highly
variable in their return on investment to students (Itkowitz, 2021), which some have pointed to as
a meaningful reason for a decline in the perceived value of higher education (Fishman, Ekowo,
& Ezeugo, 2017).
Many students and families value college as a means to the end of social mobility
(Saurbier, 2020), but “higher education today does surprisingly little to promote upward
mobility” (Sandel, 2020, p. 168), so today’s students are not only questioning the value of full-
time four-year college (Lederman, 2021), but also looking to postsecondary options beyond
college (Marcus, 2021). While programs do exist to support career and vocational training,
government subsidies for college attendance equaled $162 billion in academic year 2014-15
compared to $1.1 billion for career and technical education in that same period (Sawhill, 2018,
p114). The United States government spends roughly one hundred and fifty times more per year
on college subsidies than on career and vocational training, yet just over one-third of Americans
earn a bachelor’s degree (U.S. Census, 2020). The “‘college for all’ motto has tended to undercut
public and private support for secondary and postsecondary education in vocational skills”
(Putnam, 2016 p.255) while other countries—particularly those in western Europe—spend five
to ten times the relative amount that the United States does on active labor market training
programs, and have more defined pathways into skilled work for young people as a result
(Sandel, 2020). Since the 1980s, alternative postsecondary options in the United States have been
fighting an uphill battle in recruiting students and creating sustainable financial models.
Participation in Postsecondary Pathways
While the participation in a full range of postsecondary credential programs has increased
amongst high school graduates in the past decades, who participates in baccalaureate programs

24
(and particular segments of the undergraduate college market), associate’s programs, certificate
programs, apprenticeships, and the military often follows lines of socioeconomic status, race,
geography, and sex. Perhaps more importantly, who graduates from the postsecondary programs
with the highest returns on investment is similarly inequitable. According to a 2022 American
Compass analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Reserve Bank
of New York, under 20 percent of young Americans, who the study refers to as the “Fortunate
Fifth,” move smoothly from high school to college to career (American Compass, 2022), as
visualized in Figure 2 below. These trends have become increasingly embedded in the American
higher education landscape.
Figure 2

The Fortunate Fifth: Educational and Labor Market Outcomes of 100 9th Grade Students

Source: American Compass, 2022

25
On average, attaining a college degree pays off in regard to lifetime earnings (Autor,
2014; Carnevale et. al., 2021); however, not all students have the same access to college, not all
colleges are equally successful in graduating students, and not all degrees are of equal value in
the labor market. According to data from the U.S. Department of Education, “today, more young
people from all races and income levels aspire to attend college than in any previous generation”
(Bankert et al., 2021). Yet “access to colleges varies greatly by parent income”, particularly for
elite, highly selective, and selective universities, and “the colleges that offered many low-income
students pathways to success are becoming less accessible over time” (Chetty et al., 2017).
Additionally, although wealthy students are five times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree
compared to the lowest income students (Bankert et al., 2021), “low-income students admitted to
selective colleges do not appear over-placed, as their earnings outcomes are similar to those of
their peers from higher income families” (Chetty et al., 2017). Thus, the additional financial and
navigational barriers that low-income students face on their paths to college acceptance,
admission, and graduation are what undermine their degree attainment - not their inability to
succeed academically at challenging colleges.
When it comes to selective baccalaureate programs, socioeconomic status is,
increasingly, destiny. In 1980, 58 percent of young people in the most affluent quintile of the
income distribution entered college, as opposed to only 19 percent of students in the lowest
quintile. By 2000, those figures were 80 percent and 29 percent, respectively (Bailey and
Dynarski, 2011), representing a significant widening of the socioeconomic opportunity gap.
Zooming in on selective college admissions, the class-based inequities to access become
increasingly stark. Young people with parents in the top 1 percent of the income distribution are
77 times more likely to attend highly selective colleges and universities, which have the highest

26
rates of six-year graduation and the strongest labor market outcomes of any segment of the
higher education market, than young people whose parents are in the bottom quintile (Chetty et.
al., 2017). Much of the increase in overall access to postsecondary higher education for young
people from the bottom half of the income distribution is concentrated in community colleges,
where 81 percent of entrants say they plan to attain a four-year degree, but only about 13 percent
actually do—an uncomfortable fact that has remained the same over nearly a decade (Century,
2013; Barshay, 2020). The vastly unequal access to selective baccalaureate programs is obscured
by increasing overall averages of higher education access.
Some observers of these class-based trends in high education access, enrollment, and on-
time completion have noted that the most worrisome trend of all is not the increasing, and
increasingly inequitable, access to postsecondary baccalaureate education, but rather the recent
trends towards credentialism. Citing evidence spanning 1970-2015, Robert Putnam notes that the
expanding socioeconomic gap between who completes college with a degree and who simply
enters college and drops out before attaining a degree has continually increased over the past
forty years. Students from the top quartile of the income distribution are nearly eight times more
likely to gain a college degree than students in the bottom quartile, over four times as likely as
students in the 26-50 quartile, and over three times as likely as students in the 51-75th percent
income group. This yawning gap in degree attainment by students’ socioeconomic status
“matters hugely,” according to Putnam, “because completing college is much more important
than entering college on all sorts of levels: socioeconomic success, physical and mental health,
longevity, life satisfaction, and more” (2015, p. 187). Michael Sandel puts the issue even more
bluntly: “American higher education is like an elevator in a building that most people enter on
the top floor” (2021, p. 169), meaning that baccalaureate programs, as a whole, offer American

27
youth little in the way of social mobility. Not only do students fail to receive the labor market
benefits of increased skill attainment in the absence of a credential, and the students who receive
the highest value higher education credentials overwhelmingly come from wealthy families, but
the most significant financial rewards of the increasingly unequal American economy over the
past forty years have gone to workers with postbaccalaureate degrees, which nearly tripled the
rewards for baccalaureate degree holders in the period 1979-2010 (Autor, 2010). While it is true
that increased access to higher education for all students is a worthy goal, the labor market’s
focus on credentials rather than skills means that the mostly low- and middle-class young people
who attend college, accrue debt, and assume opportunity cost without attaining a degree receive
“no reward” and have “wasted time and money” (Rosenbaum et. al., 2025, p.6). Essentially,
those who are least capable of recovering from financial setbacks unaccompanied by marketable
credentials are the most likely to assume debt without degrees.
The history of systemic racism in the United States has touched every corner of American
society, and participation in postsecondary pathways is no exception. While socioeconomic class
is most closely correlated with educational access, enrollment, and outcomes (Century, 2013),
racism against Black Americans and its direct impacts on the Black community’s attitudes
towards postsecondary pathways, and especially vocational/CTE pathways, is particularly
worthy of mention. The aggregate college-going rates of different racial groups has been largely
static over the past twenty years: in Table 1, note that Asian Americans have the highest levels
of college enrollment, typically about twenty percent above the national average; white students
enroll at slightly above the national average; Black students at slightly below the national
average; Hispanic students, who are the exception to the rule, have been making significant
progress towards greater college enrollment in the past twenty years, moving from 22 percent

28
enrollment in 2000 to 36 percent in 2018 (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2019). College
enrollment rates are visualized in the chart below using data from the U.S. Department of
Commerce’s Digest of Education Statistics from 2019:
Table 1
College Enrollment Rates of 18- to 24-year-olds by Race/Ethnicity: 2000, 2010, and 2018

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2019
As elite higher education has recognized the need to integrate by race (though not class) and
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) enroll 10 percent of Black college
students (Shapiro et. al., 2017), Black students are relatively overrepresented in four-year
universities and underrepresented in community colleges, where only 13% of Black students are
enrolled for credit (American Association of Community Colleges, 2021). This relative
underrepresentation in open access, vocationally oriented postsecondary pathways is a product of

29
the unique history of discrimination faced by the American Black community. In the
Reconstruction South, Black students were seen by white southerners as fit only for low-level
jobs while schools prepared white students for a broad range of professional and academic
pursuits, so “it is not surprising that many black leaders today continue to see vocational
education as the denial of opportunity rather than a route to upward mobility” (Schwartz and
Hoffman, 2019 p. 138). These concerns remain relevant. “Fears that [technical and vocational]
programs might lead to a…two-tier educational system are not unrealistic,” writes Robert
Putnam, who acknowledges the stigma of American vocational education and apprenticeships
(Putnam, 2016 p. 256). Similarly, a Century Foundation report from 2013 echoes the language of
Jim Crow and Brown vs. Board of Education, warning that two-year colleges are becoming
“increasingly separate and unequal institutions” (Century, 2013).
Finally, trends in sex and college enrollment, degree/certificate attainment, and programs
of study reveal divergent postsecondary pathways for those identifying as male and those
identifying as female. In 2019, the last year for which reliable data are available, across all of
higher education, 70 percent of females enrolled immediately after high school compared to 62
percent of males (NCES, 2021). Female students were 25 percent more likely to enroll in
baccalaureate programs than male students, who were slightly more likely to enroll in two-year
programs than females (NCES, 2021). First-time full-time male baccalaureate students have a
60% six-year completion rate as compared with females’ 66% completion rate, further widening
the gap between males and females who attain a college degree. In community college, the
female advantage is, in percentage terms, even greater, as males graduate in three or fewer years
at 31% to females’ 36%. Given the gap between males and females in college access and
completion, it is easy to understand the widening gap between the sexes pursuing graduate

30
education over the past ten years, with over 50 percent more females enrolled in
postbaccalaureate study in 2019 than males (NCES, 2021). This gap matters since the labor
market rewards for degree completion - and particularly postbaccalaureate degree completion -
have ballooned in recent decades (Autor, 2010). Not only that, but between 1980 and 2012 - a
period during which there was nearly a tripling of the hourly earnings rewards for college degree
holders - earnings of males with high school or lower education levels declined substantially,
falling by 22% among high school dropouts and 11% among high school graduates (Autor,
2014). Males are more likely to enroll in subbaccalaureate certification programs in technical
fields and the trades than females, who are most likely to enter health care programs (Institute of
Education Sciences, 2020), a trend that makes sense given the fact that “among the 20 percent of
recent high school graduates who end up in good jobs, most (77 percent) are men” (Carnevale et.
al., 2021). In sum, females today are more likely than males to enroll in four-year colleges and
universities, to graduate from those universities, and to enter (and graduate from)
postbaccalaueate programs than males. While females continue to face sexism in hiring,
promotion, and pay, they are increasingly likely to have the credentials needed to enter stable,
high-paying careers. Males are slightly more likely than females to enter two-year programs of
postsecondary study, which have approximately half the 150 percent graduation rate (i.e., a
bachelor’s degree is meant to be attained in four years of full-time study, so a 150 percent
graduation rate for a bachelor’s degree is six years; likewise, an associate’s degree is meant to
take two years of study, so a 150 percent graduation rate for an associate’s degree is three years)
of four-year institutions. In the context of growing inequality in the United States and in light of
the increasing correlation between education credentials and labor market rewards, it is

31
important that equality of opportunity remains a democratic principle. It is also important to
consider the effects of an increasingly unequal and credentials-focused labor market landscape.
Effects of Non-Formalized Personalized Postsecondary Pathways

The allure of full-time, four-year college or university as a postsecondary pathway for
young people is easy to understand. The baccalaureate degree offers access to the American
middle class and serves as a prerequisite for graduate study—that gatekeeper to the most stable
and highest-paying jobs in the U.S. economy. High variation in the cost, graduation rates, and
value of four-year universities and majors is obscured by averages. High schools, run solely by
bachelor’s degree holders, present college as the obvious destination for students, often with an
infrastructure of college counselors, college-going identity-development activities, and “college
readiness” programs to support the baccalaureate pathway (Savitz-Romer and Bouffard, 2013).
The traditional full-time, four-year college experience answers some of the most pressing
questions of late high school students: “Where will I live?” “What will I do?” “Who will I do it
with?” The full-time baccalaureate experience organizes a young person’s time, offers
community and identity, and can be organized before high school graduation. It comes with
broad social acceptance and, in some cases, prestige. It supports identity development at an
important developmental stage. For the vast majority of full-time baccalaureate students, it
delays the pressures of labor market participation, thereby putting off some of the more daunting
tasks of emerging adulthood while enabling personal and career exploration in a safe
environment as part of a time-bound, socially acceptable developmental experience (Arnett,
2000).
Conversely, personalized, non-traditional postsecondary pathways, though they tend to be
lower cost than full-time, four-year college and university, are wildly diverse, often requiring an

32
individual with limited means and little support to juggle work, school, newfound personal and
financial responsibilities, and shifting social dynamics. Even the term “pathway” is misleading in
this context, since non-traditional postsecondary experiences are rarely formalized in the same
way that full-time baccalaureate study is. There are efforts to define quality and formalize non-
traditional postsecondary pathways, notably the Pathways to Prosperity Project out of Harvard’s
Graduate School of Education (Symonds et. al., 2011), though these efforts often focus on
building a comprehensive work-learn experience around community college programs offering
credentials with labor-market value. Additionally, even though the opportunity costs and actual
costs of non-traditional pathways are relatively low, the stakes are high. The period following
high school, which characterizes the beginning of “emerging adulthood” in the United States, is
critical for young people to establish (1) personal responsibility, (2) independent decision-
making, and (3) financial independence (Arnett, 2014). A young person’s navigation through this
phase of life has far-reaching effects on their ability to “take a respected place in the adult world”
(William T. Grant Foundation, 1998).
Finally, unlike full-time, four-year colleges and universities, training programs in non-
traditional pathways have limited brand recognition and uneven quality controls as compared to
such programs in other OECD countries (Symonds et. al., 2011). For traditional pathways,
accreditation ensures a baseline of fiscal solvency and federal law requires data collection on a
range of quality measures, including published 150 percent time graduation rates, average time
to degree completion, and the costs of tuition. Quality and labor market outcomes are highly
variable in the traditional college marketplace (Symonds et. al., 2011), but basic controls are in
place to segment the market and root out the worst actors. For workforce development and
training programs represented in alternative postsecondary pathways, quality controls often exist

33
but are variable and difficult to find and understand (Symonds et. al., 2011). Essentially, while
there are under 3,000 four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. (NCES, 2021) representing
traditional postsecondary pathways, there are both endless alternative postsecondary pathways -
since each emerging adult is left to create their own path, and there are very few alternative
postsecondary pathways, since the level of cohesion, time-boundedness, purpose, and lifestyle
comprehensiveness that exists on traditional postsecondary pathways exists on precious few
alternative routes.
Effects on Young People
The dearth of formalized personalized postsecondary pathways has deleterious effects on
emerging adults—those who enter a traditional full-time baccalaureate pathway as well as those
who are forced to carve paths of their own. The challenges begin in secondary school (if not
before), where students are compelled to “be the same as everyone else, only better” (Rose, 2015
p. 167) in order to get accepted to a respectable four-year university. The significant changes
between “the forgotten half” of the 1980s (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988) and the “new
forgotten half” (William T. Grant Foundation, 2015) nicely illustrate the limited improvement in
individual conditions that can be made when full-time, four-year college is presented as the only
clear postsecondary pathway for emerging adults. Increasing full-time, four-year college access,
as laudable a goal as it has been, still leaves behind half of our young people. In arguing that
American higher education has become little more than a “sorting machine” justifiable only by a
widely-held but ultimately mistaken belief in meritocracy, political philosopher Michael Sandel
sums up the emotional impact of the role of four-year colleges as the arbiters of success on
emerging adults: for those who enter the traditional pathway “it induces anxiety, a debilitating
perfectionism, and a meritocratic hubris that struggles to conceal a fragile self-esteem,” while for

34
those who are closed out of the traditional pathway, “it imposes a demoralizing, even humiliating
sense of failure” (Sandel, 2021 p. 183). Sandel, Carnevale (2014), Tucker (2019), and others note
that reforming baccalaureate education alone will neither singularly correct growing inequality
nor solve the postsecondary prospects of a majority of young people. A greater investment and
focus on respected, meaningful, and cohesive alternative postsecondary pathways is needed.
Because only the traditional postsecondary pathway exists at any scale in the United
States, high school students compete for spots rather than exploring their interests. This
phenomenon has been written about widely and has led to popular discussion of “tiger moms,”
“helicopter parents,” the “Varsity Blues” scandal, and “snowplow parents” (Lythcott-Haims,
2016; Levine, 2021; Hamilton, 2016; McCullough, 2014; Miller & Bromwich, 2019). Parents
and students feel trapped in the competition for a small number of selective college spots
because there is “a real cost for any student who chooses not to play” (Rose, 2016 p. 169). In
recent decades, the pursuit of bachelor’s degrees has gone from a quest for upward mobility to a
“shield against downward mobility…with a college diploma the boundary” dividing two
“separate and unequal nations” (Tough, 2019, p. 13). Whether a student is coming from a
wealthy family (and therefore has a high likelihood of attaining a bachelor’s degree) or from a
family experiencing poverty, high schoolers feel as though there is “no room for error in the new
system of American class mobility” (Tough, 2019, p. 13-14). The absence of meaningful,
cohesive postsecondary pathways beyond the four-year college leads to young people “hiding
their individuality instead of developing it, all because they are trying to stand out on the exact
same things that everyone else is trying to stand out on” (Rose, 2016 p. 169).
Not only has the nature of adolescence and parenting shifted towards competition in the
relentless game of full-time four-year degree seeking, but high schools have come to increasingly

35
narrow their curricula, instruction, programming, and counseling towards the singular goal of
full-time four-year “college for all.” This shift, which happened as public investment in
vocational education was waning (Putnam, 2016 p. 255) “means that the academic side of high
school has received much more attention from policymakers than CTE during this time”
(Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). The presumption of the U.S. secondary system has been that
rigorous general education represents the most effective preparation not only for the traditional
full-time four-year college pathway, but also for work and career—a presumption that has
strangled the curricular and programmatic focus of U.S. high schools, leaving little time for any
study outside of English, math, social studies, and science (OECD, 2000). Where career
preparation in American high schools does take place, it is either integrated opportunistically
within particular schools or classrooms into the core academic curriculum, such as in “academy”
programs, internships, and community service projects with applied career components. Rarely
are students in such programs “counted” as being in CTE, thereby masking the potential value of
the programs; furthermore, these career exposure opportunities are not intended to lead to work
after high school graduation. The schools in which CTE programs are delivered comprise only 4
percent of American high schools (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019), and meaningful career
counseling is largely absent in U.S. high schools (Reddy, et. al., 2015). Indeed, a 2001 survey
conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics revealed that only 8 percent of high
school counselors reported that helping “students plan and prepare for their work after high
school” was part of their primary role (Parsad et. al., 2003). In short, America’s current system
of career guidance and counseling is “wholly inadequate, and many adolescents receive virtually
no useful guidance” (Symonds et. al., 2011). Personalized postsecondary pathways beyond full-
time four-year college and university require vulnerable emerging adults, bereft of significant

36
academic support, to construct a realistic and, ideally, inspirational postsecondary plan that
balances urgent financial considerations and familial obligations with an investment in longer-
term family, financial, and occupational goals. The “forgotten half” is not forgotten; they are
systematically underserved and overlooked.
They are also stigmatized, likely as a result of macroeconomic shifts towards skilled
labor that have created the “college premium,” the resulting competition for seats in selective
traditional postsecondary pathways, and the downstream effect of restricted CTE offerings and
supports in high schools. The current stigma associated with CTE is largely a holdover of the
racist and classist history of vocational education in the United States, in which “the academic
content was weak, the skills imparted were limited, and the jobs for which students were
prepared were often low-wage and low-skill” (Holzer and Baum, 2017). Even supporters of
increasing the supply of CTE, such as Robert Putnam, warn that better supporting CTE in
American high schools and in postsecondary education would “need to erase the stigma of
vocational education or apprenticeships as second-class education” (Putman, 2016 p. 256).
Unlike European nations with strong vocational tracks and “institutionalized school-to-work
transitions,” where all students, regardless of academic ability, possess respected pathways to
postsecondary success, in the United States, many students who take alternative postsecondary
pathways “already regard themselves as failures” (Goodhart, 2020 p. 99). Indeed, CTE in the
United States is “widely regarded as what a student does if he or she cannot do academics,” in
stark contrast to the esteem afforded both the academic and the applied postsecondary pathways
in European nations (Maryland Commission, 2018, p. 67). With the erosion of secondary
programs and supports for vocational education following 1983’s publication of A Nation At
Risk, the widespread view of the high school vocational “track” became “viewed as a dead-end

37
track to which low-income and disadvantaged students were often relegated” (Carnevale et. al.
2021). This negative perception lingers today, creating disincentives for schools to pursue CTE
programs and for students to enroll in them. The neglect of such CTE pathways, and the stigma
surrounding them, “distracts us from taking seriously the educational needs of most people…it
expresses a lack of respect for the kind of work the working class does” (Sandel, 2021 p. 191).
The effects of this disrespect are deep, damaging the livelihoods of individuals as well as the
stability of American society.
Effects on Society
The American high school’s singular focus on the traditional postsecondary pathway of
full-time four-year “college for all” is a symptom of rising economic inequality. It is also a
contributing factor. Marc Tucker, President at the National Center on Education and the
Economy, presents a useful framework for understanding how economies around the world
develop in the age of globalization. Essentially, in a globalized world, economies must compete
on the basis of the cost of labor or the quality of labor. He makes the point that it is quite difficult
to transition from a low-tech/low-skill economy to a high-tech/high-skill economy due to the
formidable task of upgrading the infrastructure and systematically upskilling the human capital
to compete globally on the quality of labor. The United States has not made that transition as a
singular economy, but as a set of quite different economies - where mainly coastal states are
“home to many of the world’s most advanced economies while other states have economies more
like those found in many third world countries” (Tucker, 2019 p. 184). This intranational
patchwork of American economies fits well into the theory of “Somewheres” and “Anywheres”
developed by David Goodhart (2020). In Goodhart’s argument, Anywheres represent an
international elite defined by high degrees of educational attainment and transportability of job

38
opportunity across borders that is enabled by the global knowledge economy while Somewheres
are rooted to place—often across generations; they possess fewer degrees; and their work tends
to require a place-based web of relationships, tools, and services. Both Tucker and Goodhart
point out that economies can be locked into one of these two “Somewhere” and “Anywhere”
models, both of which present real challenges to individuals as well as to policymakers and
businesses. In 2010, the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University
predicted that 60 million Americans were “at risk of being locked out of the middle class, toiling
in predominantly low wage jobs that require high school diplomas or less” (Carnevale et.al.,
2010). Although magnitude is difficult to gauge, the trend predicted by CEW did come to pass.
The core economic problem is that healthy, competitive economies in a globalized world
are diverse, with robust education systems, training programs, and job opportunities for medium-
and high-skilled workers. Failing to invest in professional training has significant societal costs.
Young people aged 16-24 in the U.S. who are neither in school nor at work are estimated to
create a $1.59 trillion taxpayer burden, and a $4.75 trillion societal burden over these young
peoples’ lifetimes (Belfield et. al, 2012). The costs of a “lopsided” economy, marked by
inequitable opportunity for high-skilled jobs and little opportunity for medium-skilled work in
high-wage economies are high. Leaders in Switzerland and Singapore, after noting mushrooming
economic inequality due to increasingly unbalanced labor markets, took swift action to combat
such inequalities by reorienting training programs towards middle-skill development, investing
heavily in what the international community refers to as “VET” and what the U.S. calls CTE,
and slowing the growth of full-time four-year academic degree programs. In such a way, talented
students were more evenly distributed across academic and applied fields, benefiting individuals
as well as the economy. China is undergoing such a shift currently. Tucker notes that this shift is

39
important for a nation’s economic stability and commensurate with a belief in “broadly shared
prosperity” (Tucker, 2019 p. 183). Tucker emphasized that such a belief in and commitment to
broadly shared prosperity is evident in the actions of Switzerland, Singapore, and other nations
with developed alternative postsecondary pathways, but not in the contemporary United States.
Putnam (2019), Sandel (2021), Goodhart (2020), and Tucker (2019) all make the link
between the economic instability brought about by a societal overemphasis on traditional
postsecondary pathways and political instability. After a discussion of the promise of alternative
postsecondary pathways, Putnam writes:
This is not the first time in our national history that widening socio-economic gaps have
threatened our economy, our democracy and our values. The specific responses we have
pursued to successfully overcome these challenges and restore opportunity have varied in
detail, but underlying them all was a commitment to invest in other peoples’ children
(2019, p. 261).
Goodhart links the broad democratic dangers raised by Putnam to the resentment and humiliation
experienced by those locked out of meaningful postsecondary pathways: “a democratic society
that wants to avoid a powerful undercurrent of resentment…must provide meaning and respect
for people who cannot - or do not want to - achieve in the examination room and professional
career market” (Goodhart, 2020 p. 10). Even in polarized modern America, there is agreement
across the political spectrum that access to socially respected middle-skill, middle-class jobs is
important. Oren Cass, a Republican policy advisor, wrote in 2018 that such jobs matter even
more for a good society than for economic growth (Cass, 2018). Sandel, a liberal, spends pages
in 2021’s The Tyranny of Merit agreeing with Cass, noting that an education and economic
system that preferences only the traditional postsecondary pathway “feeds a politics so poisonous

40
and a partisanship so intense that many now regard marriage across party lines as more troubling
that marrying outside the faith” (p. 226). Tucker connects the dots most directly: “a well-
designed VET system could provide a path to well-being for millions of people who might
otherwise not just face grim futures themselves but also be more than willing to bring down the
whole system” (Tucker, 2019 p. 201-202). The future of American democracy will be
determined, at least in part, by the postsecondary opportunities and concomitant dignity afforded
“the new forgotten half.”
Barriers to Matching All Young People With Meaningful Postsecondary Opportunities

While most developed countries rely on vocational education and training as a
meaningful secondary, and postsecondary, opportunity for young people (OECD, 2021), and the
United States once had robust career and technical education that propelled a greater proportion
of young people towards dignified employment (American Compass, 2022), the share of
spending on career and technical education (CTE) in the United States has diminished
dramatically - from nearly 12 percent of U.S. federal K-12 spending in 1985 to about 3 percent
in 2020 (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). However, the barriers to matching all young
people with meaningful postsecondary opportunities are more numerous than a simple story of
diverting funds from preparation for alternative pathways and towards the traditional pathway of
full-time four-year college might suggest. Certainly, strangled governmental funding is part of
the challenge facing young people seeking alternatives to full-time four-year college, but
widespread information asymmetry, the misaligned incentives amongst a host of systems - none
of which are assigned full responsibility for the smooth progression from learning to working for
America’s youth, and the absence of a commonly-accepted definition of quality regarding
alternative postsecondary pathways, which results in a limited supply of reliably high-quality

41
alternative pathways, all work as barriers facing young people navigating their lives after high
school.
Widespread Information Asymmetry
Even though American high school students of all races and income levels see college
attendance as an important avenue to achieve their career goals (Fidelity, 2021), the barrier of
information asymmetry—due in large part to the fractured and highly variable college and
certification marketplaces—impedes progress towards personalized postsecondary pathways for
many students. In early 2022, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, released a
statement: “Colleges and universities need to reimagine themselves around inclusivity and
student success, not selectivity and reputation…I hope [this] will be the beginning of a new
competition among colleges—one that rewards colleges doing the most for social mobility”
(Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2022). Cardona’s hope—even if
realized—will only serve young people if they are aware of the options available to them on the
traditional postsecondary pathway of full-time four-year college, as well as the relative merits
and disadvantages of different college options. Currently, the college marketplace is segmented
into for-profit and nonprofit colleges, four-year and two-year colleges, and colleges at various
tiers of selectivity (not selective, selective, highly selective, elite, and ivy plus), but this already-
complex postsecondary landscape becomes increasingly challenging for secondary students and
their supporters to navigate when considering the highly-variable programs within colleges that
will enable graduates to accomplish their post-college professional goals (Itzkowitz, 2021) and
the unclear and, at times, misrepresented actual costs of college attendance (Goldrick-Rab,
2016). Differentiation amongst colleges and universities is, as Cardona noted, primarily based on

42
measures of who is denied admission rather than the human capital developed, or the personal
and professional opportunities created within the institutions (Itzkowitz, 2021).
Information asymmetry is a problem for college-bound students across the United States,
regardless of academic preparation and despite the fact that there are fewer than 3,000 degree-
granting four-year colleges (NCES, 2021)—a small number in comparison to the broad array of
alternative pathways. Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University and Christopher Avery at Harvard
studied the behaviors of the highest-achieving high school students in the United States and
found that thirty thousand high-achieving low-income students were “hiding in plain sight”.
These students, who Hoxby referred to as “income typical” students, applied to local community
colleges and nonselective universities rather than selective colleges. By contrast, a small group
of “achievement typical” high schoolers—most of whom lived in large cities and attended
private or elite magnet high schools—behaved similarly to wealthy “income typical” students
(Hoxby and Avery, 2013). That is, they “applied to a range of colleges, including some highly
selective ones, and went on to enroll at the most selective institution that admitted them” (Tough,
2019 p. 44-45). Hoxby’s conclusion, which she subsequently tested with Sarah Turner at the
University of Virginia using a random-assignment study, was that low-income high-achieving
high schoolers simply did not know much about selective colleges and did not know how to get
accepted to them. Hoxby and Turner’s “$6 solution” to the information asymmetry resulted in a
31 percent increased likelihood of high-achieving low-income students in the treatment group to
gain admittance to a selective school and a 19 percent increase in their enrollment versus the
control group (Hoxby and Turner, 2013). In other words, “the main obstacle standing in the way
of those income-typical high achievers was an information deficit: they simply didn’t know
much about elite colleges and how to apply for them” (Tough, 2109, p. 45). As Goldrick-Rab

43
(2016) and Tough (2019) note, information asymmetry represents an issue of equity, one in
which students in possession of accurate information and knowledgeable support are likely to
“match” appropriately with selective colleges and universities while those from more rural and
low-income communities do not have the information, the guidance, or the tools to navigate the
traditional postsecondary landscape most effectively.
If American high schoolers in possession of the grades and test scores to enter the most
elite postsecondary institutions in the world struggle with information asymmetry, the challenges
of understanding and pursuing meaningful alternative pathways are even more pronounced for
the roughly two-thirds of high school graduates who will never go on to attain a bachelor’s
degree. With “college for all” as the mantra of American high school since at least 1990
(Putnam, 2016), curricula, culture, and counseling have been oriented towards the outcome of
placing all students in four-year institutions (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). Indeed, in remarks
delivered on December 4, 2014, then-president Barack Obama summed up the American attitude
of conflating equal opportunity with college for all when he said, “Where you start should not
determine where you end up. And so I’m glad that everybody wants to go to college” (Obama,
2014). The curriculum of American high schools has been captured by courses that are designed
to prepare students for baccalaureate studies rather than career education (Symonds, et. al., 2013;
Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). Indeed, only 4 percent of U.S. high schools are designed to
deliver career and technical education—as opposed to education systems in other OECD
countries, where vocational training and CTE are embedded within the mainstream curriculum
for most, if not all, students (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). As a result, most American youth
do not have information about, or even exposure to, meaningful alternative postsecondary
pathways (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2016).

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The orientation of college and career counseling in American high schools demonstrates
the singular focus on college for all. School counselors are a critical component of the K-12
postsecondary information infrastructure (ASCA, 2022), yet the national student-to-counselor
ratio was 427-to-1 in the 2020-2021 school year (NCES, 2022)—with seven states, including
high-population states such as California, Michigan, and Illinois possessing ratios of over 500-to-
1—despite the American School Counselor’s Association recommending a 250-to-1 ratio. In the
context of an already underfunded counseling system, counselors report spending most of their
time on scheduling, academic guidance, discipline, and helping students apply to college
(Symonds et. al., 2011). In a 2002 survey of 49,500 school counselors, high school counselors
reported spending most of their time on the scheduling of courses and on college admissions
activities, while they reported spending the lowest percentage of their time on job placement and
employability skill development (Parsad et. al., 2003). The same survey, conducted by the
National Center for Education Statistics, found that only 8 percent of high school counselors saw
part of their primary role “to help students plan and prepare for their work after high school” and
51 percent ranked this alternative postsecondary preparation as their lowest priority (Parsad et.
al., 2003). Although a survey of this scale and scope has not been conducted since, more recent
research confirms that counselors are neither prepared for providing expert career and technical
education counseling to support students on alternative postsecondary pathways, nor do they see
such work as an important part of their professional roles (Institute of Education Sciences, 2012).
Although the narrowing of the K-12 curriculum and focusing of school counseling
services to accommodate a college for all approach since the 1990s is meeting some political
headwinds—U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona stated in January, 2022 that “each high
school in the country should have at least one career counselor so that every high schooler has

45
great options when they graduate” (Cardona, 2022)—it remains true that “many students are
making career education decisions blindly with no connection to reality” (Parsad et. al., 2003).
“Degrees of Opportunity,” a 2017 report conducted by the American Enterprise Institute,
highlights the complexities of identifying, much less communicating, the return on investment
(ROI) of both traditional and alternative postsecondary pathways (Schneider and Columbus,
2017). Citing evidence that increasing future job prospects is the primary reason college students
decide to attend college (Eagan et. al., 2017), Schneider and Columbus demonstrate the local
market variations that confound young people and their supporters when exploring
postsecondary pathways in the hope of maximizing their ROI. For instance, in Florida, six of the
16 postsecondary training programs with the highest-paid graduates are from associate’s degree
or apprenticeship programs offered by community colleges or technical training centers
(Schneider and Columbus, 2017). They also found that programs with what they call the highest
“success rates”—meaning, the share of total programs offered with median graduate earnings
above Florida’s median household income—are from apprenticeship programs. The authors
conclude that “many students are still in the dark about which programs offer a worthwhile on-
ramp to a rewarding career” (Schneider and Columbus, 2017, p. 14). The Pathways to
Prosperity report out of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education articulates a similar conclusion:
“recent high school graduates are often poorly represented [in high-ROI certificate and
community college programs] due in part to lack of information” (Symonds et. al., 2011). The
Pathways to Prosperity report goes one step further, linking information asymmetry to low
completion rates, stating that “a major reason” that young people drop out of college is that “too
many can’t see a clear, transparent connection between their program of study and tangible
opportunities in the labor market” (Symonds et. al., 2011, p. 10-11). A majority of teenagers

46
want their high schools to provide more information about the admissions, enrollment, and
financial aid processes of both traditional and alternative postsecondary pathways, but end up
dropping out due to a lack of information (Hoffman et. al, 2021). Because young people seek
postsecondary training for the purpose of professional opportunity, and information about the
professional opportunities offered by particular postsecondary programs is difficult to access for
many young people in a K-12 system defined by a college for all approach, America faces the
intractable problem of a “forgotten half,” with many young people now carrying significant debt
without work experience, and without a marketable degree, credential, or certificate.
Misaligned Incentives Amongst K-12, Industry, and Higher Education

While most OECD countries have a single system that guides young people from
secondary education to professional readiness, the United States requires the engagement of two
systems—K-12 and the system of higher education spanning CTE, 2-year colleges, and 4-year
colleges (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). This cross-sector need for institutional collaboration
and navigation, which falls largely to the young person to manage (Bankert et. al., 2021), means
that many young people slip through the cracks between the K-12 system, the higher education
systems, and industry due not only to a lack of support for the young person’s decision-making,
but also due to a lack of cohesion amongst these systems, which operate independently from one
another and respond to disparate incentive structures (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019; Hoffman et.
al., 2021; Symonds et. al., 2011). The underlying structures of these various education and
industry systems constitutes an enormous topic, so for the purposes of this review, it is worth
unearthing a few critical misalignments in the incentive structures that lead to young people
dropping out of a system or failing to transition smoothly from one system to another.

47
American high schools are funded based on their enrollments and are engineered to
promote on-time high school graduation rates. In the midst of a national movement towards
college for all since 1980, college acceptance rates are likewise important for high school
standing (Hoffman et. al., 2021). Since 1980, K-12 per-pupil expenditure has more than doubled
in real terms from about $7,000 per year to $16,000, and high school graduation rates have
increased nearly 10%—from about 75 percent to nearly 85 percent (Institute of Education
Sciences, 2021). Additionally, the college enrollment rate has improved by an even greater
percentage—from nearly 40 percent to nearly 60 percent (Institute of Education Sciences, 2021).
Over the same period, reading scores for 12th graders on the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) have remained stagnant, at about 285, with a slightly smaller share of students
achieving NAEP’s bar for “college-ready” and a greater share—from 20 percent in 1990 to 30
percent in 2020—achieving scores of “below basic” (Institute of Education Sciences, 2021;
Petrilli and Finn, 2015). Thus, while the American K-12 system is spending significantly more
money per pupil than it did in 1980, graduating more students, and sending more students to
college, high school graduates are not necessarily better prepared for college than they were in
1980 based on the NAEP, also known as “the nation’s report card.” Also, as high schools
celebrate their college acceptance rates, up to 20 percent of high school students who were
accepted, and up to 40 percent from low-income households, do not show up at college in the fall
(Chang, 2018)—a phenomenon known as “summer melt.” Although a high school student’s
exposure to careers and work experiences are proven to have a positive effect on future prospects
for employment and earnings, as well as increased commitment to ambitious postsecondary
goals, American high schools rarely encourage or support such activities (Symonds et. al., 2011).

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As the K-12 system looks to high school graduation and four-year college acceptance
rates as the bellwethers of success, the higher education system—inasmuch as there is a singular
system of higher education—looks to enrollment, selectivity, and retention. In their 2019 book,
Cracks in the Ivory Tower, Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness focus on the perverse incentives
at work in the higher education marketplace—where prestige is assigned to exclusivity rather
than inclusivity, professors avoid teaching as much as possible, branding materials are created
out of lies, the value of a degree is entirely dependent on the signal of the diploma rather than the
skills a student obtains while in college, and colleges do little to nothing to help students learn or
transfer the soft skills of collaboration, leadership, logical reasoning, and problem solving prized
by industry (Brennan and Magness, 2019). Brennan and Magness conclude that the broken
incentive structure of four-year colleges and universities disadvantage students by offering little
in the way of human capital development or career preparation while differentiating themselves
not based on the value they provide, but by the students they fail to serve. Such findings are
supported by the work of Bryan Caplan (2019) and Dale and Kreuger (2002), whose findings
demonstrate the social and financial value of the particular signals conveyed by selective
universities despite negligible value in the form of marketable skills, dispositions, or
competencies. As a result of eroding popular belief in the inherent value of the traditional
postsecondary pathways, most Americans report a preference for a three-year apprenticeship
after high school over free college (American Compass, 2022).
Community colleges educate 44 percent of the U.S. college population, and they do so
while attempting to meet their mandate as open enrollment public institutions of higher
education and serving two masters: enabling transfers into baccalaureate degree programs and
meeting local and regional labor market needs by developing and operating industry certification

49
programs (Century Foundation, 2013). Although over 81 percent of students entering
community college for the first time say that they plan to transfer their credits to a four-year
program and earn at least a bachelor’s degree, only 11.6 percent do so within six years (Century
Foundation, 2013). Some believe that it is “even more worrisome” that the 42 percent of
students who attain an associate’s degree in liberal arts or general education have “very weak
outcomes” in the labor market (Schwartz & Hoffman, 2019), though certificate holders and those
with technical associate degrees tend to yield family-supporting wages, ladders for career
advancement, and upward mobility—often for programs with lower opportunity costs and
similar or even lower actual costs (Schneider, 2015). Community college enrollment was down
13.2 percent, or 706,100 total students, from fall 2021 including two years prior, representing the
largest pre- to post-COVID pandemic drop of any sector of higher education (National Student
Clearinghouse, 2022). Community colleges are responding to significantly decreasing
enrollment in a variety of ways, with innovative community college leaders determined to
establish their institutions as the place to go for training the middle-skill and technical
workforces that drive regional economies, revamping certificate programs with industry partners
to better serve workforce preparation (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). Community colleges are
now also in competition with a host of low cost, short-term programs with “stackable
credentials” including bootcamps, online certification programs, industry credentials, and even
university extension programs, forcing community college leaders to choose between better
alignment to the labor market, a deeper range of partnerships with industry, and an expanded set
of inclusive workforce development certifications or the prospect of obsolescence (Schwartz and
Hoffman, 2019; Century Foundation, 2013; Schneider, 2015).

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Finally, employers are primarily interested in hiring reliable, capable employees who
possess the hard and soft skills to succeed in a role, and they are largely confused by transcripts,
unfamiliar degrees and certifications, and training programs (Carnevale, Hanson, & Gulish,
2013). Transcripts, grades, and other signals from educational institutions provide little insight
into what a worker can and cannot do (Rose, 2016), so many employers avoid the difficulty of
attempting to figure out what all the educational documentation means by requiring one or two
years of in-field experience, even for entry-level positions (Carnevale, Hanson, & Gulish, 2013).
From the vantage point of the employer, requiring experience for entry-level positions makes
sense within the established incentive structure, since a candidate with experience in a related
field will have demonstrated the ability to do the job; however, such a requirement presents an
impediment to accessing such experience for a young person—and especially those from
minority and low-income backgrounds—who cannot gain requisite experience in an entry-level
job due to the experience requirement for such a role (Carnevale et. al., 2013). This Catch-22
demonstrates the disconnect between the established systems of education and the needs of
employers. Indeed, Schwartz and Hoffman write that:
the most important thing we can and must learn from the strongest vocational systems in
the world is the critical importance of engaging employers and their associations as
codevelopers and co-owners of the career-focused approach…Until the demand side of
the equation receives equal attention and weight, CTE in the United States will never
have the impact on either students or state and regional economies that it has in the
Switzerlands and Singapores of the world (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019, p. 175).
In sum, the most effective work-based programs in the world rely on employers to invest in
workplace learning, and to collaborate with one another to train employees—both a contrast with

51
typical corporate behavior in the United States (Tucker, 2019). The misalignment between high
school, higher education, and workforce systems represents “the biggest structural barrier to
increasing college completion rates and career success,” and deepens long-standing racial and
class inequality (Hoffman et. al., 2020, p. 4).
Emerging Trends & Partial Solutions for Increasing the Supply of High-Quality
Alternative Postsecondary Pathways

Promising Trends and Solutions
Even with limited investment in vocational education, the United States has a broad range
of CTE programs spanning K-12, higher education, and industry (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019).
These CTE programs include community college certificate programs, industry certifications,
registered apprenticeships, and military service. Of these, the two “most common and rapidly
growing” are occupational certificates, conveyed by postsecondary institutions (generally
community colleges), and occupational certifications, awarded by industry groups (Schwarz and
Hoffman, 2019). Between 2008 and 2013, entrants into all degree and certificate programs
increased. However, 1-year programs awarded 28% more certifications in 2013 than in 2008, and
programs of greater than one year in duration but fewer than two years awarded 64% more
certifications. By contrast, the growth in the attainment of bachelor’s degrees was 18%. That
stated, slightly more bachelor’s degrees were awarded in 2013 in the United States than
associate’s degrees and all certifications combined (Schneider, 2015). Certificate programs span
a broad range of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, construction, technology,
installation and repair, transportation, and hospitality (Cronen et al., 2018). While enrollment in
community colleges has declined relative to enrollment in four-year colleges and universities,
certificates with labor market value represent a rapidly growing segment of the postsecondary
market. Research on associate’s degrees and certificates tends to lump these various credentials

52
into a broad category of “subbaccalaureate credentials” which, if completed, are positively
associated not only with employment but also with earnings (Hout 2012; Xu and Trimble 2016;
Stevens, Kurlaender, and Grosz 2019). In particular, financial benefits accrue to students who
complete certificates and associate’s degrees when compared to those in possession of no
credentials beyond a high school diploma (Minaya and Scott-Clayton 2017). These certificates
have the added benefit of lowering opportunity cost by enabling students to work part- or even
full-time during the program’s completion and decreased actual cost due to the relatively low
tuition and fees, as well as shorter timeline for completion, of alternative postsecondary
pathways programs.
Figure 3

Acceleration of Non-Degree Credentials Conferred, Historically and Predicted (in millions)

Source: Holon IQ, 2023
The associate’s degree and certificate program picture is, however, muddled due to high
variation in program quality as well as the complexities young people face who are

53
simultaneously working and learning. The Pathways to Prosperity Initiative, developed by Jobs
for the Future and Harvard’s Graduate School of Education to present cohesive, realistic
postsecondary pathways to students not attending full-time four-year baccalaureate programs,
defines four “implementation levers” for “rigorous academic and career pathways”: (1) engaged
employers; (2) information, awareness, and exposure to career options; (3) intermediary links
between education and employers; and (4) a favorable policy environment with committed state
leaders (Schwartz and Loyd, 2019). Inherently, the certification pathway is complex for a young
person. Community colleges, where many occupational certificates are awarded, have two
missions to balance: enabling transfer of academic credit to four-year colleges and universities as
well as providing training with labor market value (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). Additionally,
young people enrolled in high-quality certificate programs—such as those in the Pathways to
Prosperity Initiative—are typically working while they learn and, for many, balancing
responsibilities such as living on their own (American Association of Community Colleges,
2020). While certificate programs are growing and the return on investment of many of these
programs—particularly those focused on “fixing things or people”—is high (Schneider, 2015), it
can be difficult to gather data on the quality of individual programs given the high dropout rates
at community colleges overall (Rosenbaum et. al., 2015) and limited program data on
postsecondary programs not run by colleges or universities.
Another promising non-college postsecondary pathway is the Registered Apprenticeship.
Although there are over 23,000 Registered Apprenticeship programs in the United States, the
Department of Labor counted only about 585,000 active apprentices in fiscal year 2018 (Torpey,
2019), and only roughly 500,000 out of a total American workforce of nearly 154 million has a
Registered Apprenticeship credential (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019). An advantage of

54
apprenticeship programs is that they can be run by institutes of higher education, industry
groups, unions, private organizations, and local education agencies. Quality apprenticeship
programs minimize the high costs associated with college by simultaneously offering hands-on
training, technical instruction, and a paycheck (Torpey, 2019). While minimizing the
opportunity cost and actual costs associated with baccalaureate programs, apprenticeship
programs hold the promise of “increasing opportunity by raising skills, productivity, and wages,
thereby increasing the chances for young people to find and hold jobs providing middle class
incomes” (Lerman, 2016; International Labour Organization, 2017). Additionally, successful
apprentices gain access to mentorship, “soft skills,” a transferable certification with labor market
value, and the initiation into a profession. While apprenticeship programs are robust in many
countries, including Switzerland (Hoffman et al, 2021) and other nations in Europe (Sandel,
2020; Tucker, 2019), the United States has a relatively underdeveloped and variably managed
apprenticeship sector, despite myriad advantages to both workers and firms (Lerman, 2016).
There is an opportunity to expand apprenticeships, since according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, employment resulting from seven of the largest apprenticeship programs in the United
States represented almost 6 million jobs in 2018, and those seven occupations—carpenters,
construction laborers, electrical power line installers and repairers, electricians, truck drivers,
plumbers, and sheet metal workers—are all growing faster than average professions, six of the
seven have wages above the U.S. median annual wage, and they are collectively projected to add
500,000 jobs in the coming decade (Torpey, 2019). Apprenticeships are a small but growing
segment of the postsecondary picture, and they offer many advantages over traditional
baccalaureate pathways.

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Military service provides yet another alternative to full-time college while sustaining
some of the same benefits of CTE options for high school graduates, including applied training,
low opportunity cost, and paid work. However, while the military “must recruit about 150,000
enlistees” per year, 180,000 young people are “able and willing to serve” (Laich, 2019), which
means that the U.S. Armed Services must take five out of every six potential recruits, and must
recruit aggressively to fill its enlisted spots. In 2007, the U.S. Armed Services spent $3.2 billion
on recruitment activities, or over $20,000 per Army and Navy recruit and over $11,000 per Air
Force and Marine Corps recruit (Dertouzos, 2009)—this despite the military enjoying some of
the advantages of full-time four-year college, including structure, purpose, social connection,
removing some of the more immediate financial barriers to access, and identity formation. Thus,
even though military service represents a meaningful postsecondary pathway for some young
people, the calls to service are not strong enough to lure large percentages of high school
graduates into the various branches of the military, and well over one hundred times the number
of young people entering the military each year are enrolled in undergraduate programs (NCES,
2021) each fall. The well-funded infrastructure that drives high school graduates into a wide
variety of colleges and universities is simply not in place for military, career, and vocational
programs in the United States (Sawhill, 2018; Sandel, 2020). Over the past forty years, military
service has become increasingly unattractive to young people and active-duty military personnel,
which spiked at over 12 million in 1945 and registered over 3.5 million in 1968, was under 1.35
million in November of 2021 (DMDC, 2021). Unlike Registered Apprenticeships, military
service is nationally accessible, presents a relatively standard option for those interested, and is
declining in job-seeker demand and available positions. Similar to apprenticeships, military
service offers on-the-job training, paid work, a professional network, and educational incentives.

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Benefits of “Pathways for All” and “No Dead Ends”
2011’s Pathways to Prosperity report, published by the Harvard Graduate School of
Education (HGSE), signaled an early indication of the then-emerging trend away from a solely
college for all approach in America’s K-12 schools. The core message of the paper was that
America was falling behind other nations economically, in large part due to an overemphasis on
bachelor’s degrees and a systematic dismantling of the nation’s middle-skill training pathways
(Symonds et. al., 2011). The report explicitly built off of a growing body of research within the
fields of education and economics, including citations of reports such as Are They Ready to
Work?, Rising above the Gathering Storm, The Forgotten Half, and The Forgotten Half
Revisited, and claimed that a singular focus on the traditional postsecondary pathway of full-time
four-year college or university is “doomed to fail” and represents “a stunning setback for a
nation that led the entire world in educating its young for over a century” (Symonds et. al., 2011,
p. 7). For solutions to what the authors saw as America’s looming education and economic
crisis—and what others have since linked to our political polarization and an erosion of
democratic values (Putnam, 2016; Sandel, 2021; Sawhill, 2018; Tough, 2019)—the report turned
to international models, with a special focus on the German, Swiss, Finnish, and Danish systems,
which tend to provide a robust general academic education for all young people up to the U.S.
equivalent of tenth grade, and then provide defined, and differentiated, pathways focused on
continued academics for some and vocational education and training (VET) for others (Symonds
et.al., 2011). The core of the postsecondary pathways for all (as opposed to college for all) model
proposed in the HGSE report is that all students need to have a rigorous academic education,
educational outcomes and system design need to be more directly linked to labor market
opportunities, all young people need to have a clearly-defined and personally-meaningful

57
postsecondary pathway leading towards a respected profession that offers continued
advancement and financial independence, and the pathways themselves should not be so rigid as
to pigeonhole anyone into a singular occupation or to limit future educational opportunities
(Symonds et. al., 2011). The authors conclude that this multiple pathways approach—one that
prepares young people for both the traditional American pathway of full-time four-year college
and alternative pathways requiring continued learning and paid work experience (high-quality
VET/CTE)—represent “the single most promising strategy for greatly increasing the percentage
of young adults who…embark on a meaningful career” (Symonds et. al., p. 24).
One method for ensuring that multiple postsecondary pathways accomplish the desired
outcome of systematically aligning systems of education with opportunities within the labor
market for young people is to create permeable pathways “with no dead ends” (Policy
Leadership Trust, 2022, p. 4). The OECD nations with the smoothest education-to-employment
transitions for young people work relentlessly to build permeable pathways, so that young people
can move successfully, throughout their careers, between work and learning (Tucker, M.,
2019b). At the core of the concept of no dead ends is taking a student-centered approach to
individual advancement that enables smooth transitions between educational experiences and
work experiences, offers clear next steps at each point within the educational system, and
rewards advancement within academic institutions and within work environments so that even if
an individual chooses to shift professional course, the accumulated experience and skill will be
valued in the newly-chosen pathway (Policy Leadership Trust, 2022). While vocational
education in the United States has a history of exacerbating socioeconomic and racial inequality
by segregating students at an early age, thereby limiting their educational and occupational
opportunity (Policy Leadership Trust, 2022; Tucker, 2019; Putnam, 2016), the top-performing

58
nations in the world in terms of both educational equity and educational excellence withhold any
student tracking until the completion of a rigorous course of general education that extends into
the first years of high school (Tucker, 2012). These excellent and equitable systems then
acknowledge that “all education is vocational” so that all paths lead to jobs that provide financial
stability and a rewarding career, and they ensure that those paths are rich in academic content,
whether or not they are theoretical or applied in nature (Tucker, 2012). Thus, the choice a young
person makes is not whether or not they will enter a vocational or an academic track, but rather
whether they are more interested in an applied versus an intellectual form of education (Tucker,
2019b). In a system with permeable pathways that enable seamless transitions from education to
work (and vice versa), economies benefit, society benefits, and students benefit; in such a
system, “the bottom quartile performs above the average American student and the top quartile
leaves high school two to three years ahead of the average American student” (Tucker, M.,
2019a, p. 75). The shared belief of such education systems is that all students benefit from a
greater understanding of the world of work, whether or not they are assigned a vocational track,
and that it is possible to achieve the ends of equality of opportunity and educational excellence
by preparing all learners for both college and career (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019).

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Chapter Three: Methods

The focus of this quantitative study was to understand the relationships between twelfth
grade students’ perceptions of a diversity of postsecondary opportunities and their sense of
purpose as well as how both the pathways and their sense of purpose differ by participants’
demographic characteristics. The possession of a self-transcendent, prosocial sense of purpose
predicts greater academic self-regulation, high school and college persistence, and grades—
particularly in high school STEM courses (Yeager et al., 2014). As school systems across the
nation intentionally expand their curricula and counseling to include personalized postsecondary
pathways beyond full-time four-year college, it is important to understand student perceptions—
particularly the perceptions of students most directly impacted by the organizational changes—of
postsecondary opportunity, demographic characteristics, and students’ sense of purpose. The
research questions guiding this study are as follows:
Primary
● To what extent do interest in, exposure to, perceived support for, and perceived constraints
associated with a range of postsecondary options as well as demographic variables predict
students’ sense of purpose?
Secondary
● Are there demographic group differences in students’ exposure to, interest in, support for,
and perceived constraints to accessing a range of postsecondary options?
Exploratory
● For students with college-going risk factors (2.5 or below GPA, disability/IEP, and/or
poverty/FRL status), does greater exposure to, interest in, and support for a variety of
postsecondary options predict a greater sense of purpose?

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This chapter covers the approach to selecting participants for the study, data collection
and instrumentation methods applied to address research questions, data analysis—with a focus
on credibility and trustworthiness, ethical considerations, and limitations and delimitations to the
study.
Site or Organization Overview
The Heights (pseudonym) is a public charter school network operating in California and
Washington states. The network was founded in the early 2000s to prepare a diverse student
population for success in college, and the schools have been largely successful in doing so.
Approximately 98 percent of The Heights’ graduates attain acceptance to a college or university.
Over half go on to attain a bachelor’s degree in six or fewer years beyond graduation. The
Heights has been recognized as a national leader in preparing students for college, and has scaled
its college-ready model to approximately 400 schools across the country, in nearly every state.
The schools that The Heights operates are diverse, with approximately 50 percent of the 4,000
total students on free or reduced lunch plans, over 40 percent Latino, over 20 percent White, over
20 percent Filipino or Asian Pacific Islander, and over 10 percent Black. The school model at
The Heights’ fifteen schools was designed for “college for all,” but it also has defined four
commencement-level outcomes that characterize the student experience:
1. Cognitive Skills, which are assessed across disciplines on a single rubric. The project-
based learning curriculum at the Heights is built upon these Cognitive Skills and assessed
on the Cognitive Skills Rubric, which was developed in partnership with researchers at
Stanford University.

61
2. Content Knowledge, which is arranged into subject pathways aligned to state standards
and made accessible to all students all the time through a free learning platform
developed by the charter school network.
3. Habits of Success, or social-emotional learning skills, which are embedded into each
academic course, celebrated in school events and activities, and serve as the foundation
of the network’s robust mentorship program.
4. Concrete Next Step, which has—up until August of 2022—been synonymous with
College Readiness. However, the network has—for the first time in its 20 years of
operation—revised its mission to broaden graduate success beyond full-time four-year
college or university to include any personalized postsecondary pathway that is defined
by the student after an intensive, supported, and community-involved process.
The Heights is one of the highest-performing charter school networks in the country, but it is
moving away from its current model, which supports only one postsecondary pathway that has
served approximately fifty percent of The Heights’ graduates, in favor of a definition of graduate
success that the school network believes will offer greater support and greater opportunity to all
students.
This decision to change the school organization's mission was not taken lightly by The
Heights’ faculty. The organization conducted intensive alumni outreach that spanned over a year
to better understand the experience of alumni. Years of surveys, interviews, and focus groups of
students informed their decision to shift their organization’s mission away from the traditional
pathway of college for all and towards personalized postsecondary pathways. Parents were
consulted in the decision-making process through the Parent Teacher Organization. All school
leaders came to consensus on the change of organizational mission. Underlying the decision-

62
making process involving so many stakeholders was the belief that the schools must support all
students in their post-graduation plans, not only the students who would go on to attend a four-
year college or university, and not only the students who would go on to attain a bachelor’s
degree.
The 2022-2023 school year marked the organization’s initial implementation of the new
mission. Seniors were the student group most acutely affected by the shift. While The Heights
planned to continue to provide steady college counseling and academic mentorship, the
organization also planned to broaden support for and offer greater exposure to non-college
postsecondary opportunities. The organization also planned to support all students in an intensive
postsecondary planning process that does not presuppose the destination of full-time four-year
college or university for every student. The school’s Expeditions program, which operates
approximately eight weeks of each academic year, is being fully redesigned to accommodate
students’ exposure to, and exploration of, postsecondary pathways that include apprenticeships,
occupational certifications, industry certifications, military options, and personalized work-learn
pathways. Expedition’s programming is available to all students at The Heights, from grade six
to grade twelve, and the eight weeks of Expeditions programming provided annually to students
is staggered in four two-week immersive increments throughout the year. Senior perceptions of
the organizational shifts—as well as the concomitant opportunities and challenges that they
bring—offer valuable insight into not only how one charter school network messages and
implements a change from a focus on a singular traditional postsecondary pathway of full-time
four-year college to an expanded set of high-quality personalized postsecondary pathways, but
into how public education can responsibly move beyond “college for all” in service of the
postsecondary pathways that a majority of young people ultimately pursue.

63
Participants
The population of focus was high school seniors of at least 18 years of age at The
Heights. Particular attention was paid to the seniors who possessed one or more of the three risk
factors indicating a low likelihood of graduation from a four-year college or university in six or
fewer years after high school graduation. Given the organizational research (Mohammed &
Black, 2021) conducted over the past decade by The Heights’ internal Data Analytics and
College Readiness teams, the three primary indicators of an alum’s risk of not graduating from a
four-year college or university within six years of graduation from The Heights include:
● The student’s status as “socioeconomically disadvantaged,” as indicated by the student’s
participation in the federal free and reduced lunch program.
● The student’s disability status, as indicated by the student’s possession of an
individualized education plan.
● The student’s grade point average (GPA) being at or below a 2.5 out of 4.
While other factors, including a student’s status as a first-generation college-bound student and a
student’s behavioral record, do seem to negatively predict the student’s chances of attaining a
college degree, these factors are anecdotal and not supported by consistent evidence across The
Heights’ entire student population. Additionally, the three factors identified within The Heights’
internal research align well with studies conducted more broadly, which identify poverty
(National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2020), disability (U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 2015), and secondary academic performance as measured by grade point average
(Allensworth & Clark, 2020) as powerful indicators of college matriculation and on-time
graduation.

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Given the established internal and external evidence suggesting the importance of the risk
factors of experienced poverty, disability, and low GPA on a student’s likelihood of college
graduation, I coded participants’ risk factors in data collection and analysis. The Heights’ data
and information team identified participants’ risk factors. Additionally, I applied the criterion of
age in order to limit the study’s participants to adults (18 years or older) rather than minors in
order to facilitate efficient data collection by use of consent as opposed to assent, without
compromising research results.
Total study participants totaled 534 high school seniors out of an eligible total of 713
adult students. When regressions required the assignment of demographic reference groups, the
groups with the largest number of participants were assigned to the reference group, as
prevailing best quantitative analysis practices dictate, with the exception of GPA groups, in
which the 3.0-3.49 GPA group was used as the referent in order to mitigate the risk of extreme
comparisons. In the demographics table below, assigned reference groups appear with an asterisk
(*).
Table 2
Study Participants, Referents in Regressions, and N size

Sex N total = 525
Male* 271
Female 255

Race N Total = 534
Asian 94
Hispanic* 237
White 98
Black 36
2+ Races 50
Other 19

SED? N total = 534

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Yes 214
No* 320

IEP? N total = 534
Yes 64
No* 470

ELL? N total = 534
Yes 39
No* 485

GPA N Total = 534
GPA below 2.5 (of 4) 60
GPA 2.5-2.99 82
GPA 3.0-3.49 (of 4)* 162
GPA 3.5-4.0 (of 4) 227

Procedure
All recruitment decisions were made in light of the ethical principles outlined in 1979’s
“The Belmont Report” and with respect to the culture and processes in place at The Heights. I
spoke with the CEO of The Heights, who demonstrated great interest in better understanding the
relationship between exposure to a diversity of postsecondary opportunities and high school
seniors’ sense of purpose. She endorsed the study and put me in touch with the Chief
Information Officer (CIO) at The Heights, who demonstrated similar interest and provided a
spreadsheet of de-identified eligible participants, including demographic information. Because
The Heights leadership—including all principals and central office leaders—decided to move the
network beyond their original mission of college for all and towards a more expansive definition
of graduate success, encompassed by the definition of purposeful postsecondary pathways,
interest in the study was consistently voiced by members of The Heights faculty.
The twenty-item online survey was administered by high school faculty during a four-
week window in September, 2022. A set of school faculty across every high school in The
Heights public school network were trained to administer the survey with participants, and they

66
read a script explaining the purpose and use of the survey to potential participants (see Appendix
C). The script states that providing consent to participate was entirely optional and that all survey
responses would be confidential for the purposes of academic research. Students indicated
consent to participate in the study (or not) after reading the study’s Information Sheet (see
Appendix C) in the online survey tool, which reiterated the confidentiality disclosure. Since
senior mentor groups at The Heights are composed of both minors and 18+-year-olds, all
students had the opportunity to take the survey, but only consenting adult responses were used
for data collection purposes. The school network’s Data and Information team de-identified all
data and only provided the researcher with responses from consenting adult participants. For
consenting participants, information provided within the survey enabled survey responses to be
linked to extant student demographic data provided by the charter school district. Online surveys
were administered on Google Chromebook laptops provided by The Heights to all students,
though a paper version was available to students if they preferred to complete a paper version of
the survey.
Instrumentation
The survey instrument consisted of twenty questions (see Appendix A): the twelve-
question Measure of Adolescent Purpose (MAP) along with eight additional items related to
postsecondary pathway exposure, interest, perceived support, and perceived constraints to
postsecondary opportunity.
Demographics
Due to The Heights’ single sign-on service and Google Administrative Suite, the school
network’s Data and Information team were able to automatically capture student identification
numbers and match them to directory demographic data without the need for collecting

67
personally identifiable information within the survey instrument. This capability not only
ensured the safe treatment of all student data by limiting research access to any personally
identifiable information, but it also shortened the length of the survey while increasing the
survey’s accuracy, since no participants needed to self-report personal, academic, or
demographic information. Available demographic data included students’ race, sex, school, free
or reduced lunch plan status (a proxy for poverty), IEP status (a proxy for disability), and grade
point average.
Measure of Adolescent Purpose (MAP)
Twelve questions from the Measure of Adolescent Purpose (MAP) instrument constituted
the second portion of the survey. All MAP questions were answered on a four-point Likert scale
and assess three subscales of Intention, Engagement, and Prosocial Reasoning. Intention is
assessed using four of the ten questions; engagement, four; and prosocial reasoning, four.
McDonald’s Omega reliability of the MAP is .901 for the construct of Intention, .867 for
Engagement, and .937 for Prosocial Reasoning. The average omega is .902. The instrument also
underwent predictive validity with the exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) with an
average construct validity of .795, with item scores ranging from .481 to .954. Students
responded to each item on the MAP using a four-point Likert scale (Strongly Agree - Strongly
Disagree). See Appendix A for additional information.
Postsecondary Pathways (PSP)
I created eight questions that were designed to gauge students’ exposure to, interest in,
perceived support for, and perceived constraints to accessing a variety of realistic postsecondary
pathways. Of these, exposure, interest, support, and constraints were each measured using five
matrix Likert scales against a standard set of six postsecondary pathways that included “A

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bachelor’s degree (generally after 4+ years of college or university),” “An associate degree
(generally after 2+ years of community college),” “An occupational certification (such as a
Google cybersecurity certificate),” “A bootcamp,” “A paid apprenticeship,” and “A gap year.”
The five four-point Likert scales were adapted to the particular measurement, such as “Very
uninterested - Very interested” and “Very unsupportive - Very supportive.”
The question of constraints, being framed in the negative, operated somewhat differently
from the other four matrix Likert scales, as it offered “the most important factors influencing”
the student’s planning for life after high school. Options included “Making enough money to
support myself,” “The cost of the school/program,” “Where I live,” “The prestige of the
school/program,” “Where my friends live,” “Where my family lives,” “My job,” and an “Other”
option that included the opportunity to write open text. The fifth question gauges exposure to
postsecondary pathways based on the number of people the student reports knowing who have
successfully completed “A doctoral degree,” “A master’s degree,” “A bachelor’s degree
(generally after 4+ years of college or university,” “An associate’s degree (generally after 2+
years of community college),” “An occupational certification (such as a Google cybersecurity
certificate),” “A paid apprenticeship,” and “A gap year.” The options for question five in this
subscale are the same as in the other expose, interest, and support subscales, with the addition of
doctoral and master’s degrees. Finally, three additional questions were added to gauge students’
expected postsecondary activity, ideal postsecondary activity, and preferences for attending
college on a scholarship or gaining access to a paid apprenticeship program. For the expected
and ideal postsecondary activity questions, participants were instructed to “check all that apply”
from the following list: “Work full-time,” “Work part-time,” “Attend a community college,”
“Attend a four-year college or university,” “Work towards an occupational certification (such as

69
a Google cybersecurity certificate),” “Attend a bootcamp,” “A paid apprenticeship,” “Take a gap
year,” and, in the case of the ideal postsecondary question, “None of the Above.” The final
question of the survey was a forced choice between a policy that would enable the participant to
gain a full-tuition scholarship to any college or university to which they were admitted or a 3-
year paid apprenticeship program after high school that leads to a valuable credential and a well-
paying job. This final question was taken from the American Compass “Failing on Purpose”
survey (American Compass, 2021). See Appendix A for the full survey.
Data Analysis

The Measure of Academic Purpose (MAP), which consists of three subscales, was the
primary research instrument defining the dependent variables (DVs) in the study. The subscales
for adolescent Sense of Purpose represented in the MAP are (1) Intention, (2) Engagement, and
(3) Prosocial Reasoning. Additionally, Sense of Purpose was used as a composite measure of all
three subscales. The means table and alphas reliability tables are below, demonstrating the
reliability of the various composites and subscales.
Table 3
Means and Standard Deviations for Measure of Adolescent Purpose Subscales and Composite
M SD # Items
1. Intention 3.13 0.46 4
2. Engagement 3.01 0.54 4
3. Prosocial Reasoning 3.07 0.57 4
4. Sense of Purpose (composite) 3.07 0.46 12

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Table 4
Alphas Reliability of Psycho-social Variables
Sense of Purpose Reliability
MAP Sense of Purpose (composite) .892
MAP Intention .705
MAP Engagement .796
MAP Prosocial Reasoning .882

Support, Exposure, Constraints Reliability
Support (composite) .815
Exposure (composite) .848
Constraint (composite) .748

To analyze the primary research question—“to what extent do interest in, exposure to,
perceived support for, and perceived constraints associated with a range of postsecondary
options as well as demographic variables predict students’ sense of purpose?”—multiple
regressions were conducted, with the four dependent variables (DVs) of (a) intention subscale,
(b) engagement subscale, (c) prosocial reasoning subscale, and (d) sense of purpose composite
were analyzed in three steps against (Step 1) the five independent variables (IVs) of student
demographic characteristics including (a) sex, (b) race, (c) socio-economic status, (d) ability
status, and (e) English learner status; then (Step 2) the four IVs of academic performance
including (a) GPA below 2.5, (b) GPA between 2.5 and 2.99, (c) GPA between 3.0-3.49, and (d)
GPA between 3.5-4.0; and finally, (Step 3) with the nine independent variables of (a) support
composite, (b) exposure composite, (c) constraint composite, (d) interest-bachelor’s degree (BA),
(e) interest-associate’s degree (AA), (f) interest-apprenticeship, (g) interest-occupational
certification (OccCert), (h) interest-gap year, and (i) interest-bootcamp. The below table presents
an overview of the three-step analytical approach to controlling for demographic and academic

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variables before conducting the primary analysis of the independent variables of support,
exposure, constraints, and interest.
Table 5
Research Question 1 - Analytical Approach
Step 1: to control for
demographic factors
Step 2: to control for
academic performance factors
Step 3
Regressions predicting
demographic IVs’
relationships to sense of
purpose DVs
Regressions predicting
academic performance IVs’
relationships to sense of
purpose DVs (controlled for
demographic IVs)
Regressions predicting IVs of
support, exposure, constraints,
and interest in postsecondary
options to sense of purpose
DVs (controlled for
demographic and academic
performance IVs)
Demographic IVs:
1. Sex
2. Race
3. Socio-economic status
4. Ability status
5. English learner status
Academic Performance IVs:
1. GPA below 2.5
2. 2.5-2.99 GPA
3. 3.0-3.49 GPA
4. 3.5-4.0 GPA
Primary IVs:
1. Support (composite)
2. Exposure (composite)
3. Constraint (composite)
4. Interest-BA
5. Interest-AA
6. Interest-Apprenticeship
7. Interest-OccCert
8. Interest-Gap Year
9. Interest-Bootcamp

The three-step multiple regression analyses controlled demographic and academic
performance variables before the third-step analysis revealed the significance and power of IVs
related to support, exposure, constraints, and interest in various postsecondary pathways.
Running regressions in steps allows a relative analysis of how much psycho-social variables
matter above and beyond the impact of demographics and academic performance. Regarding the
analysis of the independent variable of reported interest, significance was examined at the
postsecondary pathway level. Those pathways include (1) bachelor’s degree programs, (2)
associate’s degree programs, (3) certification programs, (4) apprenticeship programs, (5)

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bootcamp programs, and (6) gap year programs. This additional layer of analysis was conducted
because, unlike the independent variables of support, constraints, and exposure, students reported
significantly different levels of interest at the specific pathway level, leading to reliability scores
well below the standard 0.70 alpha. Hispanic students, who comprise nearly half of the study
participants, served as the racial reference group in the regressions. Male students serve as the
referent group for sex (9 students identified as non-binary, a cell size too small for meaningful
analysis, leading to the total participant number of 525 for this analysis). Students without
learning disabilities, socio-economic disadvantage (not eligible for free or reduced school
lunches), and without English language learner status are coded as reference groups for the
categories of IEP, SED, and ELL.
To analyze the second research question—“are there demographic group differences in
students’ exposure to, interest in, support for, and perceived constraints to accessing a range of
postsecondary options?”—a series of one-way ANOVAs were conducted using the six
independent variables of (1) race, (2) sex, (3) socio-economic disadvantage (SED), (4) ability
status (IEP or no IEP), (5) grade point average (GPA), and (6) English proficiency (ELL or non-
ELL). Dependent variables analyzed were: (1) exposure composite (α=0.85), (2) support
composite (α=0.82), (3) constraints composite (α=0.75), and (4) six interest pathways (BA, AA,
OccCert, Apprenticeship, Bootcamp, Gap Year).
To analyze my third research question—“for students with college-going risk factors (2.5
or below GPA, disability/IEP, and/or poverty/FRL status), does greater exposure to, interest in,
and support for a variety of postsecondary options predict a greater sense of purpose?”—a series
of regressions were run to determine whether students with more college-going risk factors—
meaning low academic performance (operationalized as below a 2.5 GPA), a disability

73
(operationalized as possession of an IEP), and/or socio-economic disadvantage (operationalized
as eligibility for federal free or reduced school lunch)—possessed a greater sense of purpose if
and when they reported greater exposure to, interest in, and support for a variety of
postsecondary options. Students were categorized as possessing 0 (n=260), 1 (n=219), 2 (n=48),
or all 3 (n=7) risk factors. Then, regressions demonstrated the predictive relationships between
students in each of the four risk factor categories, their reported level of support, interest, and
exposure, and the three subscales of Sense of Purpose (intention, engagement, and prosocial
reasoning).
Limitations, Delimitations, and Assumptions

Limitations of the planned study included sample size, state, and composition. Due to the
study’s timing, the number of eligible participants was delimited to high school seniors within
The Heights school network who were 18 years of age or older at the time of survey
administration in September, 2022. Based on data received from The Heights Data and
Information Team, the maximum number of eligible participants was 713. Of those potential 713
participants, 534 consented to participation in the study. Additionally, the ideal time in the senior
year to conduct this study was early in the second semester, since by that point, seniors would
have already conducted their research into postsecondary pathways and would have been in the
process of making decisions regarding life after high school. A limitation of this study is the time
of the year required for survey administration—early in the senior year—in which many seniors
had not conducted significant research into postsecondary options. While this limitation is worth
noting, it is also noteworthy that little research is available regarding the progression of students’
sense or purpose over the course of the pivotal senior year, and little has been written about the
most effective timing and methods for exposing adolescents and emerging adults to

74
postsecondary opportunity. Finally, eligible participants were in The Heights high schools, which
are only located in urban and suburban areas in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle and
Tacoma metropolitan areas in Washington State; as a result, generalizability of results to rural
areas is limited, and the educative context of a west coast public charter school network is
worthy of consideration before applying results to other contexts.
Additionally, some delimitations are worth noting. First, the Measure of Adolescent
Purpose (MAP) survey instrument, developed by Summers & Falco (2019), attends to the
commonly accepted definition of adolescent purpose advanced by William Damon, Jenni
Menon, and Kendall Cotton Bronk (2003). This definition focuses upon purpose as a construct
that is specific to a young person’s meaningful intention, not to a quality inherent in the young
person themself. Other measures have focused upon the extent to which a person feels a sense of
purpose in life, such as the Revised Youth Purpose Interview (Andrews et al., 2006), the Revised
Youth Purpose Survey (Bundick et al., 2006), the Purpose in Life Test (Crumbaugh & Maholick,
1969), and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger et al. 2006). While these other qualitative
and quantitative instruments have been used more widely than the MAP, and they offer the
alluring dimension of being able to label a young person as purposeful or not, they do not attend
to the basic, and commonly accepted, definition of adolescent sense or purpose advanced by
Damon, Menon, and Bronk (2003) (Summers & Falco, 2019). Additionally, a delimitation of this
study is that I chose to include in the eligible participant group only those seniors who were able
to provide consent to the study. This delimitation is demographically inconsequential, as the six
demographic dimensions upon which I chose to focus secondary analysis are similar across
younger seniors, but I made the choice to embrace this age-based delimitation due to the
challenge of acquiring assent from the parents of minors.

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A primary assumption of this study is that adolescent sense of purpose acts as a leading
indicator of motivation, resilience, postsecondary access and persistence, and self-regulation.
Despite being based on significant evidence over decades of research (Yeager et al., 2014;
French & Joseph, 1999; Masten & Reed, 2002; King et. al., 2006; Bronk et al., 2009; Koshy &
Menon Mariano, 2011; Damon, 2009), the centrality of the importance of sense of purpose as a
leading indicator of adolescent success is noteworthy. Additionally, this study assumes that
college persistence, predicted by adolescent sense of purpose (Yeager et al., 2014), applies
similarly to persistence in less-well-researched contexts of non-college postsecondary pathways
including apprenticeships, non-degree certification programs, and the like. Finally, an
assumption of this study is that “emerging adults” (Arnett, 2000) are capable of accurately
reporting their exposure to, interest in, perceived support for, and perceived constraints to
accessing a set of postsecondary opportunities available to them, which include bachelor’s
degree programs, associate’s degree programs, apprenticeships, occupational certificates,
bootcamps, and gap years.

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Chapter 4: Results
The following chapter represents the research findings resulting from the study,
organized by research question. Prior to analysis, data were cleaned, coded, and examined to
ensure accuracy and completeness. Analyses were conducted in Python, with some follow-up
analyses conducted in R.
Analyses of Research Questions

Analysis of Research Question 1
To analyze the primary research question—“to what extent do interest in, exposure to,
perceived support for, and perceived constraints associated with a range of postsecondary
options as well as demographic variables predict students’ sense of purpose?”—four hierarchical
regressions were conducted for the four dependent variables of (a) Intention subscale, (b)
Engagement subscale, (c) Prosocial Reasoning subscale, and (d) Sense of Purpose composite.
Significant results emerged to validate the hypothesis that increased Interest, Exposure, Support,
and Constraints predict a greater Sense of Purpose, while demographic variables presented less
significance and, when significant, yielded smaller effect sizes on Sense of Purpose.
Table 6
Significance Table for Regression Step 1: Demographic Factors Predicting Sense of Purpose (3
subscales)
Intention
Sex ns
Race-White ns
Race-Asian ns
Race-Two or more ns
Race-Black .01
IEP ns
SED ns
ELL ns

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Engagement
Gender ns
Race-White ns
Race-Asian ns
Race-Two or more ns
Race-Black ns
IEP ns
SED ns
ELL ns

Prosocial Reasoning
Gender <.01
Race-White <.05
Race-Asian ns
Race-Two or more ns
Race-Black <.05
IEP <.05
SED ns
ELL ns

Table 7
Means for Intention by Racial Demographic Group (N Total = 515)

Demographic Group M SD N
Race-Asian 3.15 .43 94
Race-Black 3.31 .43 36
Race-Hispanic 3.1 .48 237
Race-White 3.14 .43 98
Race-Two or More 3.11 .45 50

Table 8
Means for Prosocial Reasoning by Sex (N Total = 526)

Demographic Group M SD N
Male 2.98 .6 271
Female 3.17 .51 255

Table 9
Means for Prosocial Reasoning by Racial Demographic Group (N Total = 515)

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Demographic Group M SD N
Race-Asian 3.12 .44 94
Race-Black 3.22 .51 36
Race-Hispanic 3.01 .61 237
Race-White 3.11 .6 98
Race-Two or More 3.06 .51 50

Table 10
Means for Prosocial Reasoning by Ability Status (N Total = 534)
Demographic Group M SD N
IEP 2.88 .65 64
No IEP 3.10 .55 470

While significant, effect sizes related to students’ demographic characteristics were small and
concentrated primarily on the subscale of Prosocial Reasoning. The relatively underpowered cell
size of Black students may contribute to the significance of the results in Step 1. Given the
quantity of regressions, lack of statistical significance, and small effect sizes where significance
was present, demographic characteristics contribute relatively little to the predictive power of
students’ Sense of Purpose, although where significant differences exist, the subscale of
Prosocial Reasoning accounts for most of the demographic differences.
The second step of the regression analysis conducted to answer the study’s primary
research question was designed to control for students’ academic performance before analyzing
the predictive value of psycho-social factors on students’ sense of purpose. The reference group
for the academic performance categories was designated as students with a 3.0-3.49 GPA (out of
4.0). This group represented the second largest by number and was closer to the median GPA
than the largest group: students with a GPA at or above a 3.5. For GPA, which constitutes a
standard measure of academic performance, two students did not have grades included in the

79
school network’s student information system, so the total participant number for GPA is 532 for
analytical purposes.
Table 11
Significance Table for Regression Step 2: Academic Factors Predicting Sense of Purpose (3
subscales)
Intention
GPA>3.5 ns
GPA 3.0-3.5 ns
GPA 2.5-3.0 ns
GPA <2.5 <.01

Engagement
GPA>3.5 ns
GPA 3.0-3.5 ns
GPA 2.5-3.0 ns
GPA <2.5 ns

Prosocial Reasoning
GPA>3.5 ns
GPA 3.0-3.5 ns
GPA 2.5-3.0 <.01
GPA <2.5 <.01

As in Step 1: Demographic Factors, academic performance variables were largely
insignificant and not predictive of students’ sense of purpose. Where significance was present,
the subscale of Prosocial Reasoning contributed to the majority of the differences among student
subgroups. However, even with significant results, the means again reveal relatively small effect
sizes.

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Table 12
Means for Intention by GPA Group (N Total = 532)

GPA Group M SD N
GPA>3.5 3.15 .47 228
GPA 3.0-3.5 3.16 .46 162
GPA 2.5-3.0 3.11 .42 83
GPA <2.5 2.96 .44 59

Table 13
Means for Prosocial Reasoning by GPA Group (N Total = 532)
GPA Group M SD N
GPA>3.5 3.1 .53 228
GPA 3.0-3.5 3.19 .56 162
GPA 2.5-3.0 2.91 .52 83
GPA <2.5 2.85 .65 59

The final step of the regression analysis involved taking the student responses, after being
controlled for what turned out to be relatively insignificant demographic and academic
performance variables, and analyzing the predictive value of psycho-social variables of (1)
Exposure to postsecondary options, (2) perceived Constraints to pursuing postsecondary options,
(3) perceived Support for postsecondary options, and (4) Interest in a variety of postsecondary
options on students’ Sense of Purpose along the three purpose subscales of (1) Intention, (2)
Engagement, and (3) Prosocial Reasoning. Tables M, N, O, and P demonstrate the predictive
capacities of each of the three steps in the hierarchical regression analyses to the DVs of Sense of
Purpose (composite), Intention (subscale), Engagement (subscale), and Prosocial Reasoning
(subscale).

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Table 14
N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Sense of Purpose
(composite)
Step 1: Demographics 2: Academics 3: Psycho-Social
N 534 534 534
R
2
.074 .088 .247
Δ .014 .159

Table 15
N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Intention
Step 1: Demographics 2: Academics 3: Psycho-Social
N 534 534 534
R
2
.077 .091 .211
Δ .014 .120

Table 16
N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Engagement
Step 1: Demographics 2: Academics 3: Psycho-Social
N 534 534 534
R
2
.065 .069 .195
Δ .004 .126

Table 17
N, R
2
, and Δ for Each Step in Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Prosocial Reasoning
Step 1: Demographics 2: Academics 3: Psycho-Social
N 534 534 534
R
2
.081 .110 .232
Δ .029 .122
Table 18 represents the significant results that emerged from the third and final step in the
regression analysis. The predictive power of the Psycho-Social variables of Exposure,

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Constraints, Support, and Interest in various postsecondary options proved substantially more
robust than Demographic and Academic Performance variables.

Table 18
Sense of Purpose (3 subscales) Predicted by Exposure (composite), Constraints (composite),
Support (composite), and Interest (6: BA, AA, Occupational Certification, Bootcamp,
Apprenticeship, and Gap Year) After Controlling for Demographic and GPA Variables
Intention
Variables: R
2
β Significance
Overall model .211
Exposure .123 <.01
Constraints .116 <.01
Support .133 <.01
Interest-BA .214 <.01
Interest-AA ns
Interest-OccCert -0.106 .035
Interest-Bootcamp ns
Interest-Apprentice ns
Interest-GapYear -0.106 .017

Engagement
Variables: R
2
β Significance
Overall model .195
Exposure .168 <.01
Constraints .130 <.01
Support .130 <.01
Interest-BA .204 <.01
Interest-AA ns
Interest-OccCert ns
Interest-Bootcamp -0.102 .039
Interest-Apprentice ns
Interest-GapYear ns

Prosocial Reasoning
Variables: R
2
β Significance
Overall model .232
Exposure .092 .035
Constraints .117 <.01
Support .144 <.01
Interest-BA .232 <.01

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Interest-AA ns
Interest-OccCert ns
Interest-Bootcamp ns
Interest-Apprentice ns
Interest-GapYear -0.102 .02

After controlling for demographic and academic performance factors, significant results
regarding Intention revealed that respondents indicated greater Intention when they:
● report greater exposure to people with postsecondary education (β=0.123, p=<.01),
● feel more supported by important others (β=0.133, p=<.01),
● have given more thought to constraints in their postsecondary decision making (β=0.116,
p=<.01),
● have greater interest in four-year college or university (β=0.214, p=<.01),
● have lower interest in a gap year (β=-0.106, p=0.017), and
● have lower interest in occupational certification (β=-0.106, p=0.035).
After controlling for demographic and academic performance factors, significant results
regarding Engagement revealed that respondents indicated greater Engagement when they:
● report greater exposure to people with post-secondary education (β=0.168, p=<.01),
● feel more supported by important others (β=0.130, p=<.01),
● have given more thought to constraints in their postsecondary decision making (β=0.130,
p=<.01),
● have greater interest in 4 year college (β=0.204, p=<.01), and
● have lower interest in a bootcamp (β=-0.102, p=0.039).
After controlling for demographic and academic performance factors, significant results
regarding Prosocial Reasoning revealed that respondents indicated greater Prosocial Reasoning
when they:

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● report greater exposure to people with post-secondary education (β=0.092, p=0.035),
● feel more supported by important others (β=0.144, p=<.01),
● have given more thought to constraints in their postsecondary planning (β=0.117,
p=<.01),
● have greater interest in 4 year college (β=0.232, p=<.01), and
● have lower interest in a gap year (β=-0.102, p=0.02).
Multiple standardized regression coefficients (standardized β) demonstrate significant predictive
effects on sense of purpose subscales between -.102 and .232, representing greater significance
and greater effects than demographics or previous academic performance. This predictive
significance confirms the hypothesis that the variables under the control of secondary education
providers—namely, Exposure to postsecondary opportunities, perceptions of postsecondary
Support, considerations of postsecondary Constraints, and expressed Interest in various
postsecondary options—are of greater importance to students’ Sense of Purpose than preexisting
demographic or academic performance markers.
Analysis of Research Question 2
The analyses of the second research question—“are there demographic group differences
in students’ exposure to, interest in, support for, and perceived constraints to accessing a range of
postsecondary options?”—revealed preliminary results for further investigation. Amongst racial
groups, there were some results of descriptive significance for further study and exploration.
Table 19
Significance Table for Racial Factors for Exposure, Support, Constraints, and Interest
Factor Significance
Exposure <.01
Support <.01
Constraints ns

85
Interest-BA <.01
Interest-AA ns
Interest-OccCert .045
Interest-Apprenticeship .013
Interest-Bootcamp ns
Interest-Gap Year ns

There is significant variation in reported exposure to people with postsecondary
experiences by race, with Black students on the high end of the distribution and Hispanic
students on the low end amongst groups. Additionally, there is significant variation in perceived
support for postsecondary options by race, with White students on the high end of the
distribution and Asian students on the low end amongst racial groups with sufficient cell sizes
for exploratory analysis.
Table 20
Means for Exposure, Support, and Interest by Racial Group (N Total = 515)
Racial Group Asian Black Hispanic Two or More White
Exposure
M 2.05 2.33 1.82 2.16 2.21
SD .51 .71 .63 .62 .66
N 94 36 237 50 98

Support
M 2.67 2.93 2.79 2.86 3.03
SD .57 .63 .62 .61 .64
N 94 36 237 50 98

Interest-BA
M 3.61 3.47 3.14 3.5 3.4
SD .61 .77 .86 .65 .82
N 94 36 237 50 98

Interest-Occupational Certification
M 1.94 2.22 2.2 2.06 1.92
SD .81 .96 .83 .79 .8
N 94 36 237 50 98

Interest-Apprenticeship
M 2.12 2.53 2.41 2.54 2.26

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SD .84 .91 .92 .84 .92
N 94 36 237 50 98

Regarding postsecondary pathways of interest, significant differences by racial groups
emerged. There is significant variation in students’ reported interest in the bachelor’s degree
(BA) postsecondary pathway by race, with Asian students on the high end of the distribution and
Hispanic students on the low end amongst racial groups with sufficient cell sizes for exploratory
analysis. Additionally, there is significant variation in students’ reported interest in the
occupational certification postsecondary pathway by race, with Black and Hispanic students on
the high end of the distribution and White and Asian students on the low end amongst racial
groups with significant cell sizes for exploratory analysis. Finally, there is significant variation in
students’ reported interest in the paid apprenticeship postsecondary pathway by race, with
students of two or more races and Black students on the high end of the distribution and Asian
students on the low end amongst racial groups with significant cell sizes for exploratory analysis.
While there is not significant variation amongst males and females regarding exposure or
perceived support, there is significant variation in the sexes’ consideration of perceived
constraints, with females reporting greater consideration of constraints to postsecondary options
than males. Additionally, significant differences emerged between the sexes regarding interest in
the bachelor’s degree, associates’ degree, occupational certification, and bootcamp
postsecondary pathways. Regarding interest in BA, female students were significantly more
interested in the BA as their next step beyond high school graduation than males. Females were
also significantly more interested in the associates’ degree as a next step beyond high school
graduation than were males. Meanwhile, males reported significantly greater interest in
occupational certifications than did females. Likewise, males were significantly more likely to be

87
interested in bootcamp programs than were females, though interest in bootcamps was relatively
low for all students relative to all other postsecondary options.
Table 21
Significance Table for Sex Factors
Factor Significance
Exposure ns
Support ns
Constraints <.01
Interest-BA <.01
Interest-AA .035
Interest-OccCert .02
Interest-Apprenticeship ns
Interest-Bootcamp <.01
Interest-Gap Year ns

Table 22
Means for Results Regarding Constraints and Interest by Sex (N Total = 525)
Factor Sex M SD N
Constraints
Male 3.05 .49 271
Female 3.17 .47 255

Interest in BA
Male 3.21 .84 271
Female 3.44 .77 255

Interest in AA
Male 2.63 .8 271
Female 2.78 .8 255

Interest in Occupational Certification
Male 2.16 .84 271
Female 2.0 .83 255

Interest in Bootcamp
Male 1.8 .82 271
Female 1.53 .69 255

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Students experiencing socio-economic disadvantage (SED) were significantly less likely
to report Exposure to people with postsecondary experience than their peers. Significantly,
students experiencing socio-economic disadvantage are less interested in BA programs than their
peers, but more interested in AA programs and occupational certification programs.
Table 23
Significance Table for Socio-economic Disadvantage
Factor Significance
Exposure <.01
Support ns
Constraints ns
Interest-BA .014
Interest-AA <.01
Interest-OccCert <.01
Interest-Apprenticeship ns
Interest-Bootcamp ns
Interest-Gap Year ns

Table 24
Means for Results Regarding Exposure and Interest by Socio-economic Disadvantage (SED) (N
Total = 534)
Factor SED M SD N
Exposure
SED 1.85 .53 225
Not SED 2.11 .49 309

Interest in BA
SED 3.21 .86 225
Not SED 3.39 .78 309

Interest in AA
SED 2.83 .8 225
Not SED 2.62 .79 309

Interest in Occupational Certification
SED 2.21 .86 225
Not SED 2.0 .82 309

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English language learners (ELL) reported no significant differences in exposure or
perceived constraints to postsecondary access from their peers, but they did report significantly
less support. English language learners also reported less interest in community college (AA)
options than their peers, and they reported greater interest in bootcamps.
Table 25
Significance Table for English Learner Status (N Total = 534)
Factor Significance
Exposure ns
Support .033
Constraints ns
Interest-BA ns
Interest-AA <.01
Interest-OccCert ns
Interest-Apprenticeship ns
Interest-Bootcamp .014
Interest-Gap Year ns

Table 26
Means for Results Regarding Support and Interest by English Learner (ELL) Status (N Total =
534)
Factor ELL M SD N
Support
ELL 2.63 .63 39
Not ELL 2.85 .61 485

Interest in AA
ELL 2.57 .91 39
Not ELL 2.72 .79 485

Interest in Bootcamps
ELL 1.95 .96 39
Not ELL 1.65 .75 485

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The study of students with IEPs resulted in no significant results regarding differences in
exposure, perceived barriers, or perceived support for postsecondary pathways. However,
differences did emerge regarding interest in BA and AA options between seniors with diagnosed
disabilities and their peers. Significant results regarding interest in pursuing a bachelor’s degree
(BA) demonstrated that students with IEPs are less likely to find a BA of interest than their
peers, despite the BA pathway remaining the postsecondary route of greatest interest to students
with IEPs. Additionally, significant differences emerged between students with IEPs’ interest in
community college degree programs (AAs) and students without IEPs. These exploratory results
demonstrate that students with IEPs were less likely to report interest in degree-bearing
postsecondary education than students without IEPs.

Table 27
Significance Table for Ability Status (N Total = 534)
Factor Significance
Exposure ns
Support ns
Constraints ns
Interest-BA <.01
Interest-AA <.01
Interest-OccCert ns
Interest-Apprenticeship ns
Interest-Bootcamp ns
Interest-Gap Year ns

Table 28
Means for Results Regarding Interest by Ability Status (N Total = 534)
Factor Ability Status M SD N
Interest in BA
IEP 2.97 1.03 64
No IEP 3.36 .77 470

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Interest in BA
IEP 2.49 .95 64
No IEP 2.73 .77 470

In these exploratory analyses, academic performance was significantly correlated with
Exposure, Interest in a bachelor’s degree, and Interest in a gap year program. Students with grade
point averages (GPAs) lower than a 3.0—including students below a 2.5 GPA—reported less
Exposure to others with postsecondary credentials than other students. Conversely, students with
GPAs greater than a 3.5 (on a four-point scale) reported greater rates of Exposure than other
students. However, regardless of GPA, students reported a similar weight given to their
postsecondary Constraints and perceptions of Support for their postsecondary plans. At every
step up in GPA grouping, Interest in the bachelor’s degree (BA) increased amongst participants.
Finally, students with GPAs less than 2.5 reported significantly greater interest in taking a Gap
Year than did other students.
Table 29
Significance Table for Academic Performance (GPA) (N Total = 534)
Factor Significance
Exposure .014
Support ns
Constraints ns
Interest-BA <.01
Interest-AA ns
Interest-OccCert ns
Interest-Apprenticeship ns
Interest-Bootcamp ns
Interest-Gap Year .012

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Table 30
Means for Results Regarding Exposure and Interest by Academic Performance Band (GPA
Group) (N Total = 532)
Factor GPA Group M SD N
Exposure
GPA>3.5 2.10 .52 228
GPA 3.0-3.5 2.01 .54 162
GPA 2.5-3.0 1.85 .57 83
GPA <2.5 1.88 .67 59

Interest in BA
GPA>3.5 3.60 .53 228
GPA 3.0-3.5 3.33 .53 162
GPA 2.5-3.0 2.99 .56 83
GPA <2.5 2.64 .64 59

Interest in Gap Year
GPA>3.5 2.01 .60 228
GPA 3.0-3.5 2.14 .49 162
GPA 2.5-3.0 2.10 .66 83
GPA <2.5 2.51 .59 59

Analysis of Research Question 3
For my third research question—“for students with college-going risk factors (2.5 or
below GPA, disability/IEP, and/or poverty/FRL status), does greater exposure to, interest in, and
support for a variety of postsecondary options predict a greater sense of purpose?”—the only
finding of significance (p=.047) was the negative relationship between Support and Risk on the
dependent variable of Engagement. This exploratory finding of the significant negative
interaction between Risk and Support suggests that, regarding a student’s Engagement in
purposeful activity, there is less of an effect of their perceptions of postsecondary Support for
students with more risk factors. However, this finding is driven by the extreme values in the
high-risk category (7 students), as demonstrated in the below scatterplot.

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Figure 4
Scatterplot of Purpose and Support Visualized By Risk Count

Ultimately, the results of the first research question hold: feeling supported, reporting
exposure to postsecondary options, and being interested in postsecondary educational options—
particularly baccalaureate programs—all predict a greater Sense of Purpose. While there is some
uniqueness to the responses of the 7 students in the highest college-going risk category, there is
no conclusive evidence—particularly with such a small sample size—that greater Risk for
baccalaureate ineligibility is uniquely ameliorated by broader Exposure, Interest, and/or Support
in reference to Sense of Purpose.

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Chapter 5: Discussion
The purpose of this study was to explore the connections between high school seniors’
demographic characteristics, sense of purpose, and perceptions of postsecondary opportunities
including—but not limited to—full-time four-year college or university. The study sought to
empirically examine the shifting beliefs informing emerging adults’ postsecondary decision
making so that K-12 school organizations and postsecondary training providers may improve
their services to better align with a diversity of students’ expressed needs and interests. The
results showed that the factors under consideration—exposure, exploration, support, and
consideration of constraints—predict a greater sense of purpose for young people, regardless of
students’ race, sex, English learner status, socio-economic status, and ability status. While there
are some demographic differences amongst high school seniors’ postsecondary interests, levels
of exposure, and perceptions of support for various postsecondary options, these differences pale
in comparison to the demographic similarities shared by students, particularly regarding the
study’s guiding construct of Sense of Purpose. This chapter contains a discussion of the main
results, implications for practice, study limitations, and suggestions for future research.
Summary and Implications of Principal Results
The study’s analysis of results demonstrated significant correlations between the
variables of exposure to postsecondary options, exploration of those options, perceptions of
support for postsecondary options, and understanding of constraints to seniors’ sense of purpose.
As a body of established research indicates that sense of purpose predicts a range of positive
academic, health, financial, and social-emotional outcomes, the results present an early pathway
for schools and student support organizations to better align programming with the activities that
enable a young person to discover purpose, and to thus realize the benefits of happiness,

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wellbeing, and fulfillment that result (Yeager et al., 2014; French & Joseph, 1999; Masten &
Reed, 2002; King et al., 2006; Bronk et al., 2009; Damon, 2008; Koshy & Menon Mariano,
2011). The following are the study’s principal results.
Exposure matters. This study examined high school seniors’ exposure to people who
pursued different professional and training pathways after high school as well as seniors’
reported levels of knowledge regarding those various postsecondary pathways in relation to their
reported senses of purpose on the Measures of Academic Purpose instrument (Summers & Falco,
2020). Exposure on both dimensions—who and what students reported exposure to—predicted
Sense of Purpose. Knowing people who have pursued a particular postsecondary pathway
predicted greater interest in that pathway. This finding holds across pathways. Additionally, and
perhaps more importantly, exposure to more people who pursued postsecondary training
pathways (bachelor’s degrees, associate’s degrees, occupational certifications, apprenticeships,
gap years, and bootcamps) significantly predicted greater Sense of Purpose.
Aside from simply who students’ know, what they purported to know about
postsecondary pathways also predicted their interest in particular pathways as well as their Sense
of Purpose. Although the high school seniors in the study demonstrated varying degrees of
knowledge in the different postsecondary pathways—with the bachelor’s degree being the
pathway of greatest reported exposure—exposure predicted interest across pathways. Reported
knowledge of postsecondary options likewise predicted students’ Sense of Purpose. The effects
of exposure to both people who have pursued various postsecondary pathways and
understanding of a range of postsecondary learning options were positive indicators of interest
and purpose.

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For K-12 schools, the finding that Exposure matters for students’ emerging interests and
Sense of Purpose carries significant implications for programming, procurement, and guidance
activities. Secondary programs that offer exposure to postsecondary opportunities including but
not limited to college and university hold real promise for building Sense of Purpose, and thus
enabling all young people to realize the benefits that the possession of purpose holds. Such
programs include internships, career projects, visits to postsecondary institutions of all
varieties—colleges, apprenticeships, workplaces, certification programs, military facilities, and
gap year offerings—have the potential to spark interest and ignite purpose. Additionally,
increasing access to adults in the community who have experienced a range of training programs
offers an opportunity for exposure that could broaden horizons for young people who stand on
the precipice of high school graduation. Thoughtful implementations of early college and dual
enrollment programs likewise offer opportunities for young people to gain exposure to the world
of work at no personal cost while having the opportunity to gain college credit.
Guidance activities, which are highly variable from school to school and, when they do
take place at all, are currently focused on the college admissions process (Reddy, et. al., 2015;
Parsad et. al., 2003), can be expanded to include other options. Given the well-documented
resource constraints of U.S. high schools regarding postsecondary counseling (West, 2020), the
adoption of software and/or curricula that facilitate students’ exposure to and exploration of a
range of postsecondary pathways presents a high-potential opportunity to offer students exposure
to, and a safe space to explore and navigate, a diversity of possible postsecondary pathways.
Such an approach is consonant with the recommendations of the Pathways to Prosperity authors
in 2011 (Symonds et al.). Such an approach also offers the added benefit of providing emerging
adults with a wide range of exposure to opportunity without expecting “one more thing” from

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already-busy guidance counselors or expecting schools to find ongoing operational funding to
employ additional counselors in public secondary schools.
Finally, despite this study’s focus on the role that secondary public schools in the United
States play in inspiring students’ Sense of Purpose, the responsibility for exposing young people
to postsecondary opportunity and the world of work need not be limited to middle and high
schools, who have an ever-expanding set of priorities (Lieberman, 2021). Families, community
organizations, workforce development boards, training providers, and employers have a role to
play in building exposure, and thus a sense of purpose. Families of means often already expose
young people to professionals and mentors who not only offer exposure to a variety of
postsecondary pathways, but also form the beginnings of a useful professional network, thereby
passing along social capital to the next generation (Damon, 2009). However, as William Damon
shares in his landmark research text on adolescent purpose, The Path to Purpose, families and
caregivers of all income levels can simply talk with young people about their own professional
interests, experiences, and pathways, thereby creating ongoing and meaningful opportunities for
young people to gain exposure to the world of work and the pathways that those closest to them
have taken on their professional journeys (Damon, 2009). Likewise, other community members
can promote their learning programs and corporate missions by participating in job shadows, job
fairs, mentorship programs, and internship programs with local high schools. Exposure is, as a
construct, not about the depth of experience provided young people, but about the breadth of
experience. Community organizations and companies may be understandably hesitant to make
large commitments to secondary schools, but the benefits of exposure can be enjoyed in
relatively short periods of time.

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Demography is not destiny. One hypothesis guiding the study was that Sense of
Purpose, like so many other outcomes in K-12 education, may be guided by demographic
variables including Race, Sex, Ability Status, Socioeconomic Status, and English Learner Status,
as well as prior Academic Performance (de Bray et al., 2019; Galiatsos et al., 2019; NAEP,
2019; NCES, 2021a; Reardon et al., 2022; Reeves, 2022; United Negro College Fund, 2023;
U.S. Department of Education, 2023). However, the results of the study are heartening for those
interested in meaningful, malleable student outcomes that matter for all students and matter to all
students.
The study found that some demographic differences existed amongst high school senior
study participants. For instance, female students reported greater interest in pursuing a bachelor’s
degree after high school than male students. Hispanic students reported significantly less
exposure to people who have successfully completed a postsecondary education program than
their White and Asian peers. Asian and Hispanic students perceived less support from important
friends and family members for non-college postsecondary education options than did White
students. Relatedly, Asian students reported less knowledge of non-college options than their
peers in other racial groups.
While those and other demographic differences did exist amongst study participants,
similarities across groups were more pronounced, particularly when examining the primary
construct of Sense of Purpose. Across racial groups, students reported similar perceptions of
support for bachelor’s and associate’s degree college pathways. Additionally, reported Sense of
Purpose is similar across racial groups, males and females, socioeconomic status, ability status,
and English learner status. It is the lack of the significance of demographic variables that is
noteworthy, and hopeful, about this study’s results.

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As a result, Sense of Purpose presents a rare opportunity for all K-12 schools to introduce
and/or adapt programming that has the potential to better meet the needs of all students.
Certainly, an awareness of the distinctions amongst demographic groups is worthwhile, but in
the case of purpose, all students can benefit from increased exposure to people and
postsecondary pathways representing meaningful professional outcomes. All students can benefit
from the time and structure to explore various pathways, and to test them against their personal
interests and values, as well as to learn more about those pathways of interest. All students can
benefit from better understanding the support that they have to pursue various pathways, and to
recruit those closest to them into support roles. All students can benefit from a realistic
understanding of the constraints—financial, geographic, and otherwise—to their postsecondary
decision making. And all students can benefit from creating comprehensive postsecondary plans
that demonstrate the kind of “practical idealism” advocated by Damon and other leading Sense
of Purpose researchers (Damon, 2009, p. 147).
The implications of Sense of Purpose as an equal-opportunity construct for high schools
are at least twofold: first, high schools can orient existing educational outcomes and
programming towards purpose-building activities; second, high schools can introduce new
programs that intentionally guide students towards purpose-defining experiences and
postsecondary planning. The school network of focus in the study, The Heights, itself shifted
their twenty-year mission from college-for-all to a more expansive view of postsecondary
success. While largely emblematic, the changing of a school organization's mission is
representative of reorienting existing faculty attention away from college as the destination, and
towards purposeful postsecondary pathways—inclusive of, but not limited to four-year college
and university—as avenues to personal and professional fulfillment. With shifts such as that of

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the district’s mission, programming naturally follows. College readiness curricula can be
expanded to include readiness for apprenticeships, occupational certifications, community
colleges, gap-year programs, the military, and bootcamps. Guidance activities can be likewise
extended to include pathways that support all students in their postsecondary interests. College
fairs can be expanded to include college and career fairs; invited speakers can represent not only
college admissions officers and college graduates, but also a diversity of community members
engaged in meaningful professional pursuits. Planning activities can promote professional
pathways instead of a singular destination; college itself can be framed as a means to an end of
purpose rather than an end in itself.
Similarly, new programs and resources may be introduced to expand opportunity for all
young people. Purpose-focused programs such as nXu (2023) present schools with the
professional development and curricula to enable a shift from college-for-all to purposeful
postsecondary pathways. Such programs intentionally tailor their programming to meet the needs
of a demographically diverse American public-school population. The problem of postsecondary
readiness is one felt acutely by young people and their supporters, but only secondarily
addressed in contemporary American schooling. Students care little about state testing, and high
school graduation means little to many individuals and to society at large; however, all young
people are deeply concerned about their futures beyond mandatory K-12 education. The problem
of readiness is addressed not by test scores or college admissions, but by enrollment in a
purposeful postsecondary program that enables the young person to “launch” into the world of
work and life, while investing in their continued learning (Hendrickson, 2019). While alternative
solutions to schools integrating postsecondary discovery programming are manifold, the status
quo is to rely on young people to gain exposure to postsecondary opportunities with little support

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or guidance beyond family connections; this current state is one of the most obvious inequities in
public education, and one that is little discussed.
School organizations like The Heights have introduced programming, professional
development, curricula, and assessments that focus on postsecondary readiness with a focus on
developing students’ Sense of Purpose. For instance, The Heights has created a structure they
refer to as “Personal Advisory Boards.” The personal advisory board structure that has been
piloted at the school organization of focus enables young people to gather a group of
supporters—typically parents or caregivers, peers, teachers, and mentors—and present their
postsecondary plans to the group for feedback and expressions of support (or concern). The
problem that the structure solves is that of facilitating a single decision-making conversation for
all young people planning for life after high school. Currently, many young people are not only
unaware of the postsecondary opportunities available to them, but also to the perceptions,
guarantees of support, and real constraints under which their postsecondary decision-making is
being guided. They are, therefore, left to gather information about the realistic chances of
achieving their dreams from disjointed conversations with a range of individuals who often never
speak to one another. The personal advisory board structure centralizes these conversations
around the student’s own plans and ambitions. This structure does require time and planning on
the part of school faculty and introduces a not-insignificant coordination burden on already busy
school faculty. Some of the student-led advisory board meetings, which happen once per year in
9th-11th grade and twice in 12th grade, are poorly structured and unproductive. However, many
students reported that these personal advisory board meetings provided them with the space and
structure they needed to garner critical support and information that enabled them to confidently
make a decision about a postsecondary pathway to pursue.

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This recommendation of introducing purpose-driven programming for all students further
expands the role that high schools play in the lives of young people and their caregivers. As a
policy, it is costly in terms of the time it requires to train faculty, prepare students, and
coordinate meetings. However, a young person’s purposeful pursuit of a postsecondary
opportunity is only as viable as it is supported by family members and guided by practical
realities (Damon, 2009). The alternative to engaging parents and caregivers in postsecondary
planning is, again, a status quo that is defined by vast inequities, in which some young people
have not only greater exposure to opportunity, but also greater access to support and fewer
constraints—and a greater understanding of how to piece together the components of working,
living, and learning after high school. The personal advisory board structure leads to the outcome
of all graduating high school seniors having a realistic and supported holistic plan for their lives
after high school. In most cases, it is clear that, when optimizing for the outcomes that are of
greatest importance to students and caregivers, the introduction of greater conversation about
realistic postsecondary opportunities for young people close to high school graduation is, in
rationalist terms, Pareto superior to the status quo.
The 3.0 grade point average (GPA) represents a dividing line between students. The
3.0 GPA (or unweighted “B” average)—considered one significant indicator of college readiness
(Cappex, 2023)—served as a rough dividing line between students with interest in bachelor’s
degree (BA) programs and those with interest in other options and between students with broad
exposure and those without. In contrast to the majority of students with a 3.0 GPA or above,
most students with GPAs below a 3.0 reported being uninterested in pursuing a bachelor’s
degree after high school. Students with a GPA below a 3.0 reported greater interest in pursuing
non-BA pathways upon high school graduation. Additionally, students with GPAs below a 3.0

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were more likely to indicate that they knew no one who had completed a postsecondary training
program than students with a 3.0 or above GPA. These differences in academic performance in
the senior year—an indicator that is mathematically difficult for a student to significantly
improve in the final year of high school due to the cumulative nature of the GPA measure—
represented an interesting contrast amongst students for further exploration.
Additionally, for school organizations interested in supporting postsecondary pathways
for all students, but disinclined towards wholesale shifts in existing mission statements and
college readiness programming or the introduction of schoolwide programs such as nXu or
Personal Advisory Boards, the difference in the postsecondary interests and opportunities
between seniors with a 3.0 or above GPA and those with GPAs below a 3.0 presents an
opportunity to pilot non-college guidance options for the students who need it most: those
whose senior GPAs are below a 3.0. While such programming is likely relevant to all students,
school organizations are pulled in many directions and may need to proceed cautiously as they
expand services to meet the needs of all their students. By focusing on seniors, and particularly
on the seniors who already demonstrate the most interest in options beyond the four-year college
or university pathway, schools may be able to adopt and refine the tools, resources, programs,
and services that will ultimately meet the needs of all students. Of course, schools would be wise
to be sensitive to young people and their caregivers were they to take this approach, since non-
college options continue to be stigmatized by educators and society at large (Sawhill, 2018;
Sandel, 2020) and the prejudicial effects of tracking that plagued vocational education remain
present for many communities (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019).
Students want to learn more about postsecondary options. In this study,
postsecondary options of greatest interest to students not only broke down across levels of

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exposure, but also across levels of perceived financial support. This finding coheres with
previous research (Fidelity, 2021; U.S. Department of Treasury, 2016), which indicates that
perceptions of affordability and employment in meaningful work represent primary motivators
for high school students’ postsecondary interests. Bachelor’s and associate’s degree programs, as
well as paid apprenticeship programs, represented pathways towards economic security as well
as pathways of significant interest for participants in this study. Although occupational
certifications and bootcamps—options that participants reported less exposure to in the study—
trailed degree and apprenticeship programs, roughly one-third of participants expressed interest
in these pathways. Given the nature of the study, expressions of interest for postsecondary
options despite a lack of exposure to those options presents an opportunity for postsecondary
education and guidance. Finally, amongst study participants, over 30 percent preferred a policy
that would create a 3-year paid apprenticeship after high school that leads to a valuable
credential and a well-paying job over a full-tuition scholarship to any college or university to
which they were admitted. This finding is of interest, particularly because all study participants
were enrolled in public charter high schools focused on the nearly ubiquitous college-for-all
model (Putnam, 2016; Sandel, 2020).
Because study participants wanted to learn more about the various pathways, and report
more knowledge of degree programs than apprenticeship, occupational certification, bootcamp,
and gap year programs, high schools have an opportunity to educate students on a range of
pathways beyond degree programs. First, even for high schools concerned about a move away
from college-for-all due to political considerations, college can be positioned as a four- to six-
year training opportunity leading towards purposeful work, life, and lifelong learning. Even this
relatively minor shift in the role that four-year college and university play can promote a greater

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engagement with postsecondary options that emphasizes personal purpose rather than college
rankings and peer competition. Second, and more importantly, the finding that the majority of
high school seniors in the study were interested in learning more about a variety of
postsecondary options provides a rich educational opportunity. A better understanding of
apprenticeship programs, for instance, may not lead to a greater enrollment in apprenticeship
programs; indeed, simply by providing opportunities for exposure and exploration of
apprenticeship programs, students who are determined to attend four-year college have the
potential to gain a deeper sense of purpose in their postsecondary studies than they would have
otherwise. Certainly, this is an area ripe for continued research.
Deep exploration and Sense of Purpose go hand-in-hand. The primary finding of the
study is that greater Exposure, greater perceptions of Support, greater understanding of
postsecondary Constraints, and greater Interest predict increased Sense of Purpose: increased
Intention, increased Engagement, and increased Prosociality. The variables of Exposure,
Support, Constraints, and Interest are different from one another. Put another way, they present
orthogonal and non-redundant significant and positive correlations with Sense of Purpose and its
subscales.
The implications of this primary finding are manifold. There is no singular answer to the
question: “how do we equip every emerging adult with a Sense of Purpose as they enter the
world of learning and work beyond high school?” However, there are a set of emerging answers.
Providing all students with exposure to a wide range of postsecondary programming; workplace
learning; and a diversity of community members who can act as entry-points, guides, and
mentors for young people offers the foundation for building purpose. Adopting or developing
programming that enables all young people to explore their interests and to process their newly

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gained exposure can build the three components of purpose: intention, engagement, and
prosociality. Bringing together the people whose support is of greatest importance to the young
person as they navigate life after high school in structured and intentional conversations that lead
to honest feedback and commitments contributes to the realization of purpose that benefits young
people across demographic categories. Incentivizing the development of informed, purposeful
postsecondary plans that recognize financial, geographic, and familial constraints assist in the
decision-making process facing all individuals as they exit secondary education and enter the
world of work and continued learning. Focusing on the development of Sense of Purpose for all
young people in the education system is possible, it aligns with the interests of a diversity of
students, and it promotes more inclusive and belonging-centered educational environments.
Limitations
A significant limitation of this study is the focus on a single public-school network in
California’s San Francisco Bay Area and Washington’s two major cities of Seattle and Tacoma.
While the majority of the school district’s seniors were included as participants in the survey,
and the population sampled represented diversity across all demographic dimensions of interest
in the study’s design, the generalizability of the study’s results is limited by the sample size of
534 participants as well as the demographic characteristics of the school network of study.
Beyond geography and demographics, the school network of focus in the study is a public
charter management organization of fifteen total schools across two states. Students and their
families opted into the schools, and at the time that they opted in—likely in 2018—the school
network was well-known within the communities in which it operates as a place to go in order to
gain access to four-year colleges and universities. Thus, despite a diversity of responses to
questions regarding postsecondary pathways, a limitation of the study is the choice made by

107
participants and their families to attend a high school designed to achieve college enrollment for
all graduates.
Another limitation of the study is its purely quantitative design. While sample sizes and
cell sizes proved large enough to yield significant results on the study’s research questions, and
the use of the Measure of Adolescent Purpose (MAP) assessment provided a reliable and valid
data collection instrument, the results are able to establish correlations amongst variables and
describe relationships amongst those variables, but they are not able to represent the unique
perspectives of the study’s participants. By design, the study prioritized the testing of hypotheses
across a broad sample of high school seniors rather than exploring the qualitative experiences
motivating students’ responses and behaviors. Additionally, generalizability of results is
hampered by the fact that the study did not involve random assignment.
Finally, the demographic diversity of the study’s participants is both an asset and a
limitation. Based on a review of contemporary research, this study represents the largest
administration of the MAP to Hispanic students in the United States. Additionally, White, Asian,
and students of two or more races are well represented in the study. However, Black students,
Native American students, and Pacific Islanders are underrepresented in the survey. The
responses of Native and Pacific Islander students were unable to be analyzed due to insufficient
cell sizes. Likewise, participants with GPAs below a 3.0, students with Individualized Education
Plans (IEPs), and English language learners are underrepresented relative to their peers.
However, in each of these cases, cell sizes were sufficient for analysis, but increased attention to
these groups—and to the diversity of participant interests and needs within these groups—
presents a limitation of this study and an opportunity for further research.
Recommendations for Future Studies

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Same study, larger and more diverse sample
The most obvious direction for future research is the replication of this study across a
larger and more diverse participant group. Although research in U.S. high schools is legally,
operationally, and ethically challenging, access to a larger and more geographically and racially
diverse sample of high school seniors would support a greater understanding of the predictive
power of Exposure, Exploration, Support, Constraints, and Interest to Sense of Purpose for
various student populations. Black students, in particular, are a racial group suggesting further
study. For instance, Black students reported a significantly greater Sense of Purpose than all
other racial groups, particularly on the subscales of Intention and Prosocial Reasoning. Even
after controlling for academic performance, Black students reported significantly greater Sense
of Purpose and Intention. These results are statistically significant, and they are worthy of further
study despite the fact that Black students comprised only 36 out of the 534 study participants.
Spending more time filling out the picture of Black students’ experiences and connections to
Sense of Purpose could enable school systems to better meet the needs of Black students.
The same is true for Native American and Pacific Islander students, who were not able to
be represented in the study’s racial demographic analyses due to underpowered cell sizes.
Likewise, extending the study beyond large, urban metropolitan areas on the United States west
coast and beyond a single public charter school network would yield greater understanding of the
generalizability of results. Finally, segmenting some of the participant demographic groups, such
as the group of students with disabilities, could yield more actionable results. Given the
heterogeneity represented within certain demographic groups, a deeper analysis with a larger
sample of high school seniors has the potential to enable educators to gain a greater
understanding of student needs at subgroup levels—for instance, students with autism spectrum

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disorders as opposed to students with emotional disabilities—rather than umbrella demographic
categories.
Qualitative opportunities for further study
The purely quantitative nature of this study offers a meaningful springboard for future
qualitative research. Gaining a greater understanding of the experiences and patterns of thinking
driving expressed behavior for students in different demographic groups could benefit the
guidance and programmatic considerations of high school educators. Specifically, a qualitative
study of students who possess a GPA of 3.0 or above in their senior year versus students who
possess a GPA below a 3.0 could inform postsecondary counseling and programming.
Additionally, deeper investigation into the specific programmatic innovations being employed by
The Heights as the school network moves away from a “college-for-all” model and towards a
“purposeful postsecondary pathways” model could inform high schools interested in themselves
moving in such a direction. Of particular note is the school organization’s installation of Oral
Defenses and Personal Advisory Boards. These structures rely on programming that exposes
students to greater postsecondary opportunities, provides the time and curricula necessary for
students to explore those opportunities, incentivize postsecondary planning including but not
limited to full-time four-year college and university in the context of students’ interests and
constraints, and engaging a student-selected board of advisors who offer structured support and
feedback to students. A study of the school programs and activities designed to increase the
predictive variables of Exposure, Exploration, Interest, Support, and Constraints—and thus,
Sense of Purpose—for all students has the potential to provide high schools with operational
recommendations for enacting a model that enacts the suggestions of the Pathways for
Prosperity (Symonds et al., 2011) committee through defined schoolwide guidance and

110
programming. Such programs are not limited to the work of The Heights, and while The Heights
has perhaps uniquely employed a set of programmatic supports that focus on the variables of
Exposure, Exploration, Interes, Support, and Constraints, other school districts and public-school
organizations are embracing similar programs demonstrating promise (nXu, 2023; Project
Wayfinder, 2023; Purpose Project, 2023).
Likewise, a greater understanding of the needs of school leaders, district administrators,
and guidance counselors has the potential to present accelerators and barriers to the adoption of
school outcomes beyond college-for-all. Not only are public K-12 schools currently beholden to
expectations marked largely by standardized test scores and on-time graduation rates, but the
constraints of administrative and faculty time and resources is worthy of study. Even if
promising practices emerge that support a variety of purposeful postsecondary pathways for
students, the incentives, needs, and tools available to school leaders and counselors to enact such
practices present an opportunity for future study. What are the barriers preventing the adoption
of such practices and programs? What are the conditions that enable the adoption of a broader
range of postsecondary outcomes and guidance activities? A qualitative understanding of adult
incentives, mindsets, and behaviors may lead to solutions that both better support a diversity of
young people in their postsecondary planning and lead to greater adoption given the needs of K-
12 educators.
Longitudinal opportunities for further study
Finally, this study presents a snapshot in time for seniors in a single public-school
organization; however, future research may study the effects of the schools and students who
have undertaken the shift from college-for-all to purposeful postsecondary pathways to examine
results over time. William Damon suggests that a greater focus on purpose in our nation’s public

111
schools will lead to increased motivation and engagement on the part of students, which has the
potential to combat depression and anxiety for young people (Damon, 2009). To what extent is
this hypothesis true at scale and over time? To what extent are school organizations who
undertake this shift away from college-for-all able to mitigate the concerns of researchers and
practitioners who fear that such a shift will lead our nation’s schools back to the racial and class
inequities plaguing vocational education tracking in the 1970s (Schwartz and Hoffman, 2019;
Pillow, 2018)? Ultimately, what are the long-term outcomes of students who select non-
baccalaureate options as well as students who pursue four-year college or university upon
graduation from high school? Such studies may examine not only Sense of Purpose, but also
dimensions of Wellbeing, Happiness, and economic independence that comprise the distal
outcomes proposed by Purpose researchers (Frankl, 1959; French and Joseph, 1999; King et al.,
2006; Koshy & Menon Mariano, 2011; Bronk et al., 2009).
Conclusion
The goal of this study was to explore the relationships between high school seniors’
exposure to, exploration of, interest in, support for, and constraints regarding a breadth of
postsecondary options and students’ sense of purpose. The construct of Sense of Purpose
presents a proximal measure of more distal positive outcomes including personal happiness
(French and Joseph, 1999), psychological wellbeing (King et al., 2006), resilience (Masten and
Reed, 2002), life satisfaction (Bronk et al., 2009), and occupational fulfillment (Koshy and
Menon Mariano, 2011). The study was conducted against a national backdrop of declining
college enrollment (National Student Clearinghouse, 2022), increasing student loan debt
(Hanson, 2022), the removal of bachelor’s degree requirements for entry-level government jobs
(Cohen, 2023), the primal importance of financial considerations in postsecondary planning

112
(Fidelity, 2021), and a reappraisal on the part of students and K-12 schools as to the wisdom of a
college-for-all model (Itkowitz, 2021; Fishman et al., 2017; Loyd, 2022; National Governors
Association, 2023). Additionally, the study was conducted in a period of widening economic
inequality (United States Census Bureau, 2022), racial tension across the United States
(Horowitz et al., 2020), political polarization (Mounk, 2022), and a mental health crisis amongst
American teens (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023)—all factors that led to the
study’s design of accounting for six dimensions of participants’ demographic markers when
conducting the analysis.
The study’s results provide a hopeful early blueprint for educators, policymakers, and
others interested in promoting the well-being of today’s youth. Greater exposure to
postsecondary opportunities, exploration of those opportunities, support for those opportunities,
and understanding of constraints guiding the pursuit of those opportunities predicts increased
Sense of Purpose. Additionally, possessing purpose is of interest to young people and it is
available to them, regardless of race, sex, socioeconomic class, ability status, English learner
status, and prior academic performance. Although postsecondary navigation remains a challenge
for resource-constrained public high schools (Savitz-Romer and Nicola, 2022), and the
programmatic supports that secondary schools need to offer broad exposure, exploration,
support, and constraints exploration to all students are not yet in place in many middle and high
schools, students are seeking more and better information about their options for life after high
school (Paolini, 2019; Strada Education Foundation, n.d.), state and federal governments are
moving both messaging and policies away from four-year college as a singular path towards
success (National Governors Association, 2023), and non-degree postsecondary training options
are the fastest growing segment of the higher education market (HolonIQ, 2023). These factors,

113
when taken together, create an opportunity for greater coherence amongst K-12, postsecondary
learning providers—including, but not limited to full-time four-year college and university, and
employers in service of promoting purposeful pathways for all emerging adults. Aligning K-12
programs and guidance with student interests and an expanding set of postsecondary
opportunities is achievable, and the implications of such alignment could make K-12 offerings
more inclusive and motivating, postsecondary education options better tailored to both student
needs and workforce demands, economic opportunity more widespread, and, as experts such as
Marc Tucker (2019) have claimed, a stronger and more resilient democracy.

114
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APPENDIX A

Survey
Research Questions:
1. To what extent do interest in, exposure to, perceived support for, and perceived
constraints associated with a range of postsecondary options as well as demographic
variables predict students’ sense of purpose?
2. Are there demographic group differences in students’ exposure to, interest in, support for,
and perceived constraints to accessing a range of postsecondary options?
3. For students with college-going risk factors (2.5 or below GPA, disability/IEP, and/or
poverty/FRL status), does greater exposure to, interest in, and support for a variety of
postsecondary options predict a greater sense of purpose?

Survey Questions
MAP = Measure of Adolescent Purpose
Item Construct /
Dimension
Scale Source
1 I believe I can fulfill my goals and aspirations. Purpose -
Intention
Likert MAP
2 I have taken active steps to fulfill my life goal. Purpose -
Intention
Likert MAP
3 I plan for the future. Purpose -
Intention
Likert MAP
4 I think about the possible outcomes of my decisions
before deciding.
Purpose -
Intention
Likert MAP
5 I am passionate about my goals and aspirations. Purpose -
Engagement
Likert MAP
6 I spend a significant amount of time doing activities
related to my life goal.
Purpose -
Engagement
Likert MAP
7 I feel emotionally invested in my goals and
aspirations.
Purpose -
Engagement
Likert MAP

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8 I am currently involved in activities related to my
goals and aspirations.
Purpose -
Engagement
Likert MAP
9 The work that I do will have a positive impact on
others.
Purpose -
Prosocial
Reasoning
Likert MAP
10 My life goal represents a personal commitment to
make a meaningful contribution to society.
Purpose -
Prosocial
Reasoning
Likert MAP
11 I feel a sense of personal responsibility to help others
and/or improve society through the work that I will
do.
Purpose -
Prosocial
Reasoning
Likert MAP
12 I believe that it is possible to help others and/or
improve society through the work that I will do.
Purpose -
Prosocial
Reasoning
Likert MAP
13 To what extent are you knowledgeable about each of
the below options for your life after high school?
1. A bachelor’s degree (generally after 4+ years
of college or university)
2. An associate’s degree (generally after 2+ year
of community college)
3. An occupational certification (such as a
Google cybersecurity certificate)
4. A bootcamp
5. A paid apprenticeship
6. A gap year
Reported
knowledge of
postsecondary
options
No
knowledge

A little
knowledge

Some
knowledge

Significant
knowledge

14 To what extent are you interested in pursuing each of
the below options for your life after high school?
1. A bachelor’s degree (generally after 4+ years
of college or university)
2. An associate’s degree (generally after 2+ year
of community college)
3. An occupational certification (such as a
Google cybersecurity certificate)
4. A bootcamp
5. A paid apprenticeship
6. A gap year
Reported
interest in
postsecondary
options
Very
uninterested

Uninterested

Interested

Very
Interested

15 To what extent would the people who are most
important to you support you if you chose to pursue
each of the below options for your life after high
school?
Perceived
support for
postsecondary
options
Very
unsupportive

Unsupportive

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1. A bachelor’s degree (generally after 4+ years
of college or university)
2. An associate’s degree (generally after 2+ year
of community college)
3. An occupational certification (such as a
Google cybersecurity certificate)
4. A bootcamp
5. A paid apprenticeship
6. A gap year

Supportive

Very
supportive
16 When thinking about your plan after high school,
what are the most important factors that are
influencing your decision-making?
1. Making enough money to support myself
2. The cost of the school / program
3. Where I live
4. The prestige of the school / program
5. Where my friends live
6. Where my family lives
7. My job
8. Other [fill in]
Perceived
constraints
Very
unimportant

Unimportant

Important

Very
important

17 How many people do you know who have
successfully completed:
1. A doctoral degree
2. A master’s degree
3. A bachelor’s degree (generally after 4+ years
of college or university)
4. An associate’s degree (generally after 2+ year
of community college)
5. An occupational certification (such as a
Google cybersecurity certificate)
6. A bootcamp
7. A paid apprenticeship
8. A gap year
Reported
exposure to
postsecondary
options
None

Few

Some

Many

18 What do you expect to be doing in one year, after
graduating from high school? (select all that apply)
1. Working full-time
2. Working part-time
3. Attending a community college
4. Attending a four-year college or university
5. Working towards an occupational certification
(such as a Google cybersecurity certificate)
6. Attending a bootcamp
7. A paid apprenticeship
Expected
postsecondary
activity
Checkboxes

143
8. Taking a gap year
19 If you could do anything after high school to work
towards your goals, what would you choose to do?
(select all that apply)
1. Work full-time
2. Work part-time
3. Attend a community college
4. Attend a four-year college or university
5. Work towards an occupational certification
(such as a Google cybersecurity certificate)
6. Attend a bootcamp
7. A paid apprenticeship
8. Take a gap year
9. None of the above
Ideal
postsecondary
activity
Checkboxes
20 If policymakers could create one of the following
options before you graduate from high school, which
would you most like to be available?
Response to
two pathways
1.Full-tuition
scholarship to
any college or
university to
which you are
admitted
2.A 3-year
paid
apprenticeshi
p program
after high
school that
leads to a
valuable
credential and
a well-paying
job

American
Compass
“Failing
on
Purpose”
study,
2021

144
APPENDIX B

Information Sheet

The following information was presented to all participants at the commencement of the online
survey (administered via Google Forms), prior to their participation in the study.

High school seniors are invited to participate in the following survey. The purpose of this survey
is to better understand how high schools can support students as they think about and plan for
life after high school. The survey will take 20-30 minutes to complete and it is anonymous. You
may stop at any time without penalty. Thank you for your consideration, and please answer
honestly as all responses will be kept confidential.

145
APPENDIX C

Administration Script

The following script was read to all participants as an introduction to the survey. The person
reading the script was a trained school employee during the month of September, 2022.

This morning, you have the opportunity to complete a survey about your experience as a high
school senior. In particular, this survey is part of a study designed to better understand the ways
in which high schools can support students as they think about and plan for life after high school.

As you may know, our school is trying to gather the best information and resources possible to
help you consider options for your transition out of high school and into postsecondary life. Your
responses will allow us to target our efforts given your ideas and interests. Your participation in
the survey is optional. The survey has 20 questions and it will take 20-30 minutes to complete.
You may stop at any time without penalty. Much of what you encounter on this survey will be
beneficial to you as you prepare for your PLP meeting, since it will ask you about your level of
interest in various options you may choose to pursue next year.

Thank you for your consideration, and please answer honestly as all responses will be kept
confidential and we believe that they will help us, and other schools, improve what we offer
students. The link to the survey is on the board. If you have any questions as you complete the
survey, please silently raise your hand I and will come to you. The room will be silent for the
next 30 minutes.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk, American public schooling has increasingly narrowed curricula and programming to a singular student outcome: full-time four-year college or university. In the intervening years, significantly more students have enrolled in four-year college or university, but only marginally more early adults have graduated with a degree, and student debt has reached unprecedented levels, nearing $2 trillion. With increasingly limited applied learning options in high school, teens have experienced a crisis of purpose while non-degree credentials are poised to become the most-conferred award in U.S. higher education by 2030. This quantitative study explores the intersection of high school programming with students’ sense of purpose, which predicts a host of positive outcomes—from on-time high school graduation to postsecondary learning persistence to happiness, resilience, and physical and psychological wellbeing. By analyzing the responses of 534 high school seniors across two states, the study demonstrates that factors such as exposure to postsecondary opportunities, perceived support for postsecondary learning, and an understanding of decision-making constraints regarding life after high school predict a student’s sense of purpose. Additionally, a hierarchical analysis of demographic variables including race, sex, socioeconomic status, ability status, and English learner status demonstrated that unlike in so many other dimensions of U.S. public education, when it comes to Purpose, demography is not destiny.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Carter, John Adam (author)

Core Title Standing at the precipice: purposeful postsecondary pathways

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Global Executive

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 07/25/2023

Defense Date 06/29/2023

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag adolescent purpose,apprenticeship,career counseling,civic engagement,college and career readiness,democracy,fulfillment,life after high school,mental health,OAI-PMH Harvest,occupational certification,postsecondary pathways,Purpose,sense of purpose,student debt,wellbeing

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Chung, Ruth (committee chair), Samkian, Artineh (committee member), Seli, Helena (committee member)

Creator Email adam@mypointb.org,theadamcarter@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113288943

Unique identifier UC113288943

Identifier etd-CarterJohn-12141.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-CarterJohn-12141

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Carter, John Adam

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20230725-usctheses-batch-1073 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu