Journal article
Rethinking the Cooling Out Hypothesis for the 21st Century: The Impact of Financial Aid on Students’ Educational Goals
Community college review, Vol.47(1), pp.79-104
01/2019
DOI: 10.1177/0091552118820449
Abstract
Background: Most community college students from low-income families have ambitious educational degree goals, but only a small fraction attains them. For many decades, sociologists have primarily attributed this problem to a cooling out process in which college practitioners diminish students’ educational ambitions using academic reorientation processes that encourage the least-promising students to lower their degree goals. The cooling out explanation focuses exclusively on the actions of institutional community college actors rather than other factors affecting student decisions and thus has been used to vilify community colleges as engines of inequality. Objective: This article addresses an alternative hypothesis, considering whether student financial aid, the ubiquitous and multifaceted system that community college actors mainly do not control, influences students’ educational goals. Method and Results: Using data from an experimental study of need-based financial aid in Wisconsin, I find that a private grant program, which triggered a repackaging of students’ financial aid awards, decreased the educational degree aspirations and expectations of 2-year college students, on average. Contributions and Implications: Although counterintuitive, this finding is consistent with the idea that the complex manner in which aid is delivered creates confusion and uncertainty about the actual costs of college. While these lowered degree goals persisted over time, they did not affect degree attainment rates, suggesting students’ expectations may be more malleable and less consequential than prior research suggests. This article demonstrates that the observed cooling out phenomenon is not necessarily the result of a meritocratic sorting system and involves processes previously neglected by sociological theory. A more robust model of college choices is needed.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Rethinking the Cooling Out Hypothesis for the 21st Century: The Impact of Financial Aid on Students’ Educational Goals
- Creators
- Katharine M Broton
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Community college review, Vol.47(1), pp.79-104
- DOI
- 10.1177/0091552118820449
- ISSN
- 0091-5521
- eISSN
- 1940-2325
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications; Los Angeles, CA
- Grant note
- William T. Grant Foundation (https://doi.org/10.13039/100001143) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education DGE-1256259 / National Science Foundation Anonymous donor Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation Institute for Research on Poverty R305B090009 / Institute of Education Sciences (https://doi.org/10.13039/100005246)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/2019
- Academic Unit
- Sociology and Criminology; Educational Policy and Leadership Studies; Center for Social Science Innovation
- Record Identifier
- 9983980096502771
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