Understanding the Role of Economic, Cultural, and Social Capital and Habitus in Student College Choice: An Investigation of Student, Family, and School Contexts

Abstract

This study investigates how habitus, especially when it interacts with economic, cultural, and social capital, shapes the college-choice process including whether or where to attend college. By explicitly including variables intended to serve as proxies for the construct of habitus and integrating economic and sociological perspectives, this study will deepen our understanding of the complex college-choice process.

Using the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002) – the most recently available national longitudinal study – this study identified a sample of 11,800 high school class of 2004 seniors. Considering that the dependent variables of this study are binary or categorical variables, this study uses logistic and multinomial logistic regression. Also, by adding the interactions among forms of capital, this study examines the following questions: How do variables that are often used to proxy for different forms of capital and habitus influence whether or where to attend college? To what extent does one form of capital reinforce the activation of other forms of capital? To what extent does the impact of forms of capital and habitus differ by a student’s socioeconomic status in the college-choice process?

The results indicate that not all forms of capital, nor the proxies used to measure habitus, are associated with college choice in the same way. While proxies for economic capital (e.g., family income), social capital (e.g., parent-student involvement), and habitus (e.g., occupational expectations) have been shown to have direct, positive effects on college outcomes, the variables often used to measure cultural capital (e.g., involvement in arts) have not. The results also reveal two distinctly different patterns regarding the relationship among forms of capital. While the first pattern indicates that one form of capital may actually undermine, rather than reinforce, the activation of other forms of capital, the second pattern indicates that one form of capital does reinforce the activation of other forms of capital. Although there is little evidence of differential effects of the habitus proxies (a student’s occupational expectation and comfort level at school) by socio-economic characteristics (e.g., family income and parents’ education), the results indicate that the impact of these habitus proxies does differ by race/ethnicity.