Against an expanded sector of higher education, inadequate empirical effort has been made to examine the experiences of middle-class students who fail to get straight into university rectify their situation. Such experiences, as well as their psychic/emotional aspects, are of increasing relevance to understanding the operation of class against a…

Inequality in the United States has been rising in recent decades, while intergenerational mobility remains low. This means that absolute mobility--the extent to which children are economically better off than their parents--is declining, and intergenerational inequality is increasingly entrenched. A long literature suggests large returns to…

While a class gap remains in obtaining a degree despite an expansion of higher education, a variety of second chances have become available. How class matters in receiving parental assistance for seeking a second chance is of increasing importance to understanding educational inequality in an altered context of higher education, but it is…

Community colleges have long been the overlooked stepchildren of the educational system. But because of profound structural changes in the U.S. economy over the past several years, community colleges have become increasingly critical to the nation's economic competitiveness and the key platform for moving low-income people into the middle class.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the decision-making process of students who decided to study for a foundation degree. Design/methodology/approach: The research involved interviewing 30 students who were on, or had recently completed, a business-related foundation degree. Findings: This study found that students were not adopting a…

This study examined the use of education tax credits at four community colleges using data from the Federal Quality Assurance Program in 1998, the first year of the HOPE Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Tax Credit (LLTC). Preliminary estimates indicated that the two tax credits were expected to primarily benefit middle-income tax filers with…