Schooling is a social project of making futures. Youth and families navigate aspirations framed by perceptions of what is possible within starkly unequal conditions of possibility. In Cape Town, persistent colonial and apartheid geography that continues to normalize racialized inequality is made visible and reproduced in large part through schooling patterns and outcomes. The convergence of post-apartheid reforms and global neoliberal trends have accelerated processes of education marketization, including a growing sector of “affordable” private schools that claim to level uneven terrain and interrupt poverty by shaping upwardly mobile youth from township communities. Critics argue they fuel an educational crisis, causing further differentiation in an already inequitable system. Proponents point to failing state schools and assert families’ right to quality education. My research foregrounds perspectives and experiences of those confronted with this double bind between “choice” and “crisis.” Based on 21 months of ethnographic research including participant observation, 35 semi-structured interviews, six unfocused groups, and a 110-respondent educational autobiography survey, A Ticket to Life explores how students, alumni, families, and staff of a low-fee independent high school in Cape Town’s oldest township, navigate the racial and spatial politics of aspiration in an anti-Black city as well as how the school is embedded in the broader racialized politics of transnational education reform. Engaging anthropology, Black studies, and comparative education, I argue that the spatial and affective valences of aspiration are both violent and life-saving in the context of uneven geography, that deep investments in liberal individualist notions of aspiration compromise commitments to liberatory pedagogies, and that, in the context of global racial capitalism, aspiration is deployed as a portable logic to support the transnational spread of market-based education reforms. Nevertheless, youth, families, and educators (in schools and beyond) harness education as both a site and a strategy of struggle, in the process forging a capacity to conspire toward the inextricable goals of racial and spatial justice.

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This investigation is concerned with change in school-directed aspirations of middle and upper-middle-class Jewish public high school students over a fifteen-year period of time.

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The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which Tinto's model of the dropout process applied to a national sample of community college students. Strict definitions of persistence were used in applying a Tinto-based model to both 2- and 4-year student samples from the High School and Beyond (HSB) data set. The primary focus of the study was to determine the relative effects of social and academic integration, in relation to student background characteristics, on two measures of persistence: persistence in the institution, and persistence in higher education. The data were analyzed using path analyses procedures. Results only partially supported Tinto's theory. Major findings revealed that: 1) background variables directly affected persistence, no matter how defined, 2) the ability of Tinto's model to explain persistence may be highly dependent on the criteria used in defining persistence, 3) the model may better explain institutional persistence than persistence in the system of higher education, 4) student background characteristics may be more influential than institutional characteristics in explaining the long term persistence behavior of students, 5) results indicated that the Tinto model's ability to explain persistence was dependent upon the criteria used for defining persistence/dropout. / Ed. D.

The influence of systematic information interventions on black high school students in Virginia was examined in this study. The State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) sponsored a series of information intervention activities since 1982 to influence black high school student aspirations for college. This study was designed to examine influences on college aspirations attributable to the SCHEV activities. A survey originally designed by SCHEV and the Department of Education was modified to collect data from 1151 black graduating seniors from representative high school districts in Virginia. The data were analyzed by cross-tabulation and chi square procedures. Results of the analyses suggested that one information intervention—Better Information Workshops—had more influence on college aspirations than other interventions, including published brochures, videotapes/cassettes, and public service announcements. Respondents indicated that their aspirations were influenced significantly by parents, other adults, guidance counselors, peers, and teachers. Almost 70% of the respondents would be first generation college students. In addition, fewer males than females were found to aspire to college attendance. / Ed. D.

The primary purpose of this study was to construct and test a model of the factors affecting high school students' first time entry into different types of postsecondary institutions. To test the model, a sample (N = 5395) of high school students was drawn from the sophomore cohort of High School and Beyond data. These students were enrolled in different types of postsecondary institutions: four year colleges and universities, two year junior colleges, community colleges, and vocational technical colleges. The path model is a set of structural equations that considers the college enrollment decision of the students to be a function of four exogenous variables and six endogenous variables. The exogenous variables were: socioeconomic status of the student's family, student's academic ability, academic performance, and educational aspiration. The endogenous variables in the model were: high school program, encouragement for college attendance, cost of the postsecondary institution, size of the postsecondary institution, and student aid both in the form of grant and loan. These variables were arranged in a fully-identified block recursive model. Because of possible interactions caused by different parameters between blacks and whites, the model was analyzed separately for black students and white students. The model also was estimated separately for male and female students. The computer program, GEMINI, was used to estimate the model. Results indicated that tuition cost, academic ability, and educational aspiration were the most important influences on students' enrollment choice between four year colleges and other postsecondary institutions. Financial aid variables, both grants and loans, exerted significant positive effect on the college enrollment decision as well. The effects of these variables were found to be similar for blacks and whites, and for males and females. Recommendations for future research include further work on college going behavior with different populations. The studies of non-traditional patterns of attendance and the impact of current financial aid policy on these patterns would contribute to better understanding of college attendance behavior. / Ph. D.

The nighttime losses from an integral collector storage (ICS) system were investigated. The significance of the sky temperature, wind speed, and ambient temperature on the losses were examined. Outdoor data was taken on several nights to characterize the thermal performance of an ICS system under various environmental conditions. Indoor tests were then performed under an artificial "nighttime sky" environment, with a simulated wind, in an attempt to duplicate the heat losses which occurred outdoors. The standard rating procedure which specifies the conditions for the heat loss tests for ICS systems was analyzed to see how well it characterizes the collector performance at night. Experimental results indicate a synergistic effect between the sky temperature and wind speed. The effects of wind on the losses from the ICS system overshadow the effects of small changes in sky temperature, but larger changes of sky temperature, with a constant wind speed, have a pronounced effect. It is recommended that both of these parameters be taken into account in heat loss tests in standard rating procedures. Indoor tests can duplicate outdoor heat loss results within 8 per cent. The minimum requirement for SRCC rating tests should be to monitor, record, and report the sky temperature. / Ed. D.

Traditional higher education institutions are being admonished by federal commissions as well as scholars for being unresponsive to student and societal needs. Several studies have pointed out the growth of proprietary and corporate postsecondary education programs at the expense of market share formerly enjoyed by traditional higher educational institutions. There is considerable conflict among scholars, businessmen, and commissions on what higher education institutions should do to be more responsive. The major objectives of the market research study were to determine the following: (1) What potential students' long-term goals were and (2) What expectations that had for educational institutions contributing to realization of those goals. The theoretical foundation for this study was Vroom's expectancy theory in which he hypothesized that motivation was a function of valence or value of individual goals and the expectancy of realizing those goals through individual effort and the instrumentality of an organization. A random sample of potential students was asked to put in order or priority five major goals and expectations for achieving those goals through various means, ranging from educational effort through luck. The results and conclusions of this study were: (a) In general all socio-economic groups were in agreement on goals--making money and good health among others. Most agreed that luck, rather than any effort on their part, would be the main instrumentality for achieving good health; (b) Education and hard work were perceived as the most likely means for obtaining money; (c) Those with previous higher education experiences valued it more as a means to obtain goals/values than did those with little higher education. / Ed. D.