literature review #5

2. Arum, Richard, and Josipa Roksa.  Aspiring Adults Adrift. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Print

3. This book focuses on the employment rate of young adults and breaks it down into catagories or employed, underemployed and unemployed in both skilled and unskilled workers.  The study is also broken down into different metrics like choice of major and CLA (Collegiate Learning Assessment) performance when measuring job retention and ability to acquire a job after graduation.  The findings were consistent and the authors were able to deduct that CLA does play a factor in post-graduate employment and performance in their careers. There are many visual aids to support the text and studies were taken from sources such as the bureau of labor statistics along with research conducted by the authors. 

4. Richard Arum has a M.ED in teaching and curriculum from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a PH.D in sociology from the University of Caledonia Berkeley and is currently employed at New York University.  He is most famous for his work on the CLA Longitudinal Study.

Josipa Roksa is an associate professor of sociology and education at the University of Virgina. Her work focuses on other aspects of education beyond just the academics and looks at its social context.
5.  CLA- The Collegiate Learning Assessment is a test designed to analyze the “collective and cumulative result of what takes place or does not take place over the four to six years of undergraduate education in and out of the classroom.”
College Selectivity- The prestige of a certain university and used in the context of this study is used as an independent variable when analyzing employment.

6. “Only engineering and computer science majors had significantly improved chances of avoiding unskilled occupations. Indeed, only 4 percent of graduates from those fields of study, net of other factors, were in unskilled occupations” (Arum 65).

“Comparing college graduates who performed well on the CLA to those who performed less well (defined as one standard deviation above or below the mean senior year CLA scores) the likelihood of experiencing unemployment increases from 5 to 7 percent” (Arum 63)

“Considered as a whole, 53 percent of the college graduates who were not re-enrolled full time in school were unemployed, employed part time, or employed in full time jobs that paid less than $30,000 annually” (Arum 57).

7.  This book adds value to my research because chapter three focuses on the employment of young adults and separates them between those with no education, bachelors and masters degrees.  The study compares them with one another along with other factors such as major and performance in school.  Many visual aids are used throughout the work that can be used in my paper to help reinforce my research.