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ASA's Bachelor's and Beyond Survey: Findings and Their Implications for Students and Departments
Abstract
With the support of the National Science Foundation, the American Sociological Association conducted a longitudinal survey of sociology majors from the class of 2005, following them from senior year into careers or graduate school. The first part of this article provides a context for the results from the What Can I Do with a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology? study and a summary of its key findings. Wave I data demonstrate strong student interest in sociological concepts, perceived mastery of some research skills but not others, and general satisfaction with the major. Sociology majors are both idealists and careerists. The majority expects to enter the job market after graduation but is not satisfied with the career advising they receive. Key findings from Wave II demonstrate that more respondents go directly into the job market than expected, job search strategies are important in finding a job that matches what students learned in their sociology programs, and those who find such jobs are more satisfied with the major. The second part discusses how the survey findings can be used to enhance curriculum, advising, and assessment without vocationalizing the curriculum and without adding extra burdens to faculty members' already heavy schedules. Finally, the article discusses how the data can be used as a baseline for department assessment.
... A modest number of studies have investigated the use of capstones specifically in the sociology major. For example, the ASA research department staff and a committee of sociologists developed a survey called Bachelor's and Beyond (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). The survey asked questions to students early in their careers or graduate school about research skills, sociological theory, and plans after graduation (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). ...
... For example, the ASA research department staff and a committee of sociologists developed a survey called Bachelor's and Beyond (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). The survey asked questions to students early in their careers or graduate school about research skills, sociological theory, and plans after graduation (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). Similarly, McKinney and Naseri (2011) conducted a study on the learning outcomes of sociology students during the four years of a student's undergraduate experience. ...
... The second major finding of our study is that previous assessments immediately after the course have not detected the distinctions that we found in our long-term assessment (McKinney and Naseri 2011;Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). The CBR capstone had the most influential long-term outcomes (Table 4). ...
Undergraduate capstone courses in sociology are designed to integrate students’ knowledge in the discipline and to culminate the classroom experience with field application. Are capstones achieving these goals in a durable way? Although the short-term outcomes of capstone courses have been researched, fewer studies have documented the long-term outcomes of capstone courses. We conducted a survey of sociology capstone alumni to understand the long-term outcomes of the sociology capstone by asking sociology alumni about their capstone experience. Our research revealed that all capstones produced long-term outcomes as measured in the alumni survey. Second, alumni of the community-based research capstone experienced a more profound and longer reaching effect than those who participated in the internship or traditional capstone seminar format. Alumni reported the development of professional skills, application of sociological concepts and research skills, and a sense of being part of a community.
... Her survey of sociology majors found no positive or negative attitudes toward research, so it should not be assumed students would be put off by doing an activity like the lost-letter technique. In fact, successful integration of this experiment in class may decrease the confidence gap sociology students have regarding research (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). This activity also has the potential to strengthen a student's research self-concept, defined as a student's confidence in his or her ability to understand the logic and usefulness of research methods (Markle 2017). ...
... Employing multiple styles of teaching in the classroom makes sociological content more accessible to diverse student learning styles. Calls for the reform of undergraduate research methods education have been vast and varied (Atkinson and Hunt 2008;Earley 2014;Markle 2017;McKinney et al. 2004;Nind et al. 2015;Spalter-Roth et al. 2010;Wagner et al. 2011), and this paper seeks to provide an alternative or supplement to the traditional lecture. Future advances in teaching research methods would be wise to focus on similar active learning techniques and strategies. ...
Over 50 years ago, Stanley Milgram and colleagues published a short article detailing an unobtrusive experimental design they called the lost-letter technique. The technique involves placing stamped, unmailed letters in a community and using the relative rate of return to infer local attitudes toward political issues and social groups. Furthermore, the technique is simple and inexpensive enough to replicate in an introductory-level social science course as a means to familiarize students with social research methodology. This activity utilizes active learning with student-centered pedagogy, and this paper details the procedure, best practices, and student feedback. Students enjoy having a personal stake in the project and find they better understand social research through this active learning project. Instructors are encouraged to consider adopting the technique in their courses.
... Although sociology faculty understand that the skills that employers are looking for are well developed in sociology curricula, students (and many employers) may not realize this. The 2005 Bachelor's and Beyond project (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010) found that most sociology majors did not include sociological skills on their résumés or use sociological skills and concepts in their job search strategies. One way to help students improve their career readiness is to include career readiness skills in learning outcomes for specific assignments or courses, for example, "students will learn to identify and articulate the skills they have developed and how to share this information with potential employers." ...
... Another resource for integrating data analysis on careers into existing courses are the Bachelor's and Beyond projects, discussed previously. A series of research briefs reports on the results of these longitudinal surveys, including briefs on social capital, job satisfaction, and first-generation students (Senter et al. 2013Spalter-Roth and Eskine 2006;Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). In addition, the 2005 data set (ASA 2017) is available from the ASA, along with a faculty manual for how to help students launch into satisfying careers (ASA 2010). ...
Colleges and universities face pressures from multiple stakeholders to attend to the labor market success of their graduates. In this article, we argue that it is in the best interests of sociology students and the discipline that sociology programs respond proactively to these pressures. We encourage sociology programs to design curricula that develop student skills in critical sociological thinking as well as explicitly connect skills to career-related interests. After reviewing research on what employers expect, what students want to learn, and sociology graduates’ first labor market experiences, we offer suggestions about how programs can respond to the requests for accountability for employment outcomes without substantially revising the traditional undergraduate sociology curriculum or expending excessive amounts of faculty time on new initiatives. We argue that integrating liberal learning and applied learning is the best way to serve students and the discipline.
... Sociology as a field does not lead to one or two obvious career paths (unlike social work or secondary education), and efforts to search online job boards for "sociologist" with only baccalaureatelevel training lead to few options (Hecht 2016). Sociology majors are advantaged in securing good jobs when they list their sociological knowledge and skills on their résumés and discuss them in interviews, although many majors do not take advantage of these opportunities (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). ...
Sociology students are interested in having meaningful careers that use their sociological knowledge and skills, and higher education institutions are under pressure to show that their graduates achieve career success. A one-credit-hour course focused on careers, professional development, and resources for sociology majors can increase students’ confidence that multiple options exist for them in their postbaccalaureate lives. Sociology faculty can design a course that increases students’ ability to locate and apply for relevant jobs and graduate programs and to practice skills that employers say that want to see in college graduates. Detailed examples of assignments, readings, and class activities are presented that can readily be tailored to the unique circumstances of different institutions and their students.
... Sociology students generally find the statistics more difficult than other subjects [4]. In fact, carrying out statistical analysis using software and interpreting the results are some of the most common skills in which sociology students lack confidence [5], [6]. To make matters worse, statistics is also known to be a source of anxiety (i.e., statistics anxiety) [6]- [8]. ...
... These branding pressures permeate nearly every corner of the modern university, which has essentially become a "house of brands," constituted by academic units that must actively compete for a "slice" of the student market if they wish to survive (Hemsley-Brown and Goonawardana, 2007). As enrollment shifts at the turn of the century showed (Brint, 2002;Brint et al., 2009), the existence of academic units is far from assured, with many disciplines currently under threat of downsizing or complete elimination, given their inability to attract enough students (Giroux, 2010;Spalter-Roth et al., 2010). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how entrepreneurship education is being marketed to students within the Canadian university sector.
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis of the webpages representing 66 entrepreneurship education programs in Canada is performed.
Findings
Entrepreneurship education is found to be framed as providing students with a collaborative learning experience, useful hands-on skills with real world applications and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Research limitations/implications
This study looks at only one type of promotional material, and thus, further research is needed to triangulate its findings.
Originality/value
This is the first study that empirically examines the marketing of entrepreneurship education in Canada.
... Sociology majors come from a market of students who are interested in social issues and are captivated by initial exposure, career interests, and personal values (Spalter-Roth et al. 2010). Potential sociology majors could possibly be attracted by other majors that coincide with career interests and values, such as psychology, economics, anthropology, and so on. ...
While the popularity of the psychology major and the sociology major were comparable in 1970, sociology witnessed a decline while psychology witnessed expansion. This article considers strategies of expanding the popularity of the sociology major, considering data from a variety of sources. Primary recommendations are to configure programs to maximize prospects that students discover sociology early in their college careers and to limit the number of barriers that might prevent students from enrolling in sociology courses. Departments that expanded the number of sociology majors from 2008 to 2014 are identified. These departments prioritized expanding the major as an objective and developed a variety of methods to increase access, visibility, and vitality of the sociology program at their institutions.
In this article, we present the design and evaluation of
a middle years, major-based peer-mentoring program at
a small public master’s-granting institution in northern
California. The middle years encompass the academic
period between the end of first year and the beginning of
senior year. The peer mentors in this program supported
a middle years experience-based curriculum, while offer-
ing academic mentoring, career support, and connections
to communities and other peers.
We begin by conceptualizing peer mentoring. We then
provide an overview of the research literature on high
impact practices, as they relate to persistence and gradua-
tion. We locate major-based peer mentoring in particular,
and middle-years programs more generally, as atypical
but effective strategies for supporting student success.
We then outline the institutional context and detail a pro-
gram design that targets key points in a high-impact mid-
dle-years curriculum, as well as structures for additional
mentor outreach.
The outcomes discussed in this article are based on an
online survey, as well as institutional and process eval-
uation data. Overall most students had met with their
major peer mentors and reported positive outcomes re-
lated to academic success, major integration, and career
planning. Students of color were significantly more likely
than white students to have met with their peer mentors.
First-generation students were significantly more likely
than students whose parents had a college degree to have
met with their peer mentors. Additionally, students of
color were more likely than white students to report that
a major peer mentor helped them attend a department
event, a measure of academic integration.
This article explores the tensions between ideals about sociology (and what it ought to be) transmitted during university socialization and the everyday working activities among Argentinean sociologists. It focuses on an extreme case: that of the graduates who, lacking the opportunity or the desire to join the professoriate, became market researchers. The case is extreme because while university training provided these individuals with a set of methodological and analytical skills that proved to be useful (and profitable) when studying consumers and markets, it also encouraged a critical, world-rejecting, view of the discipline which was at odds with their professional activities. Not surprisingly, they encountered a distressing moral puzzle: were they betraying sociology’s progressive values, values to which they were seriously committed? Building on E. Hughes’ concept of “dirty work”, this paper examines how these individuals navigated an occupation that was, at least initially, seen as morally objectionable, and the ways by which they came to imbue it with new and edifying “sociological” value. This article is based on interviews with sociologists working in market research and a socio-historical account of the School of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, the nation’s most important program, where all our interviewees were trained. This study has implications for understanding situations in which actual professional practices are in sharp contrast with the ideals presented during university socialization, and the identity repair processes that university-trained workers undertake when dealing with deviant careers.
The American Sociological Association has produced a wide range of reports and materials addressing curricular best practices. Collectively, those materials are an invaluable resource for guiding revisions of the sociology major, but they do not address processes for implementing such revisions. In this conversation piece, we describe the steps by which our department implemented a thorough curricular redesign—a process nearing completion after five years of formal discussions, and with roots reaching back even farther. We organize our discussion around three areas of effort that comprised our process: charting a course, bringing colleagues along, and institutionalizing outcomes. We highlight important milestones, challenges, and successes that we encountered along the way and provide recommendations based on our experiences for colleagues in other departments interested in undertaking their own redesign.
Discussions of the core in sociology have focused on faculty members’ perspectives regarding what should be taught in introductory sociology courses. Because the development of curricula is and should be a social process, we argue that students’ perceptions of learning outcomes also should be considered when curricula are developed. This study utilizes a content analysis of 461 student-authored, end-of-semester reflective essays concerning the most memorable learning that occurred in an introductory sociology course. Collected between 2006 and 2015, the assignment was utilized in each of 12 introductory sociology course sections taught by the same instructor at two universities. We then map student essay topics onto the Sociological Literacy Framework (SLF) to identify the themes most memorable to students, comparing responses of online, regional campus students with residential campus students. Results suggest the instructor placed the greatest emphasis on the SLF Sociological Eye theme and the least emphasis on the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme. Students found topics within the SLF Socialization theme most memorable and rarely cited the SLF Social Change and Reproduction theme.
Cornerstone courses bridge introductory content from lower-level survey courses with the more advanced theoretical and methodological content of upper-level, major-only courses. Cornerstones are implemented with the goal of better preparing students for advanced coursework and/or assisting them with understanding their major and its associated career options. Although cornerstones are common in psychology, biology, and business, they are seemingly less popular in sociology curriculums. This article uses evaluation data from a newly instituted cornerstone course in sociology to illustrate the potential benefits these courses can have for students as well as the discipline more generally.
Sociology research methods students in 2013 and 2016 implemented a series of “real world” data gathering activities that enhanced their learning while assisting the department with ongoing program assessment and program review. In addition to the explicit collection of program assessment data on both students’ development of sociological concepts and skills while undergraduates and alumni’s use of such knowledge after graduation, an effort was made throughout the semesters to highlight key research methods knowledge using examples that focused on job searching and careers appropriate for baccalaureate-trained sociologists. Students reported that these real-world activities both increased their interest in and their learning about research methods. These explicit and implicit experiences with an employment focus also led them to increase their own thinking about their eventual careers and preparing job search materials, such as résumés, that include skills developed in their undergraduate sociology courses.
This study employs a cross-sectional design to explore sociology majors’ attitudes toward research methods. Survey data from a convenience sample of students enrolled in 16 departments are used to compare the attitudes of students who have and have not completed a research methods course. Despite consistent anecdotal claims that students harbor disdain or anxiety about research methods, the results indicate that students’ attitudes are lukewarm, at worst. Completion of a research methods course is associated with more positive affect toward research methods and feelings of greater cognitive competence in research methods knowledge and skills. The results also indicate that completion of a research methods course is not associated with being more interested in research methods or feeling the subject is less difficult.
If they are fortunate, sociologists may be introduced to theories of communities, organizations, and groups during the course of their training. They may also be fortunate enough to learn about group dynamics and about how to work sensitively with youth, families, or different ethnic groups. These topics are not, however, standard curricular material for sociology students because of sociology’s emphasis on developing students’ sociological thinking and consciousness (Mesny 1998). Sociology’s practical contributions to addressing social problems and promoting social change are often neglected, albeit not deliberately. Students often leave universities underprepared for the reality of addressing social issues, including working with groups and communities.
This teaching report chronicles a symposium held on the access grid discussing how service learning in its various guises is taught in New Zealand universities. The report summarizes the various speakers and provides a URL link to three resources generated by the symposium: power point slides, an audio tape and a transcript of the proceedings.
Ironically, the discipline of sociology appears oblivious to the social forces that threaten it: the discerning parent's investment in their offspring's education, the mounting individual student debt and the New Zealand government's intention to collect and report data by discipline on recent graduate incomes. Sociology departments both nationally and internationally market boundless career possibilities for their graduates, but fail to identify the pathways to these lucrative destinations. The following discussion focuses on potential pathways. The article presents a response to these social forces: the establishment of a research based internship in a remote New Zealand university isolated from ideal placements in government ministries or NGO headquarters. The article outlines the setup of a research focused public sociology internship and argues for the centrality of an ethics application as a pedagogical device as the first step into research focused experiential learning and teaching.
Content analysis of 77 college and university catalogs and department websites assesses conformity with select recommendations for the sociology major. The majority of institutions have programs that fulfill some recommendations examined, but the minority fulfills most of the recommendations. Some sociology programs are much more coordinated than others. Fewer than one in three institutions with sociology majors have programs that fully or nearly fully conform to the measured recommendations. Benchmarking current levels of curricular coordination leads to identification of institutions that may represent “gold standards” and aspirational models. Institutional theory informs methods of using benchmark data to advance curricular coordination.
This article is intended as a contribution to the embryonic sociology of energy and infrastructure. To do so it focuses on New Zealand (and one policy in particular – Warm Up New Zealand), but it also makes connections to relevant issues and literatures across the globe. The article looks at the research currently being undertaken on the long- term impact of both climate change and energy depletion and the consequences for Building Code standards and ‘sustainability’ rating tools for housing. Research concerned with energy and housing in New Zealand has focussed on the cost-effectiveness of maintaining warmth. Studies have concentrated on heat loss from houses and the efficiency of heating systems. One of the consequences of this has been Government subsidies for insulation and heat-pump installations to increase energy efficiency – Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart. This has helped to foster significant growth in the heat-pump market. We consider some of this policy’s effects. Heat-pump technologies have two unanticipated “take-backs”. Research indicates that heat- pumps are not significantly decreasing the demand for electricity in the winter. Of greater concern is that there is increased demand for electricity for cooling purposes which introduces a new and significant electrical load during the summer. We conclude that policy should more properly be directed at long-lasting improvements to the fabric of houses rather than subsidising short-lived equipment that not only increases electricity consumption, but also does not allow the human body the ability to adapt over time to the predicted increased average temperatures in New Zealand.
The authors provide context for the three articles in the special section of this issue of Teaching Sociology on the topic of assessment. They provide a brief discussion of assessment in higher education today, supported by research conducted by the American Sociological Association from a survey of department chairs. These data indicate that most sociology departments are in fact conducting some form of assessment, although faculty members often are critical of these activities. The authors argue that sociologists are well situated to play a major role in carrying out assessment plans by virtue of their disciplinary training and skills in analyzing data. Further, the authors appeal to readers of Teaching Sociology that assessment and the scholarship of teaching and learning are inextricably linked and that it requires only a small step from conducting research on the scholarship of teaching and learning to doing assessment.
This article explores sociology’s continued vulnerability as a discipline in the context of global, economic, and workplace change. Recent data suggest that a majority of sociology graduates will continue to pursue jobs and careers outside of academia, though they all express misgivings about whether they are prepared to do so. Moreover, there has been a precipitous decline in the number of academic jobs in sociology while the number of non-academic jobs has actually increased. Regardless, new sociology PhDs expect to find jobs in academia. In the aftermath of the “great recession” of the past decade, the changing nature of employment, jobs, careers, and the workplace is likely to continue to challenge sociology’s ability to provide graduates with clear pathways toward success in a competitive global economy. In short, the discipline may be headed in a perilous direction, particularly regarding its future graduates. The article suggests ways that academic sociology might change course and better serve its students and its institutional role in higher education. The central goal will be to suggest how applied concepts regarding employment and workplace change in the global economy may be integrated into the curriculum.
The focus on quantitative literacy has been increasingly outside the realm of
mathematics. The social sciences are well suited to including quantitative elements
throughout the curriculum but doing so can mean challenges in preparation and presentation of material for instructors and increased anxiety for students. This paper describes tools and resources available through the Interuniversity
Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) that will aid students and instructors engaging in quantitative literacy across the curriculum. The Online Learning Center is a source of empirical activities aimed at undergraduates in lower-division substantive courses and Exploring Data through Research Literature presents an alternative to traditional research
methods assignments. Searching and browsing tools, archive structures, and extended online-analysis tools make it easier for students in upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses to engage in exercises that increase quantitative literacy, and paper competitions reward them for doing so.
In this article I report on the common themes derived from three small-scale qualitative studies that focused on how sociology majors believe they learn our discipline. These studies include a group interview, analysis of content in learning logs, and individual face-to-face interviews. Based on the results of these studies, five types of connections appear critical to student learning in sociology: to others, those among related ideas or skills, to students' lives, across courses, and to the discipline. In addition, students were at different points on three overlapping pathways of learning: level of success in the major, use of surface-deep approaches, and degree of novice-expert learning. I also offer implications and suggestions for teaching, sociology programs, and future research.
This study called the use of the learning‐loss scale into question to the extent that the scale has not been validated experimentally. In order to conduct such a validation, students’ performance in an experimental lecture was compared to their self‐report of how much they learned during that lecture. The results identified a moderately strong validity coefficient between students’ performance on a recall test and reports of how much they believed they learned during a lecture.
The NSF-funded Integrating Data Analysis (IDA) Project undertaken by the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Social Science Data Analysis Network sought to close the quantitative literacy gap for sociology majors. Working with twelve departments, the project built on lessons learned from ASA's Minority Opportunities through School Transformation (MOST) Program, where curricular change was a departmental (not individual faculty) agenda. A critical mass of faculty in each IDA department developed and used quantitative modules in lower division courses. This article reports on the steps to develop departmental curricular change and the important results for student learning and future professional success.
Though C. Wright Mills made a pivotal contribution to the discipline by raising sociologists' awareness of the ideological and bureaucratic content of sociological practicality, he may have placed unyielding limits on "the promise" he profoundly proclaimed in the "sociological imagination." By defining types of practicality in such rigidly confining terms, as either "liberal" or "illiberal," those wishing to practice sociology in broader and more expansive ways were left with few of the alternatives Mills himself wished to extol. Over the past generation, the field of applied sociology and teaching and learning sociological practice have struggled to develop in the discipline. This has posed huge challenges for teachers wishing to address the needs of students who have perennially been interested in finding practical possibilities for applying their sociology in jobs and careers. The purpose of this paper is to: 1) examine the concept of sociological practicality propounded by Mills; 2) critically assess the concept of sociological practicality in the historical context of American sociology; 3) identify and discuss a broad typology of models of research and practice from which types of practicality may emerge; 4) discuss the implications of this typology for teaching and learning sociological practice; and 5) conclude by discussing ways of teaching a liberating practicality for sociology.
This paper describes two teaching strategies from our workshop, "Teaching the Sociology of Gender and Work," that can help students understand the mechanisms and consequences of workplace gender inequality at the macro-and micro-levels. Cynthia Anderson's class project uses wage and sex composition data that allows students to learn actively how data are used to study general trends and changes over time. It encourages students to explore the reality of their possible careers and fields in terms of wages, proportion of women and men, and other factors. Sharon Bird's class exercise requires students to consider the interactional dynamics of everyday work life and encourages them to see the subtle processes of marginalization and exclusion while also thinking about how to overcome gender biases. Some of this information will contribute to student angst about inequality in the workplace; thus, we conclude with suggestions for decreasing potential student distress and increasing student empowerment.