Social Class and Educational Aspirations: A Weberian Analysis

Standard measures of social class are argued to be insufficient in predicting college attendance desires among high school students from similar social class backgrounds. An attitude scale was developed using 274 seniors from two suburban high schools. Chi-square analysis indicates that the attitude measure is a better predictor of college-going plans than is the education of either parent or the occupation of the father. The attitude scale appears to discriminate among students on a dimension similar to McClelland's desire for achievement. It is argued that traditionally static variables, such as social class, can be replaced by process variables in explanations of social phenomena.