Nubian Jones

Mrs. Thomas

UWRT 1104-102

05 August 2018

Thesis

In the beginning of this paper, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to write about. I knew what I

wanted my general topic to be about, but what I wanted to dig deeper into was hard for me. All

the topics I originally thought of for it I wasn’t “in to”. After writing my draft with in a confused

state and my professor and I looking over it, I realized what I wanted to write about. I needed to

write about something that was important to me and that I could dig into more. The most

important thing in my life is my family. Which is why to me, I think family is the most important

factor to what affected my decision of college and where I wanted to go. This would be

interesting to students like me whose families are one of the most important things in their lives.

Also to parents and educators everywhere, to understand what might go into a kids mind when

deciding these things. I will cover aspects that families affect when determining what college

you want to go to, that include: Parents Education, Parenting Style, Family Tradition, and Cost.

Each of these build onto each other, which affects the students and their decisions that they

might subconsciously make. Throughout this paper, I will bring out my own personal

experiences and information from different authors and studies.

Parents are a definite effect on what you do in anything in life. As you were a child, your parents

were your role model and the first people you see and you spend the most time with in life. In

this aspect, if your parents went to a 2-year institution or a 4-year institution you’re more likely
to do the same as they did. One study from US Education Department National Center for

Education Statistics, the primary facility to collect and analyze data related to education in the

U.S, focused on students that were sophomores in high school in 2002, freshmen in college in

2003 until they were college graduates in 2007. The students were split up into 3 groups, one

was with students who had at least one parent with a degree, the second group was for students

who had at least one parent who started (but not necessarily completed) any kind of higher

education, and the third group was for students with neither parent having any experience with

college. The studies came to the conclusion that more students from group one attended and

completed college. This shows that your parents educational choices affect what choices you

might make. Most students will say “I’m nothing like my parents”, this can be true but, in the

end, they are the person you might spend most of your time with depending on situations.

Another part of this can be costs. What your parents make can also affect on what college you go

to based on what you have to pay (if you don’t get a full ride with scholarships). A lot of

student’s may not want to put that weight on their parents. But they might not know that they can

do it themselves without putting all of it (if anything at all) on your parents.

As Aharon Tziner, a professor in Behavioral Sciences and Business Administration at Netanya

Academic College, states “The results therefore indicate that the parental influence on young

people’s career preferences is mediated by the quality of the parent-offspring relationship.”( This

means the closer the parent-child bond is, the more open a child is to the advice that their parents

might give them about what to do in life.

There are 4 parenting styles: Authoritarian, Permissive, Uninvolved and and Authoritative.

Authoritarian parents affect their children by showing basically that their opinion doesn’t matter.

My parents raised me in a kind of Authoritarian style. My dad has always put us up to this high
expectation that he wants for us in life. In my immediate family there is: my brother, my sister,

my dad, my mom and I. I’m 2 years older than my sister, and my dad still holds us to the same

expectation. My sister, Ceecee, is my half-sister, so we have the same dad but different moms.

Ceecee is 16, mostly lives in Durham with her mom and her wife. She lives a whole different

community that I’m used to. So we grew up in the “same” household with the same expectations

but we are 2 different people when it comes to education. She wants to go to an HBCU, while I

knew that I didn’t want to go to an HBCU. I knew I wanted more of a diverse feeling. This could

be due to many reasons, one being that we grew up in different communities. The other being

that my mom and dad are very different in a sense of who they hang around. My dad is more of

the party-goer and the class clown. While my mom is more of the nice, outgoing, friendly, nerd. I

grew up with them both and I wanted to feel both of those things around me at a college I could

call home for the next 4 years.

How your parents fund your education is also a huge aspect. Let’s get it out the way, no one can

pay for college on their own without any help. According to CNBC, a recognized world leader in

business news, only “23% of costs are covered by parent income and savings”. (Patel 2017) The

rest has to be covered with loans and financial aid. College has gotten more expensive over the

years and jobs have gotten worse. Most kids don’t even think they have the option to go to

college just because of the costs alone.

A lot of kids are “pressured” by parents to go to the same colleges they might have went to

because it could be a family tradition. This pressure can often be a deficit to a child's decision.

They may not want to go where their parents went to, or may not even want to go at all. You see

this in shows were the parent might pressure their kids to go to the ivy league college that they

went to. The more a parent pushes a child to do a certain thing, the more likely the child is going
 to push away. This can also go along with parenting styles. My sister and I were raised by the

same standards with our dad, but since we she mainly lived with her mom in Durham, she grew

up with a different parenting style than what my dad was used too. Also exploring how parents

might want their own kids to go to the same institution that they might have went to. In another

study by Donald P. Bertsch, the writer of Parental Influence in College Selection, he sums up

exactly what I wanted the point of this paper to be. Bertsch states, “In a study by Holland (1959),

home environment was found to be an important factor in the college preferred by the student.”

This tells me that what goes on at home for a student affects what they might want to do after

high school and when away (or not in some cases) from home to a whole other experience.

Works Cited

Bertsch, Donald P. “PARENTAL INFLUENCE IN COLLEGE SELECTION.” Freshwater Biology,

Wiley/Blackwell (10.1111), 23 Dec. 2011, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2164-

6171.1968.tb00142.x.

Bond, Casey. “Why College Isn't Worth The Money.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 14 Sept. 2015,

www.forbes.com/sites/caseybond/2015/09/04/why-college-isnt-worth-the-

money/#73421e26653d.

“College Education - ProCon.org.” ProConorg Headlines, college-education.procon.org/.

“Jussi Välimaa.” SpringerLink, Springer, Dordrecht, link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4020-

6604-7.
Staff, Study International. “Parents Education Levels Affect Childrens Likelihood to Attend College -

Study.” Study International, Https://Www.facebook.com/Studyinternational.co.uk, 9 Feb. 2018,

www.studyinternational.com/news/parents-education-levels-affect-childrens-likelihood-attend-

college-study/.

“Students' Postsecondary Education Arcs Affected by Parents' College Backgrounds, Study Finds.”

Esports Quickly Expanding in Colleges, Inside Higher Ed,

www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/08/students-postsecondary-education-arcs-affected-

parents-college-backgrounds-study.

Patel, Prashant. “How Parents Are Paying for Their Kid's College.” CNBC, CNBC, 18 July 2017,

www.cnbc.com/2017/07/18/how-parents-are-paying-for-their-kids-college.html.