Were They Pushed Or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms In Education

Like few other decisions in life, educational choices must be made by virtually everyone growing up in industrial societies. The consequences of these choices for individual lives are momentous, yet decisions about schooling can be treacherous. They are made during the teen years, at a time when personal preferences are unstable and there is little past experience to draw upon; once made, they are not easy to change. Diego Gambetta offers a refined exploration of the mechanisms that influence educational decisions between compulsory school and college.
Gambetta tests two fundamental and opposed explanations, which he applies to the study of educational and other personal choices. One approach holds that individuals are essentially passive, either constrained by a lack of alternatives or pushed by factors they are unaware of. The other approach regards individuals as capable of purposive action, able to weigh the available alternatives against the prospect of possible future rewards.
Applying sophisticated statistical models to two surveys conducted in northwest Italy. Gambetta provides an integrated assessment of the specific effects of a variety of factors on educational decisionmaking: family economic and cultural capital, previous academic achievements, labor market prospects, and personal aspirations. From this analysis emerges a subtler, more realistic approach to individual decisionmaking that brushes aside either extreme. The author concludes that rational adaptation is the predominant operating mechanism in making choices, but that it generates different effects depending on class-related values and personal preferences.