Educational Decision Makers: The School Guidance Counselor and Social Mobility

Abstract

Three questions regarding the secondary school guidance counselor are addressed: (1) Do counselors devote more time to students predisposed than to students less predisposed toward higher education? (2) To what extent does the counselor's advice depend upon such variables as a student's status, intelligence, educational expectations, and encouragement from parents? (3) Does the counselor have an effect on a student's educational expectations independent of the effects of these variables? Correlational and path analyses with longitudinal data from 1171 males and 1105 females surveyed at the end of their freshman and sophomore high school years revealed that: (1) counselors have more educational contacts with students less disposed toward higher education; (2) the student's educational goals and intelligence exert a direct effect on the educational advice accorded him by the counselor, but virtually all of the effect of status on such advice is indirect; and (3) the counselor has an incremental effect on the student's educational expectations independent of the influences of the predisposing variables included in the analysis. Moreover, a student's early educational expectations appear to have a critical effect on his subsequent expectations.