College, connections and care: how mobility and social capital affect college preparation for youth in foster care

Restricted until 26 Feb. 2010.Of the over 500,000 youth currently in foster care in the United States, only 10% to 20% enroll in college. Of those, less than 5% graduate. Compared to their peers, foster youth draw from less stable social networks when seeking support for college aspirations due to the many times youth in foster care tend to change residences and schools. Since valuable college-related information, skills and support tend to be accessed through social relationships, lack of sustained support can be particularly detrimental to the long-term well-being of youth with experiences in foster care. This dissertation explores how the transient nature of foster care affects students abilities to gain and utilize social capital and navigate college-conducive social networks. Longitudinal data from ethnographic interviews conducted with six students from foster care as they prepared for and during their first year of college shed light on how foster youth evaluate the resources they have at their disposal given institutional and social contexts that potentially hinder college going.; Research findings illustrate the complex ways that students mobilities and social capital interact and influence educational achievement. The two central goals of the dissertation are to: (a) further theoretical knowledge of social support networks; and (b) advance knowledge on college access for an understudied, high-risk student population