Exploratory Essay

Throughout the world, education is becoming increasingly important as well as heavily emphasized in order to become a productive citizen and member of one’s society. However, there are many prevalent disparities between who decides to attend college and who does not receive the opportunity to. This research is important in order to help better understand and develop ways to encourage more students to attend college. Our research will attempt to help highlight areas of our educational system that can be improved upon to help students that may be falling through the cracks of the institution, which may be able to be prevented by parents, school educators, and administrators. It is important to try to improve the educational attainment level

A few of these variables include socio-economic status, education level of parents, race, school environment, and gender. In an effort to narrow down which factors have a significant impact on children’s expectations, we are particularly interested in how the parent’s level of education, more specifically the mother’s level of education, affects their children’s self-report of aspired education attainment level. Social scientists argue that gaps apparent in academic achievement occur due to economic and social advantages that many students obtain that are a result of high levels of education earned by the parents (Abosede & Akintola, 2016). The independent variable, mother’s education, refers to the highest level of education achievement as reported by the respondents who completed the survey (Sewell & Shah, 1968). There have been numerous studies previously conducted that examine the father’s education level impact on children, however there are not many studies previously carried out that only examine the effect of the mother’s education level on her children’s educational aspirations. Stevenson and Baker (1987), emphasized the mother’s education level as the independent variable, rather than the father’s, because the mothers are more involved in a majority of the day to day schooling activities of two parent families and