The influence of college on women's choice of teaching as a career

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to estimate the effects of college on undergraduate women's choice of school teaching as a career. A causal model was proposed and tested on a sample of 2,730 nonminority women attending 74 four-year colleges and universities. The model posited that teaching career choice at the end of the sophomore year of college was a function, not only of aptitude, family background, secondary school experiences, and precollege career choice, but also of college characteristics, institutional environmental dimensions and measures of the college experience. The model, as operationalized in this study, explained 26% of the variance in teaching career choice at the end of the sophomore year. With precollege career choice held constant, both the selectivity/prestige of the institution attended and the strength of the environmental press for academic/intellectual competition had negative effects on teaching career choice. The results tend to confirm expectations that college has a significant, unique influence on women's teaching career choice which is not simply the result of differences among the students enrolled. Compared with the effects of precollege variables, however, this influence is quite small.