| The deeply-ingrained perception that equality of opportunity exists for all Americans, dubbed the myth of upward social mobility, suggests that continued expansion of educational opportunities is the most viable conduit for intragenerational upward social class mobility. Viewed through a class structural perspective, individual placement within the economic structure determines the life chances or opportunities available to individuals, and individual economic success may depend upon educational attainment. Two general orientations toward educational attainment in the United States are the meritocratic perspective and the reproductive prospective. McMurrer and Sawhill (1998) suggest since fewer available opportunities are provided within the current environment of declining economic dynamism, educational processes may actually operate to maintain or reproduce class structures instead of making class structures more permeable (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1973; Gilbert, 2003) thus limiting upward mobility. Absent from the meritocratic and reproductive perspectives concerning social mobility research is the dimension of individual agency and how individual action may influence the permeability of class boundaries.;The purpose of this study is to describe and discover the perceptions scholarship recipients who obtained college degrees may have concerning their own intragenerational social mobility and how those perceptions may affect the broader issues of social and economic inequity through a qualitative exploration grounded in life course research, structuration theory, interpretative phenomenology, and Heideggerian hermeneutics. This study is important because it may serve as a springboard for further research concerning scholarship intervention in educational attainment and intragenerational social mobility by looking at the perceptions of individuals who have attempted through educational attainment to move through class barriers. Conceptualization of the findings may create a holistic picture of the role scholarship receipt and educational attainment play in intragenerational social mobility. |
