John Hardin

Sociology 101
Section: 004
September 27, 2015
College attributes of Socialization
Everyone, at some point in their life, asks themselves why they are doing a particular
something. This of course is different for each individual, but one question connected
particularly struck my curiosity. Not long ago I attended the orientation for the University of
Kentucky. While I was there, I couldnt stop myself from asking myself why I was there. Not
why I was at the orientation specifically, but rather why was I attending college at all. Oddly, I
have always planned to attended college and cannot remember a time in my life when I thought
otherwise; so the fact that the query of why I was in college ever entered my consciousness,
struck me as very curious. However, as I thought about it, it became abundantly clear that I could
not just view this from a personal standpoint, but rather I needed to look at the entire culture in
which I have been educated. While I hadnt realized it at the time, I was trying to answer this
question sociologically. I began to realize that if I was to understand the answer to why we
attended college, I first needed to understand what kinds of people attend college, what was it
they hoped to gain by continuing their education beyond high school, what is it that they hope to
achieve after college, and why is it necessary for them to attended college to reach their goal.
While I was at orientation, I recognized that there was an amazing amount of cultural
diversity among the students who were attending this college event. This was later emphasized
as extremely important once school started. This begged the question, what are the attributes
students wanting to excel in college have in common? We all come from different backgrounds,

ethnicities, and religions, yet we all chose the same this same course. I began to realize that we
all shared the common idea that college leads to success. Interesting however, there is clearly no
required restriction that limits personal success to only those who are college graduates. In fact,
some of the most successful people in the world and history never attended college. So, the
question must be askedwhy do we think that the only path to success is through college? The
answer is that we have been socialized, a process of learning ones own culture, to think that a
college education is the only path to success. Society, through the focus of their parents, tells its
children at a young age that college is important to a successful, happy, economically stable, and
fulfilling life. As such, the children of this generation grow up believing and committing to this
path to success and will therefore pass this same ideology onto the next generation. This is what
sociologist would call a norm, a shared set of expectation by a society. I personally identified
with this concept by reflecting on my high school class where only one student chose to get a job
rather than attend college. It was obvious that the norm for our schools students had been set in
placeattending college after graduating high school was expected. Additionally, any student
who chose to get a job instead of attending college was defying the established norm and
becoming a social deviant: someone who defies the norms set by a culture.
This process of analysis led me to ask, What is our purpose of attending college in the
first place? This question is not to be confused with why we chose to attend college, but rather
we are asking what was the motivation that prompted us to attend college in the first place?
During orientation, I felt the answer to this presented itself in a fairly simplistic way; however,
after spending a few weeks attending classes, I realized that my simplistic response to this
question was not at all adequate to explain the manifest function, intended consequence, and
inherent need to gain an education. When I was in high school, one of my classes explained what

it meant to grow up. One of the main points of growing up was learning to establish and
maintain relationships with others. By attending college, an individual is able to meet a large
group of people with vast diverse backgrounds and by getting to know them, expands their view
of the larger worldwide culture in which they participate. The expanded views could include the
difference in ways individuals speak to the difference in their beliefs. This is known as primary
socialization: learning to become a member of a culture. College also allows the students to meet
other people with the same interest, rather than just people who attend the same location for
schooling. This is known as secondary socialization: when an individual learns to be a member
of a specific group. These are what sociologist call latent functions or an unintended
consequence. Both the manifest and latent functions are important as to what is gained by
attending college and also lead the students to look at what is to be expected to come after
graduating college.
The understanding of this manifestation leads to my last question: What is it we plan to
gain after attending college? Considering this question reverts my focus right back to the norm I
was taught in high school: college leads to success. Interestingly, how we define success is quite
relative; but looking at it from strictly an economical perspective we must first look at the
variables being compared. The Independent variable, cause agent, is that of attending or not
attending college, while the dependent variable, the thing that changes, is the economic success
one gains by attending college versus choosing not to attend college. However, the result of this
cant be proven without knowing the intervening variable, the variable that affects the
relationship between the independent and dependent variable. In this situation, the career field in
which the individual plans to enter is a key factor. For example, if I wish to have success in
Engineering, I will need a college education focused on engineering studies to even be

considered for a job in the field. However, someone who believes they would benefit from
simply getting a job straight out of high school and dismisses the social requirement to get a
college degree to achieve their goals would choose a different path. Without the intervening
variable that going to college is necessary to gain success, one could connect higher education to
success as a spurious relationship and could be claimed as simply coincidence.
The last thing that should be looked at is why we, as a culture, see economic success as
important? This is most likely due to the large influence that the conflict theorist view has place
on the culture. This is the belief that conflict in a culture to gain scarce resources is good. The
best way to think of this is through the Biblical statement, if you dont work you dont eat. The
idea is that the more success someone gains economically, the more scarce resources they can
gain. Though many people dream of economical equality, there has never once in recorded
history a culture that has achieve this. This is due to the fact that when one takes from successful
individuals who work hard to gain scarce resources, and give it to the unsuccessful, it encourages
both the successful and unsuccessful to stop working. This is the reason that the functionalist
theory, the belief that conflict is bad and that everyone should simply play his or her role in
society, cannot exist. It is this conflict that encourages students such as myself to attended
college so that we can prosper and be successful in our career fields. For this reason, students
such as myself attended college so that we can achieve something that others cannot; whether it
is economically or some other unique type of achievement in their own career.
After thinking sociologically about why I was attending college, I came to this
conclusion: we as students often follow the norm of attending college because we have been
socialized to believe that it is the right thing to do to become successful. Due to our culture, we
are taught that the way one gains success is through conflict and that it is through this conflict

that we become socialized. Thus, the best way to be better prepared for this conflict is by
furthering our education, the manifest function of attending college. However, it is through this
that we gain not only an education, but we are also given the chance to further our understanding
about the culture around us. It also allows us to begin to develop a smaller group of individuals
in whom we share the similar interest. It is because of what was gained through attending college
that the norm was developed originally and it can be claimed that it is for these same reasons that
I, along with countless others, are attending college now.