Teens career expectations rose in US and UK, Penn State study finds
Penn State researchers found adolescents in both countries became more ambitious from 2000 to 2018, with class gaps shrinking in the U.K.
By Priya Raghavan · Science Reporter
3 min read
Teens career expectations climbed steadily in the United States and the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2018, according to a Penn State study accepted for publication in the American Educational Research Journal. The findings matter because the jobs young people expect to hold are tied to later schooling and labor-market outcomes, according to Soo-yong Byun, a Penn State professor of education, demography and Asian studies.
Byun and co-authors used nearly two decades of data from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, to compare adolescents’ expected occupational status in the two countries. The paper, titled “Shifting futures: Trends in socioeconomic disparities in adolescents’ expected occupational status in the United States and the United Kingdom, 2000–2018,” is available on ResearchGate as a preprint.
The researchers found that more adolescents reported ambitions for high-status careers, including medicine, law and engineering, over the period studied. Byun said the research was not designed to prove why that shift occurred, but he linked the pattern to broader changes such as growth in knowledge-based work, higher parental education levels and stronger expectations around children’s education and careers.
What influences teens’ career expectations?
Occupational expectations are the jobs adolescents think they are likely to have as adults. According to Byun, those expectations matter because they can signal later educational attainment, work outcomes and future inequality.
The Penn State team found that family socioeconomic background shaped expectations differently in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the U.S., Byun said the link between family background and career expectations stayed relatively modest and stable over time, including relatively small socioeconomic gaps among students aiming for the highest-status occupations.
Byun said that pattern may reflect the lasting appeal of the “American Dream” and the broad structure of U.S. secondary education, which may encourage students from varied backgrounds to imagine similar career paths. The study did not identify those factors as direct causes.
The U.K. showed a different pattern, according to the researchers. Socioeconomic disparities in occupational expectations narrowed there, especially as British adolescents’ expectations rose more quickly in recent years.
Between 2000 and 2015, American adolescents reported higher occupational expectations than British adolescents, the study found. By 2018, that difference had largely faded because expectations among British adolescents had increased more rapidly, according to Byun.
Byun said the convergence is consistent with U.K. education changes that stressed more comprehensive schooling, broader educational access and efforts to raise young people’s aspirations. He also said the U.K.’s historically more stratified education system, with earlier academic tracking, may have tied young people’s career expectations more closely to family background before those gaps weakened.
What can schools do with the findings?
Byun said the results suggest schools and policymakers can help shape students’ career expectations by expanding opportunity and promoting ambitious but realistic goals. He said educators and career counselors can use the findings to spot students whose ambitions may be limited by lack of exposure to education or career options.
More personalized career guidance and wider awareness of available pathways could help students form aspirations around their interests and abilities rather than family background, Byun said.
The study also points to a new question for researchers: how artificial intelligence may change what adolescents expect from future work. Byun said it is too early to know how AI will affect students’ education and career expectations, but the upcoming PISA 2025 data will give researchers a chance to study how AI and other social changes are influencing young people’s views of their future careers.
This story draws on original reporting from Phys.org.