This document examines how race affects socioeconomic status through education levels. The author studies whether race impacts a person's ability to attend and complete college. Through research on racial disparities in education, the author finds white people are more likely to graduate high school and attend college compared to black people. The author's fieldwork at their college finds white students rely more on financial aid and jobs to pay for school, while Asian students have more parental funding and aspire to higher degrees. Overall, the research confirms racial differences exist in educational attainment and socioeconomic opportunities in the United States.

1. RACE AND
SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS
By Kylee Clark

2. PROBLEM STATEMENT
How does race* effect
socioeconomic status?
*Note race is being used instead of ethnicity because race is a
social construct and I am looking for how people are perceived not
the actual origins of a person.

3. OUTLINE
For this project I am looking into the question of how does race effect
socioeconomic status. Specifically I am looking at how race effects the ability to go
to and complete college (an indicator of socioeconomic status). This question could
go in many directions. I chose the indicator of college completion and education
because it is relevant to me and the other people in this class since we are currently
in school.

4. METHODOLOGY
First off I am looking at different scholarly articles on race
and education. This will help me figure out a basis on what
is going on in the United States in general. Bellingham is just
a small portion of the United States and will not be
generalizable to the whole.
Second, for my field work, I am going to survey college
students and ask about their college experience. Since I am
looking at the social construct of race I have decided I am
not going to talk about their race instead I am going to link
the answers with what I see.

5. FIELD WORK QUESTIONS
Questions I will ask college students:
• Are you using financial aid to complete your college experience?
• Are your parents helping you pay for college?
• If not, how are you paying for school?
• What level of school do you wish to complete?

6. WHAT I FOUND IN MY RESEARCH
I have found through my research that college education is very important in
a persons socioeconomic status in the United States. This is an indicator of
what type of job a person will be and socially, how a person is seen. College
education is generational because of the loan process. When a person
applies for financial aid to be able to get a loan there parents assets are
looked at. If your parents do not have assets then you will not likely to be
able to get the loan.
Through this research in the United States, white people are more likely to be
able to go to college and they have more life chances however, those who
are black are less likely to get these chances. In the United States 13% of
whites do not graduate high school while 21% of blacks do not graduate
high school. This is a big difference and without high school a person can not
go to college.

7. WHAT I FOUND IN MY FILED WORK
My field work ended up being a little more difficult than I expected. In my
research I found that most of the data is on blacks versus whites in
socioeconomic status. However, there are mostly white people in Bellingham,
there are not a lot of black people here.
With this most of the white students I talked to were paying for education
through working, financial aid and help from their parents. There were a wide
variety of what level of education they wanted to complete. The results came
to about half wanted to finish their AA and half wanted a BA with a few higher
levels surveyed.
The other category of race I found was Asian students. Most of these student’s
parents were paying for their schooling. Also, they were going to higher levels
of education. Mostly these students wants to get BA s and higher.

8. CONCLUSION
My conclusion on what I learned is both what I expected and
what I not what I expected. I learned from my research that with
the categories of whites and blacks there is a huge difference
between who can and cannot go to college. Unfortunately, this is
what I expected. There is still a difference between races in the
United States, even if we don’t want there to be one.
During my field work I found that there is also a difference
between races in the college world in Bellingham. This difference
is mostly between whites and Asians. Asian students are more
likely to be sent to school fully funded with a career focus. Whites
are more likely to have to piece together funding for college and
do not necessarily have as high of aspirations.