Sex Differences in Educational Aspirations and Expectations

Previous studies of sex differences in adolescents’ goals for educational attainment have focused on either educational aspirations or expectations and found that socioeconomic background has a greater effect on the educational goals of girls than boys, and that academic ability has a greater effect on the educational goals of boys than girls. Almost all of these studies are based on students who attended high school between 1955 and 1960. This paper examines more recent evidence on sex differences in both educational aspirations and expectations, obtained from a random sample of eleventh grade students in Pennsylvania. The findings indicate that: (1) boys both aspire to and expect higher levels of educational attainment than girls; (2) the discrepancy between educational aspirations and expectations is greater for girls than boys at higher levels of aspiration; and (3) both socioeconomic background and academic ability, as measured by an achievement test, have a greater effect on educational ambition for boys than girls.