Academic Ability, Higher Education, and Occupational Mobility

The anchorage of career perspective is a mechanism common to both the unlimited and limited success orientations toward occupational mobility. The two models of motivation can be considered complementary; they refer to two outcomes of a more general model. The more general model requires that a career perspective be anchored to some reference point, which may be either the starting point of a career, or the level of maximum possible achievement. Level of occupational aspiration need not be treated as determined by separate mechanisms for each level, as current theory sugguest.'7 The more general and parsimonious conception, career anchorage, generates all levels of occupational aspiration from a single model.