Men Don’t Ask for Directions: Gendered Social Capital and the Path to College at an Urban High School

Abstract

Young Black and Latino men transition from high school to 4-year universities at rates considerably lower than their peers. College-going disparities by gender are partly influenced by young men’s constrained access to social capital in high school. This research explores how gendered inequalities in social capital arise for college-aspiring seniors at an urban high school. The data suggest that young men were more reluctant than their young women to “ask for directions” on their way to college because they were concerned about being perceived as bothersome, and they believed their social disadvantages were insignificant. Young men who were in contexts that allowed them to overcome these challenges successfully collected important college-going social capital. These findings can support researchers and practitioners who seek to expand college access in marginalized communities.

Keywords

College access social capital masculinity race urban high schools

Common scholarly narratives about postsecondary access for Black and Latino men are disheartening. Black men’s college outcomes are described as “dismal” (Harper, 2012), while Latinos are said to be “vanishing” from college campuses (Saenz & Ponjuan, 2009). These harrowing appraisals are supported by data from the U.S. Department of Education (Musu-Giillette et al., 2017) demonstrating that Black and Latino men trail their white and women peers in college attendance rates. DiPrete and Buchmann (2013) assert that there exists a “rise of women” with respect to postsecondary access and persistence. Enhancing college success for young men of color is an important lever for improving educational equality by race and ethnicity in the U.S.

Importantly, young men are capable of college-going success, particularly when they are embedded in supportive networks. Ample research has shown that young men can leverage social networks to overcome structural barriers and make it to college. Research has illuminated young men who turn to family members for support and inspiration (Carey, 2016), who develop relationships with teachers (Harper & Williams, 2014), who stay after class for support (Warren, 2016), and who connect with school mentors who guide them through the college application processes (Huerta et al., 2018; Knight-Manuel et al., 2019). The young men who do leverage support networks often adeptly navigate their way to college. However, research on social capital and college going suggests that they often do not get adequate help. Gendered analyses of help-seeking have uncovered profound gender-based inequities in college-going support (Klevan et al., 2016; Riegle-Crumb, 2010).

While social supports are at the center of young men’s ability to successfully enroll in college, why Black and Latino young men get less support through the college transition than young women remains unclear. As such, this paper addresses the following question: What are the gendered processes by which young men and women at an urban high school differentially access college-going social capital during the college transition process?

By analyzing interviews of 16 young Black and Latina/o men and women, this paper intends to understand the gender dynamics of college transition process at an urban high school. Although the finding may not be generalizable to young Black and Latino men in all high school contexts, this paper intends to understand the college transition process in an urban school with implications for other urban schools. “College transition process” refers to the process wherein students select potential colleges, prepare their applications throughout the fall, secure funding, and make their commitment decisions between the winter and spring. Because the path to college is dynamic and complex, multiple points exist at which students can make a wrong turn (Klasik, 2012). Accordingly, social capital—the resources embedded in an individual’s social networks and their ability to access them—is crucial for college-aspiring students in marginalized communities.

Leveraging Stanton-Salazar’s (1997) conception of social capital, this paper interrogates how help-seeking behaviors are influenced by gender in an urban school. The findings this paper elaborates in this study are as follows. First, reinforcing extant literature, young men expressed less knowledge of college-going processes and far narrower support networks than young women. The data suggest that during the college transition process, young men were reluctant to reach out to adults or peers who they feared might see their questions as bothersome.

An additional barrier to help-seeking was that young men were far less likely to acknowledge structural disadvantages in access to college knowledge, and they expressed confidence in their ability to overcome barriers without assistance. Young women reported securing ample college-going support, and this discrepancy reinforced gendered gaps in college knowledge. However, four of the ten young men who developed trusted networks of college-going support or who acknowledged structural disadvantages were able to make informed college-going decisions during their senior year. Findings suggest that social capital accumulation toward college going is shaped by gendered social processes in urban schools.

Gender, Race, and College-Going Social Capital

Gender, Race, and College Access

For young men in urban contexts, college is an elusive goal. The California Department of Education (2018) reports that less than half of Black and Latino masculine high school completers from low-income backgrounds enroll in college immediately after high school, compared with over 70% of Whites. Young Black and Latino men are also substantially less likely to attend college than their feminine peers in California. Nationally, gaps in college access for young men of color are wide and longstanding (Dukakis et al., 2014; Hurtado et al., 2008). While Black and Latino young men have no shortage of college-going aspirations (Hurtado et al., 2008), these dreams often remain unfulfilled.

Treatment of Black and Latino men is circumscribed by systems of race and masculinity that reinforce inequity. Their identities are informed by intersecting oppressions, constraining a sense of self within acceptable bounds of racialized masculinity (Collins, 2004; Connell, 1995). Their experiences within the social world—an accumulation of racial sleights and messages of masculinity—may compel a resistance to admitting vulnerability in school settings (Majors & Billson, 1993). Also, Black and Latino young men may be uniquely susceptible to discrimination at the hands of teachers and counselors (Ferguson, 2010; Martinez & Huerta, 2020). Toldson et al. (2009) describe young Black men who experience discrimination from educators who occasionally tracked them into non-college preparatory coursework. Teachers may be surlier with boys in elementary school who ask for help, particularly when deemed “troublemakers” by teachers (Calarco, 2018). Musto (2019) finds that behaviors perceived as “brilliant” among White and Asian boys are viewed as “bad” for Black and Latino boys. In response to urban learning conditions, many young men develop academic identities that are “non-compliant,” and they seek out careers that do not require college-going (Carter, 2005). The experiences of young men in school and society present a unique challenge for those tasked with guiding them to postsecondary success.

Social Capital and College Access

Social capital is at the center of scholarly conversations of college access equity. Social capital encompasses the knowledge and resources an individual has embedded in their social networks, their ability to access those resources, and how the resources are leveraged toward social mobility (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988). Drawing on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, Stanton-Salazar (1997) developed a theory of social capital as applied to marginalized students who he argued navigate a “ubiquity of network barriers and entrapments” (p. 5) in schools. Social capital—its presence in a network as well as one’s knowledge of how to access it (Lin, 2002)—is unequally distributed in schools. White and middle-class students have robust networks with abundant stores of social capital, and they are often well versed in strategies that permit its exploitation. Low-income students lack access to social capital useful for academic advancement and are more likely be embedded in groups with “negative social capital” (Portes, 1998)—“downward leveling norms” that constrain mobility.

Stanton-Salazar (1997) emphasized a multitude of barriers to social capital for marginalized students. For example, the ability to navigate bureaucratic systems to access knowledge and the ability to “decode” its linguistic and symbolic messaging are profound barriers for non-dominant students seeking educational mobility. Also, Stanton-Salazar emphasized that schools are not designed to build the close, trusting relationships necessary to help students understand and internalize academic information. The likelihood of developing academically productive relationships is undermined by racism and class oppression, and interpersonal interactions often leave students of color feeling unsupported and undervalued in schools. Students are often “denigrated or tacitly cast as inferior” (Stanton-Salazar, 1997, p. 24). The “entrapments” on the path to social capital development for Black and Latino young men are thus manifold.

Despite the profound challenges for marginalized students illuminated by his framework, Stanton-Salazar (1997) also suggested potential for educational mobility through social capital. Primarily, he conceived of “institutional agents” who are individuals capable of connecting students from marginalized communities to dominant capitals associated with educational mobility. Institutional agents require a “bicultural orientation” whereby they navigate the social norms and expectations of multiple communities and leverage this socially transcendent position to connect non-dominant students with valued social capital. With respect to college guidance, Tierney (1999) urged that college-going practices maintain a degree of “cultural integrity” to ensure that students with college-going aspirations are not forced to choose between their cultures and college-going. Counselors who understand and validate the cultural realities of marginalized students can serve as institutional agents who can help them realize their college-going aspirations (Welton & Martinez, 2014).

Other writers who investigated how students connect with institutional agents and build networks of academic support have suggested that trust is at the center of this process. Holland (2015) noted that trust among college counselors entails an alignment of their expectations with those of marginalized students who want counselors who actively support their college dreams. In their work on trust and mentorship, Ream et al. (2014) found that trust matters more for the success of students from marginalized backgrounds because they are more likely to experience institutional racism during educational transitions. Trust, they argued, can encourage the type of risk-taking necessary for academic engagement, and marginalized students face profound risks in educational spaces.

The development of social capital has important implications for college access. Holland (2015) suggested that social networks with sparse information about college planning constrain the development of college knowledge among Black youth. School peers in addition to adults matter for college access (Tierney & Venegas, 2006), and Farmer-Hinton (2008) argued that the scarcity of college knowledge in family and peer networks elevates the importance of school-based social capital in the college-going process. “Pivotal moments” of college guidance from caring mentors can profoundly impact college trajectories (Espinoza, 2011). Duncheon and Relles (2019) noted that schools’ organizational structures mediated access to college-going social capital. Social capital is a key framework for understanding the college-going opportunities among marginalized youth.

Gendered Social Capital and the College Transition in Urban Schools

In the above scholarship, social capital is treated a bit like a financial asset. Students own social capital in the form of friends or counselors with valuable information, and they access that capital to achieve educational success. However, social capital is by its nature social, and as such, is circumscribed by systems of culture and identity. These systems inform the processes by which students generate and use social capital. In the theoretical work on social capital in urban contexts, scant attention has been directed at the role of gender. Gender and social capital, as noted above, are each independent drivers of educational outcomes for marginalized youth. Gender also shapes the development of social capital. The gendered processes by which social capital is developed and leveraged in urban contexts toward college-going deserves focused investigation. Some work on social capital among marginalized youth has suggested broad gender inequities with respect to social capital development, though the specific processes that produce these inequities remain unclear.

The profound inequities faced by young men of color in urban schools likely elevate the importance of social capital for their postsecondary futures. In these schools, however, counseling resources are meager and overwhelmed (Corwin et al., 2004), and young men are less likely than women to receive counseling support at their school sites (Bryan et al., 2009). When they do interact with counselors, evidence suggests those interactions may be less fruitful than they are for young women. Zarate and Gallimore (2005) found that interactions with counselors were more predictive of college attendance for Latinas than Latino boys. Given counseling constraints and gendered disparities in college-going outreach, young men’s access to college-going social capital may be uniquely scarce in urban schools. How young men seek help from counselors in urban settings represents an important component of college-going social capital.

Young men may also be at a disadvantage to young women with respect to college-going social capital in their peer networks. Using a nationally representative sample, Wells et al. (2011) discovered that young women have substantially broader stores of college-going social capital than young men across peer and family networks. Indeed, girls may be more likely to have “closer” friendships (Giordano, 2003) and report more academically-oriented peer groups that support college-going (Riegle-Crumb, 2010). Valenzuela (1999) found that young Mexican-American women were much more likely than young Mexican-American men to be sources of academic social capital in peer groups. Groups of young men in urban contexts may be particularly susceptible to “downward leveling norms” (Bourgois, 2003; Portes, 1998) that constrain opportunity. Social capital appears to explain a substantive proportion of the gender disparities in college enrollment (Klevan et al., 2016). Abundant research has suggested that young men have less academic social capital, and this inequity has profound implications for college going.

When presented with opportunities for support, whether young Black and Latino men access the available help presents an additional challenge. The scholarly literature (as well as amateurish comedy routines) is replete with commentary on the improbability of men asking for directions. Indeed, in many circumstances—on the internet (Bennett, 1998), in health care Galdas et al., 2005) in libraries (Whisner, 2000), and in schools (Wright, 2003)—gender processes appear to inform how people ask for support. By some accounts, men’s reluctance to seek help is connected to a sense of masculine identity grounded in toughness and a reluctance to appear vulnerable (Kimmel, 2000; Majors & Billson, 1993). However, it may also be a learned behavior in response to young men’s experiences in specific social contexts. For example, Rosette et al. (2015) found that men who were leaders were perceived to be less competent when they ask for help, but women who were leaders experienced no similar penalty for help-seeking. Schwab and Dupuis (2022) learned that masculine socialization compels young men in college to “struggle in silence,” rather than reach out for help in college courses. Given fraught relationships with teachers and staff and the expectations of masculinity, repercussions for help-seeking may be particularly acute for young men in urban schools.

As such, young men’s social capital—the college-going resources in their networks and whether they access them – seem to profoundly shape their academic performance. Gender disparities in college-going social capital are made clear in existing scholarship on college access, but why this disparity exists is less clear. How young men leverage social capital during the college transition and how gender informs this process remain under-investigated. Next, I outline a methodology aimed at illuminating the processes surrounding race, gender, and college-going social capital for young men at an urban high school.

Data and Methods

The research presented here is part of a larger study on preparing for college at Sunrise High School an urban high school in California. I spent two full academic years working with the Class of 2020 in an AVID course and observing their classrooms. As the primary data for this study, I draw primarily on 16 interviews, with all names pseudonyms, conducted between May and July of 2020 upon students’ graduation. I leverage my ethnographic observations to facilitate my analysis of the data.

Research Site and Participants

I interviewed 16 students—nine boys and seven girls—at Sunrise High School, a school serving nearly entirely Black and Latinx students from working-class backgrounds. The school faces struggles typical of urban schools in the United States. It has lower test scores and offers fewer college-preparatory opportunities than most other schools across the state. The campus, though shrinking amidst competition from nearby charter schools, and some of the buildings are being sold off to local developers. Yet, the school serves as a community hub of sorts within its under-resourced neighborhood as most students I spoke with expressed pride in Sunrise. Most research participants were active in the school. Only two boys did not participate in an official group but were well-known across the campus. The young women were similarly involved. All student-participants had GPAs that would have qualified them to attend 4-year universities immediately out of high school. I summarize the students in Table 1.

Table 1.

Summary of student interview participants.

Student name	Race/Ethnicity	Approximate GPA	College plans
Young men
Alexander	Latino	4.0	University of California
Andrew	Latino	2.4	None
Cisco	Latino	3.4	California State University
Conrad	Latino	4.0	Community College
Enzo	Latino and Black	3.0	Community College
Eric	Latino and Black	3.0	Community College
Ferdinand	Latino	3.4	Community College
Kevin	Latino	3.1	University of California
Miles	Black	2.8	HBCU in Georgia
Young women
Angela	Latina	3.4	University of California
Eve	Pacific Islander	3.9	University of California
Janet	Latina	3.8	University of California
Jessica	Latina	3.9	University of California
Priscilla	Latina	3.2	Community College
Tonya	Black	3.9	University of California
Yolanda	Latina	3.5	Community College

Data Collection

While this research predominantly draws on interview data, my ethnographic work leading up to the interviews also informed the findings. I spent over 150 hours over 2 years at Sunrise High School as a participant observer at the school and in the neighboring community. I interacted primarily with two sets of peer groups of young men during the 2018 to 2019 schoolyear—the engineering club and a historically Black fraternity—but also connected with students across the junior class. I met them in AVID classes, after school sporting events, and club meetings. I visited many at home and joined them on walks around their neighborhoods. The following year, I stayed connected with the students, supporting young men and women with college applications, reading personal statements and discussing scholarships and financial aid.

Leaning on the relationships I had built over 2 years at Sunrise, I contacted students at the end of the 2019-20 school year over text message and email to gauge their interest in participating in an interview about the college application process. I could not connect in person, because schools were closed due to COVID-19. Every student who I reached out to initially agreed to participate. I asked them to reach out to some of their friends as well, but fewer responded. Each interview lasted about 45 minutes and happened over video chat. I asked about their experiences with the college application and selection process and how their identities of gender and race shaped their educational opportunities and the college going process.

My positionality influenced my interactions with the students. As a 37-year-old, brown, mixed-race Indian and White former teacher in urban schools, I believe I was uniquely able to make connections with these students. I am comfortable in communities of color and in urban classrooms. During the school year, I spent time with groups of students regularly, talking about sports, politics, or popular culture. By the time I conducted the interviews, I had long been a familiar face on the Sunrise High School campus.

Data Analysis

I coded the transcribed interviews in two rounds. In the first round, I used inductive, in vivo coding, jotting key words and phrases from student comments in the margins. Next, combining in vivo codes with codes deductively oriented around issues of social capital and identity, I developed a codebook of three parent codes and 14 subcodes. Parent categories included obstacles to college going, relationships and college going, and student ideologies and characteristics. Among others, subcodes included “college knowledge,” “institutional agent,” “asking for help,” and “social identity and culture.” The codes were then re-applied to all of the transcripts in a second round of coding. After coding each document, I wrote short memos that illuminated emerging themes and potential points of synthesis, occasionally drawing connections to ethnographic data. Through careful analytical process, I delineated the intersections of social capital, gender, and race as students navigated the college going process at an urban high school.

Findings

All of the young women I interviewed, regardless of their ultimate choice of college, shared far more robust knowledge on a wide range of college topics than the young men. They had a stronger sense of a potential major. They applied to more universities—including “target schools” and “reach schools” They sought out more scholarships. They knew how to select majors and did so strategically to enhance chances of admission. They spoke about college plans with a fluency that many of the young men did not. Since they were first-generation college students, the young women did not come to this information easily. They reported a lot more support. Why did young women get more college-going help than young men?

Put simply, the young men did not get college-going help as often as young women. All of the young women reported wide, robust support systems. Only four (Cisco, Alexander, Kevin, and Miles) of the nine boys reported comparable support and knowledge. The data suggest the following process shaped this pattern. First, young men were especially uncomfortable asking for support from adults, did not want to be perceived as bothersome, and past reprimands from potential adult mentors soured them on asking for help. Although occasionally, college-going information existed in their peer networks, young men engaged far less frequently in college-going discussions with friends than did young women, again worrying about potentially bothering friends who just wanted to have fun.

Second, for college-related assistance, young men were more likely to reach out only to family, where college-going information was often limited. Only one student had a sibling who attended a 4-year university. Only one had any parent with a college degree. Despite the scarcity of familial college knowledge, young men were confident in the quality of information they amassed. They were much less likely than young women to acknowledge disadvantages by way of their social position. Devoid of access to college-going expertise from knowledgeable adults, most young men were making decisions on limited information. Here, I describe this process, concluding with a discussion of the four young men in the sample with robust understandings of the college transition. In so doing, I suggest ways that urban schools can more effectively connect young men with postsecondary aspirations to college-going information.

Gender and College Knowledge

After graduation, Andrew opted to take a year off from school to work. I asked him why. “I have trouble signing up for college, and I’m still very confused on the college process and how to go there,” he said. He continued,

I’m very confused. I don’t know where to sign up. I don’t know all this – I don’t know how to start college. It’s very difficult for me, so I don’t really know about this year, but hopefully next year I’ll figure it out.

Confusion was a common experience among most of the young men at the school. The processes of the college transition—the lengthy applications, FAFSA, the staggered deadlines, the official documents, and the numerous other requests from admissions boards—was a bit of an enigma. “I had no idea where I wanted to go,” Conrad remarked about the exploration phase of the application process. Enzo got stuck trying to figure out his college funding. “Something’s wrong with my financial aid or something, and they said they’ll fix it, and they haven’t emailed me back. So I’m just waiting. And once I do that, I play video games.” Young men expressed exasperation from the beginning of the process through its final stages.

Misunderstandings were common. In visits to his orthodontist, because Ferdinand decided he wanted to study dentistry, he scoured college websites for majors and coursework in the field of dentistry. “I couldn’t find any. I was surprised.” When he failed to find 4-year universities with dentistry majors, he became frustrated and disheartened. “Maybe I didn’t search deep enough. I don’t know,” he said. Ferdinand was unaware that dentistry was not an undergraduate major and required graduate studies after a bachelor’s degree. I was the first to tell him. Ferdinand also struggled to negotiate the multiple public university systems in California. Though Ferdinand had earned a 3.4 GPA in high school, well above the threshold for the University of California system, he had heard that UC’s were “research institutions,” and did not apply. “I don’t like doing that.” he told me. “Doing what?” I asked. “Trying to find research, . . . I’m always looking through stuff and I never find what I need.” Ferdinand thought dentistry was an undergraduate major and that the UC system’s “research” designation meant that its students had to conduct more research than students at other universities. Both of these misunderstandings caused him to limit his college options.

Two young women exemplify a marked contrast with the types of college knowledge that Andrew and Ferdinand brought to the application process. While Ferdinand searched quixotically for a dentistry major, Janet strategically pursued a major that simultaneously satisfied her intellectual passions and increased her chances of acceptance. Janet’s cousin attended UC Berkeley, a school Janet hoped to attend. “I didn’t think I was going to get in,” she recalled. “I remember calling my cousin and I was like, ‘Hey, I like ethnic studies, but what’s the major that not a lot of people apply for?’ And he was like, ‘It’s ethnic studies.’ I was like, ‘Okay, let me just apply.’” Janet also knew she could switch to a more impacted major after she was accepted. “If I don’t end up wanting to major in that, I can always flip over to political science or any other majors.” Jessica, meanwhile, was passionate about becoming a veterinarian. Unlike Ferdinand, she knew her profession required graduate studies. She said,

As a little girl, I already knew I was going to be a veterinarian . . . I searched up what was the top schools for veterinarians . . . Davis was one of them. And I thought, oh, since my dad lives here, I could go to UC Davis because their animal science is good.

Though she had yet to determine where she would go to veterinary school, she had taken the first step to a veterinary career in transitioning to UC Davis.

In beginning college coursework, young women also tended to get a head start on the young men. Enzo, for example, was set to attend a community college but had not yet signed up for classes by early June. Priscilla, an undocumented student attending the same college as Enzo, had enrolled in all of hers by joining a program that offered priority enrollment. Yolanda was also going to the same community college. Leveraging college credits that she had amassed in a dual enrollment program at Sunrise, Yolanda enrolled in a 1-year transfer agreement with automatic admission to UC Santa Cruz where she planned to major in legal studies. Enzo, meanwhile, planned to study music production. I researched course options with him for his first year. Music production was not listed.

Navigating mountains of college-going information was a challenge for the young men. “It just seems like the internet doesn’t really have all the answers for me,” Andrew lamented. Young women seemed to generally have a stronger command of knowledge regarding the college transition. They amassed this knowledge because they asked more questions. They sought out expertise from peers and school personnel. Most of the young men did not. Below, I present this process of help-seeking through the lens of gender at Sunrise High school.

Asking for Help

Asking for help from adults at Sunrise could feel like a perilous endeavor. While both young men and women mentioned feeling occasionally reluctant to ask questions about college, asking was particularly stressful for young men. They reported reaching out for far less support than did the young women. They were more likely to pursue college information on their own. Ferdinand, the young man who wanted to major in dentistry, regretted not getting more support. “I thought I was doing the right thing for myself, but I realized now that I didn’t really ask, so now I’m in the hole where I don’t know what I actually want to do.”

Conrad, a young man with aspirations in the field of video game design was similarly reluctant to seek support. Conrad, a 4.0 student decided to attend a community college early in his senior year. “So, while everyone was trying to get that together, I was basically relaxing because I already know I want to go to a community college.” As someone who had worked with Conrad for 2 years, I wanted him to keep his options open and apply to UCs as well. I asked him if he had spoken with any teachers or counselors about this decision. He had not. “I sort of kept the plans to myself,” he later, told me. I shared Conrad’s decision with his AP US History teacher from the previous year. She called him into her room and sat down with him to discuss his decision.

The way she put it is that I could regret not taking an opportunity. She would say “If you want to go to community college, if that’s your plan, that’s fine, but at least apply to the UCs to see the different things that they would provide for you . . . then you have infinite options. Then, you could make your final decision there.”

Conrad took her advice and was accepted to UC Riverside for computer science along with a number of Cal State schools. After learning of his acceptances, without consulting any adults at the school, he selected community college, confident in his final decision.

Young men were also less likely than young women to reach out to friends for support. Kevin tried talking to his friends about college but recalled being regularly rebuffed. “They don’t really want to talk about college that much,” he said. His closest friend, Conrad, “just wanted to focus on having fun and stuff.” Young men reported that play was prioritized over college-information sharing. Miles emphasized “goofiness” among peer groups of young men at Sunrise. Enzo, in frequent pursuit of college-going information, found his peers to be poor resources for college support, “N***as in the school just not helping shit for your future, you get what I’m saying? And as time’s gone on, I learned to do shit alone,” he said. All the young women, meanwhile, reported frequent, robust conversations with friends about college plans – in person and in text message group chats. The handful of young men who reported such conversations reported them in friend groups with many young women.

Young women were mostly unabashed about reaching out in the college-going process. Priscilla, the student with abundant college knowledge was also negotiating Dream Act opportunities as an undocumented student. She said, “I’m always asking for help. I’m always bugging counselors.” Tonya, planning to attend UC Irvine in the fall shared that she talked about college to “anyone who would listen to me for a prolonged period of time.” The young women reported seeking far more help than the young men about their college futures.

Gendered Constraints to Help-Seeking

These inequities in college support, I found, did not stem from inadequate college-going resources at the school or any favoritism among college counselors. Rather, gendered experiences and ideologies had shaped how young men sought college-going support from adults and peers. First, they worried about bothering potential mentors. Often, they drew on past reprimands for asking questions from adults to make decisions about whether to ask for college-going support. Second, they asserted far more confidence in their familial networks of support, minimizing real systemic barriers to college-going for marginalized students.

Feeling like a bother

The young men worried they would be bothering someone if they asked for help. Conrad reported only asking for help about college if adults approached him on the subject first. Otherwise, he said, “I just feel like I’m bothering them.” Andrew was concerned that since he viewed himself as possibly not going to college, asking a question may be taking an opportunity from another student more likely to put the college advice to use. “I don’t want to be that person that’s bothering them, because at the end of the day, what if I never went to college and I just wasted their time when they could’ve helped another student and they would’ve gone.” Many even felt like they might bother their friends by bringing up college application drudgery in peer networks. Concerns about being a bother if they asked for help were prevalent among young men at Sunrise High School.

Young men worried about the potential for admonition from an adult if they were to ask a question. As Ferdinand noted, “I feel like if I ask a question, ‘Do these schools have dentistry,’ I feel like I’m going to get an answer like, ‘Why didn’t you look into it?’” Miles shared frustrations about past experiences asking for support from some adults. “When you ask for help, they get an attitude. I don’t got time for that. If you make me feel like I’m bothering you, I will not speak to you.” Past frustrations with reaching out for support influenced current help-seeking behaviors of young mend during the college transition.

Young women, though also somewhat wary of bothering adults with questions, saw more potential for positive outcomes from help-seeking. Yolanda explained, “You know how we have guest speakers in AVID or people that come? Like they came for a reason so I feel bad if no one else has questions.” Janet worried little about annoying anyone with questions, assuming questions could serve the greater good. “I never really cared about what other people’s opinions were,” she said. “Because I’m sure that a lot of them were probably having the same question that I am. I might as well help both of us out.”

Young women also expressed more trust in adults and greater confidence they would not be reprimanded for asking questions. They were more likely to identify multiple adults who supported them with college decisions. Janet described a staff member she called her “sister” and “one person that I was always able to count on when it came to that stuff.” She “pretty much went to her every single day,” she said. Priscilla had become very close with multiple counselors at the school. All but one of the young women in the sample participated in college programs that brought them into close relationships with college graduates. As Eve described, “They build a trust. A lot of these mentors that I’ve noticed my freshman year. And so it was kind of like a familiar face.” Unlike the young men, young women could recall few, if any instances, of being rebuffed by potential mentors. Eve expressed sometimes worrying about negative experiences when asking an adult for support. I asked her if she could recall a negative experience with an adult she asked for help. After a pensive pause, she replied “I couldn’t remember that.” No young women recalled examples of being reprimanded for asking for help.

Disregarding familial disadvantages

All students credited their families as essential sources of inspiration for the college transition. Parents were said to express consistent support for college-going aspirations. In terms of technical assistance around the strategic mechanics of the college application process, however, families could offer limited guidance. Only one student in the sample had a parent who attended college, and while there was some scattered college-going in extended families and peer networks, a significant majority of the students would be the first in their immediate families to attend university. Young women acknowledged their limited familial access to college-going knowledge, but young men were less likely to do so.

For young men, parents and other family members were often the primary or only support in college-going decisions, in spite of limited access to college-going expertise. Conrad, for example, aside from one exchange with Ms. Crawford, mentioned his parents as his sole source of guidance during the application process. “Right now, I’m just taking advice from my dad,” he said. Conrad’s dream to design video games, was fostered by deep emotional support from his father. Conrad did not believe he needed advice from anywhere else.

Similarly, Eric’s reluctance to attend college was influenced by his dad. Eric became connected through a friend to a subscription service for foreign exchange investing that has received scrutiny from governments in multiple countries for potential fraud. Eric said his dad would loan him money for investments. Although, Eric was planning to join his cousin at a local community college to become an airplane mechanic, he said he would prefer to forego college and focus only on investing. “If it takes off, I want to go for that and that alone,” he told me.

Conrad and Eric believed their postsecondary paths were unhindered by social oppressions. Conrad minimized his identity as a working-class Latino. “I don’t want to be defined as someone who had all the odds against him,” he said. “I just want to be a game designer.” He said he never experienced oppression, but “if I were to get oppression, I wouldn’t mind.” Eric also believed his work ethic transcended marginalization he might experience as a mixed-race Black and Belizean man. He said,

My thing is, like, not to look at the world to where you feel like it’s fighting against you, but to look at the world to feel like you need to work hard to get to where you have to be . . . Regardless of who you are or what your race is . . . You’ve got to grind.

The belief that complaining about oppression was more of a barrier than actual oppression was common among young men and discouraged help-seeking beyond familial networks. Conrad and Eric expressed a masculine certainty that they could overcome any odds.

Young women were less hesitant to admit social disadvantages in the competition for postsecondary opportunity, and as such, they were more eager to look beyond family for support. “I don’t feel like we have some of the resources that some of the other communities do,” Janet explained. She said she “loved” her family but worried she “didn’t have that support at home.” She said, “the only way for me to understand and learn about college, was through asking questions.” Jessica, in making the transition to UC Davis admitted, “My mom and dad can’t help us because they never deal with that. They never had to do that, because their highest level of education would be elementary for them.”

Yolanda explained, “Being first-gen, there isn’t a family person I can go to right away.” She worried about “imposter syndrome” in college. Tonya did too. “Sometimes I think it was too easy,” she said about classes at Sunrise. For Angela, these disadvantages encouraged help-seeking. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it on my own, and there weren’t other people that’d be able to help me with it, so I had to go seek that help.” For the young women, because systemic disadvantage was palpable, they built non-kin support networks to facilitate college access.

Constructing Successful Networks of Support for Young Men

While most of the young men neglected to assemble a robust knowledge base about the workings of the college transition process, four of the nine young men—Cisco, Alexander, Kevin, and Miles—learned enough about the college-going process to secure acceptance to 4-year universities. Unlike their peers, these young men asked questions. These four young men were less likely to feel like a bother or to disregard systemic disadvantage.

Not feeling like a bother

Cisco, whose older brother attended UC Berkeley, was not concerned about bothering him. Cisco described video calls with his brother late night in the library as he prepared for upcoming exams but was intimidated by the UC system, noting he was not “for the books” like his sibling. Indeed, Cisco was far more socially engaged in high school than his brother. Cisco was elected the student body president, took part in multiple sports, and was a leader of an on-campus men’s fraternity. He was accepted to the UC system, but opted for a less competitive California State University instead. He enjoyed the social feel of the campus.

Cisco did not make this decision lightly. He reached out for advice from his brother frequently. Through his brother, he was also connected to a college program that took him on college tours and supported him with applications, financial aid and college selection. Cisco’s tour to CSU Northridge was particularly inspiring. He said, “the person that was giving us the tour, everybody knew him, . . . it was more of a family.” Cisco had a broad friend group, consisting of mostly young women. On their group chat, college information-sharing was rampant. “We were all stressing before Commitment Day,” Cisco told me they would, “be on FaceTime, talking what college do we want to go to? Where do we want to go? . . . probably at night too, staying up. . I feel like with my group of friends, I got the lottery.” With access to a college-going brother, college-bound friends, and a program explicitly dedicated to college access, Cisco was uniquely unworried about “bothering” anyone for college support.

Alexander did not have a sibling in college and kept a much smaller social circle than Cisco. However, he was the only other young man I interviewed in a program designed to support students’ transitions to college. Alexander was passionate about science, and as a sophomore, he saw a counselor’s presentation about a summer program that helped students transition to college as STEM majors. He described the support he received in the program:

Most of the things that I know are from the program. They’re the ones that brought me into it because they had college courses. . . prepared you for the personal insight questions, what you should be expecting, what you should look for in a college. And if it wasn’t for the program, I wouldn’t be that into it, that informed about it.

Like Cisco, Alexander’s ability to seek college support was aided by a program dedicated explicitly to college-going for marginalized youth. Familial, friendship, and programmatic networks provided young men with trusted avenues for obtaining college-going information.

Acknowledging disadvantage

While most young men in the sample were hesitant to admit they endured social oppressions or systematic disadvantages, two were not. Kevin, more than any other young man in the sample, reported eagerly asking questions to college representatives and his school’s college counselors throughout the college application and selection process. He regularly asked questions at meetings with college representatives. “I started asking them about the campus, or how is it different . . .” he said. “I asked one, two, or three questions for each person that came.” Kevin appeared to me to be the most knowledgeable about the college-going process of any of the young men. He strategized between reach and safety schools. He submitted an intent to register at a Cal State, knowing that he could rescind free of charge if he got off the waiting list at UC Riverside. Ultimately, he did, and planned to attend UC Riverside in the fall.

Kevin’s help-seeking around college-going was largely fueled by an anxious uncertainty about his future. During the college application season, his family was abruptly evicted from their house. They moved far east into the desert into a mobile home, and Kevin finished assignments on spotty internet during the COVID pandemic. The chaos, Kevin said, illuminated the likelihood that life could be upended. It influenced his commitment to clear, achievable plans as he transitioned to college. He told me, “I’m always like, “Oh what if this happens? What if what happened last year could happen again?” Kevin said he was often “second-guessing” himself. “I’m kind of scared to go into the unpredictable . . . So I guess that’s why I try to second guess, to make sure I’m making the right decision.” Kevin’s disposition belied the masculine assuredness and confidence exuded by other young men at Sunrise High.

Another student, Miles, a Black young man, expressed a sophisticated awareness of social inequality. He was deeply thoughtful about injustices endured by Black men the U.S. and maintained a strong sense of racial identity. He said,

This is a privilege. It’s a privilege to be Black in America, because people like to hate. You see how they acting. They’re trying to kill us. . . . Because they ain’t even Black, and they want to be us. So, they try and put us down because we’re trying to find a way of living. We’re doing our own things, and they don’t like that. So, it’s a privilege to me.

Miles joined a historically Black fraternity at Sunrise, run by Mr. Patterson, a Black man who Miles described as “like a father figure.” Through the organization, Mr. Patterson flew the young men to the South to visit HBCUs and spoke often about the importance of education for the Black community. Miles was deeply inspired by Mr. Patterson, and he would be attending Clark Atlanta University in the fall. “This is an HBCU,” he told me. “An all-Black college, so I can relate to my people more. Being sent to a HBCU meant a lot to me.” Onto his knowledge about systemic injustice, Miles built a strong racial identity grounded in resistance, “The Blacker I get, the better,” he said. In connecting with Mr. Patterson, that identity was directed toward college going, which Miles excitedly pursued. Kevin and Miles’ acknowledgment of social disadvantages inspired them to collect college-going support.

Discussion

College knowledge for young Black and Latino men was caught at the intersection of masculinity and social capital. With the same counselors and peers, both young men and women had access to similar networks, but these young men knew less about the college transition than the young women. Relatedly, they reported reaching out for far less help. These patterns of gender, race, college, access, and social capital are reinforced by existing research. Black and Latino young men face heightened challenges transitioning to college (Harper, 2012; Saenz & Ponjuan, 2009). They have thinner academic networks than young women (Riegle-Crumb, 2010). Perhaps then, that they are less likely to “ask for directions” to college is unsurprising.

These findings reinforce existing scholarship that has illuminated young men’s struggles to develop social capital in educational contexts, and in this case how those struggles develop specifically during the college transition for young men in urban schools. Importantly, however, the findings extend our understanding of social capital and urban masculinity, demonstrating the processes that discourage help-seeking for young men in high schools serving predominantly low-income families of color.

Two processes seemed to limit how these young men of color engaged in help-seeking: feeling like a bother and disregarding disadvantage. First, they believed they might be perceived as a bother to anyone they asked for support. In particular, previous experiences with reprimands from adults during help-seeking discouraged them from reaching to potential mentors. The excessive punishment of young men of color (Ferguson, 2010; Musto, 2019) may influence how they seek help in high school. Young men were also concerned about bothering their friends about college, worried about disrupting the playful nature of peer interactions. Women had not experienced similar reprimands for help-seeking. Second, some young men were hesitant to acknowledge information gaps in their familial networks, relying heavily on kin for college expertise. The women, meanwhile, expressed anxiety about their social disadvantages and eagerly sought out information from counselors, teachers, and peers. Young men were embedded in gendered social contexts that impinged help-seeking for the college transition.

A second important finding from this study emphasizes that young men are not destined to lack college-going social capital. The young men who reached out for support were positioned in social worlds that helped them overcome these challenges. Cisco had a sibling with college expertise who he was unworried about bothering. Cisco and Alexander were both connected with college-readiness programs that built trusted networks of college support. Other young men were uniquely attuned to the precarity of college-going opportunities in their social circumstances. Kevin, perhaps anxious by nature, was also made nervous by the commotion in his home life and sought a degree of certainty regarding his college-going future. Miles was less anxious than Kevin, but he became well-versed in the challenges faced by the Black community and, inspired by Mr. Patterson, saw attendance at an HBCU as a means of resistance and cultural uplift.

Thus, the roots of gendered inequities in college-going social capital in urban schools, I suggest, may be grounded in how ideologies of race and masculinity emerge in schools and society. As Stanton-Salazar notes, urban schools feature “a ubiquity of network barriers and entrapments” (p. 5) for students in search of social capital. Other scholars have found that these entrapments may be particularly profound for young Black and Latino men. They are deemed “bad,’ not “brilliant” for speaking in class (Musto, 2019). They are disciplined harshly (Ferguson, 2010). They are viewed as deficient by teachers and counselors (Harper, 2012; Martinez & Huerta, 2020). During the college transition process, these upsetting prior experiences with social capital acquisition make young men reluctant to reach out for support. They worry they will be perceived as bothersome. Young women, meanwhile, who experience fewer reprimands during help-seeking at school, are more adept at collecting social capital for college access.

In the larger social world, other pressures exist that can discourage social capital development dominant among young men. Ideologies of masculinity encourage toughness and independence (Kimmel, 2000) and when these ideologies intersect with racism and socioeconomic disadvantage in urban schools, they are magnified (Majors & Billson, 1993; Pyke, 1996). Young men may thus “struggle in silence” due to norms of hegemonic masculinity (Schwab & Dupuis, 2022). The data here suggest that these ideologies of race and masculinity manifest in the college transition process, impacting how young men develop social capital. Despite a disadvantaged social position, young men expressed a sense of masculine confidence, convincing themselves they do not need the help at all. They resisted notions of social disadvantage, asserting ideals of meritocracy.

Young women, unrestricted by the bonds of hegemonic masculine ideology, readily admitted their disadvantages and sought out social capital to enhance their repertoires of college-going resources. These gendered processes of social capital development, heretofore underexplored, have profound implications for college-going among young Black and Latino men.

Despite these significant challenges, the data suggest possibilities for expanding social capital among marginalized young men in urban schools. First, many worried about bothering potential college-going mentors, but those with close, trusting relationships with adults who attended college gained access to essential support. These adults might be considered institutional agents (Stanton-Salazar, 1997) of college access. Also, mixed-gender peer networks were important resources for college-bound young men. Second, though young men might be less inclined to acknowledge social disadvantage, more critical, culturally relevant learning opportunities might help them recognize and navigate social oppressions between high school and college (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Tierney, 1999). Young men are not fated to information inadequacy. Rather, the particulars of their social circumstances influence whether they “ask for directions” on their way to college.

Thus, for students at Sunrise, access to college-going social capital was bound by gendered processes in urban contexts. Social capital is not simply an account of resources from which students withdraw and apply as needed. Rather, how they access social networks is framed by their social identities and experiences in the social world. Young men who have likely endured discrimination and deficit orientations throughout their schooling experiences may hesitate to access available social capital. Additionally, young men of color often face unique experiences with oppression that socialize them to assert an imperviousness to hardship and vulnerability. How young men endure gendered social systems can shape access to college-going social capital in urban schools. Scholarship that elevates social capital as a tool for educational equity necessitates attention to gender, and for young men, the particular ways that masculinity shapes their movement through their social worlds.

Conclusion

Certainly, the data here is not intended to be generalized to all settings. The gender dynamics and the particulars of social networks are unique across high schools. However, in conjunction with the literature on gender, race, and social capital, I call on educators and school leaders to consider how gender shapes differential access to college knowledge. Public schools are a crucial space for augmenting college-going social capital. Educators might consider how their interactions with young men encourage or discourage help-seeking. To support successful college transitions for young men, school leaders need to ensure access to trusted mentors. College-going programs—such as AVID and Upward Bound—might expand their reach through targeted recruitment of Black and Latino young men who could benefit from the social capital of their organizations. Cultural relevance in college-going practices could also help young men understand and overcome structural oppressions in their postsecondary pursuits. The students at Sunrise High School offer an important lens into the development of college knowledge among marginalized young men, a group long denied access to postsecondary opportunities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Bob Ream, Michael Moses, Sara Goico, Bill Tierney, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Suneal Kolluri

Author Biography

Suneal Kolluri is an assistant professor in the College of Education at San Diego State University.

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