Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Kimberly Salazar Social Science

Welfare-to-Work Versus Human Capital Ideology: An Investigation of the Barriers Student-Parents Face Navigating CalWORKs at 4-Year Universities

Scholars Journal

In 2020, the Public Policy Institute of California reported that only 5% of CalWORKs Community College (CC) recipients transferred to a 4-year college; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as people earn advanced degrees such as Bachelors, Masters, etc., earnings increase and unemployment rates decrease. Unlike the California CC systems, where CalWORKs serves 58 counties via its presence at every CC, 4-year universities don't have a county CalWORKs presence on campus. This leaves the onus of navigating CalWORKs welfare-to-work (WTW) requirements on student-parents sans centralized guidance. Through qualitative research, Kimberly's project will uncover the ways CalWORKs student-parents at 4-year universities navigate college as a means of achieving long-term self-sufficiency under a Welfare to Work ideology in an effort to establish best practices for CalWORKs student-parents navigating California Universities.
Kimberly Salazar
Major: Sociology
Mentor: Yu-Ling Chang, Social Welfare
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