Opportunity and Uncertainty: Life Course Experiences of the Class of '73

Alexander D. Gregor is director of the Centre for Higher Education
Research and Development at the University of Manitoba and co-editor of
Postsecondary Education in Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

Paul Anisef and his colleagues in this York University–based research
project have made a major contribution to our understanding of the
relation between schooling and subsequent lifetime experience. The
methodology and theory (“life-course” or “transition” theory)
employed by the study provides a far richer understanding of that
relation than do the transitional approaches, which focus more on
educational attainment and occupational status.

This longitudinal study was begun in 1973 with a group of some 2555
Grade 12 students from a range of Ontario high schools and regions. The
researchers maintained periodic follow-ups of the cohort, and the book
under review reflects the outcomes of a major revisit in 1995 to the
remnant of that original group (then numbering 788). The examination of
the group’s experience is set against a thorough analysis of the
social and economic backdrop to the two decades involved, and the
interest and complex subtlety of the experience is enhanced by inclusion
of detailed stories of five of the participants.

Reexamining the cohort in midlife enabled the researchers to study the
interwoven educational, employment, and personal threads. It also
allowed them to compare the 1995 group’s experience to that of their
parents at the same stage, as well to contrast the 1973 group with a
group of students who graduated in the 1990s. In both cases, substantial
differences in experience and outcome were discovered. The study covers
a period of fundamental change in Canadian society, and in the light of
those various shifts, the researchers are able to offer important
observations about such matters as the experience of first-generation
Canadians, the factor of gender, and the impact of various government
social and economic policies.

While it will be of primary interest to scholars and policymakers in
the field, Opportunity and Uncertainty can be comfortably and usefully
read by anyone interested in the relation between schooling and “life
course.”