Realized potential or lost talent: high school variables and bachelor's degree completion

Career Development Quarterly, Sept, 2004 by Jerry Trusty, Spencer G. Niles

The effects of other background variables were also relatively strong. Being a woman increased the likelihood of realized potential by 65%. This finding is consistent with the current trend regarding gender and college degree completion (see Wirt et al., 2002). That is, more young women than young men are now completing bachelor's degrees. One reason for this may be that the stakes are higher for women than for men. In 1998, young men who had a bachelor's degree earned 56% more than men with only a high school diploma. In the same year, young women with a bachelor's degree earned 100% more than women with only a high school diploma (Wirt et al., 2000).

Regarding racial-ethnic group membership, Asian Americans were most likely to realize their potential. Differences among other racial-ethnic groups were not large and not statistically significant. Conservatively, we can only say that Latinos, African Americans, Whites, and Native Americans did not compare favorably with Asian Americans regarding realized potential.

Conclusion

The Realized Potential or Lost Talent model developed in the present study explained a substantial portion of the variability in lost talent. Effects of high school variables were particularly strong, over and above the effects of background variables. The effects of intensive course taking, high school attendance, extracurricular activities, and parents' expectations are evidently important to the realized potential or lost talent process. Effects of high school variables in the present study were stronger for our sample of participants with high early ability than for the general sample of college-attending, degree-seeking participants in the Trusty (2004) study and LTED model. Whereas the LTED model and the Realized Potential or Lost Talent model are similar in that they include many of the same variables, they are qualitatively different conceptually. Our results also revealed quantitative differences, with stronger effects of high school behavior variables and parents' expectations in the Realized Potential or Lost Talent model.

We posit that the concept of realized potential or lost talent is useful for counselors. Helping people realize their potential is consistent with the behavioral, humanistic, and multicultural foundations of the counseling profession. When young people do not realize their potential, the negative personal consequences are likely to be pervasive and enduring. There are also negative societal consequences.

We assert that the Realized Potential or Lost Talent model is useful for several reasons: (a) The model is practical; (b) the outcome--bachelor's degree completion--is practically important to young people's career development; (c) the model explains a practically significant portion of the variability in realized potential or lost talent; (d) it targets what young people spend most of their time doing in their high school years, namely, taking courses and participating in extracurricular activities; (e) the model identifies where students, counselors, teachers, parents, and schools should focus their attention, and it implies what all these stakeholders should do to help young people realize their potential; and (f) the model is comprehensive. It includes gender, racial-ethnic, family, and socioeconomic contexts and identifies important high school variables across broad areas of students' functioning. It is also comprehensive in a longitudinal-developmental sense, because data used to develop the model spanned 12 years, from high school to 8 years after high school graduation.