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Does higher education increase Social Mobility?

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  • Does higher education increase Social Mobility?

    I thought this was interesting, and worthy of discussion.

    Social Mobility: What it's worth

    The government thinks more higher education means more social mobility. It's wrong

    THE belief that more education will make Britain more meritocratic and shrivel the class system lies behind the huge expansion in higher education of the past two decades and the government's determination to steer half the country's 18-30-year-olds into universities. The idea that we live in a “knowledge economy” has strengthened that notion. But recent research casts doubt on it. Education plays a smaller role in social mobility than it used to, according to research which looked at the relationship of people's education to their careers in the early 1970s and early 1990s (see chart).

    Why should the impact of education on social mobility be declining? Because, according to a forthcoming paper* by three academics at Nuffield College, Oxford, employers are becoming less interested in educational qualifications. That's happening for two reasons. Part of the job of higher education is to send a signal to employers—that someone has learnt to think, to persevere, to absorb information and to present ideas. As the supply of graduates grows, and the quality of teaching in Britain's shabby, crowded universities declines, this signal is fading. At the same time, services have been growing at the expense of manufacturing, and, increasingly, the qualities that employers in the service sector want are those the middle classes acquire at home: articulacy, confidence and smartness.

    To test their hypothesis that employers pay little attention to educational qualifications, the Oxford researchers analysed 5,000 recruitment advertisements and interviewed people doing the hiring. Firms, they discovered, want recruits with skills that formal education does not necessarily bring: “high touch” in the jargon, rather than hi-tech. Typical examples are management jobs in fast-growing industries such as leisure and retailing, as well as posts in public relations, in sales and customer care.

    Employers themselves say much the same thing. “What our members want is office and personal skills rather than more advanced education,” says Matthew Knowles, policy adviser at the British Chambers of Commerce, a group for small and medium-sized businesses. “You see a lot of people from university who take three to six months to pick up the skills for an office job. They could do that by the age of 19 and start moving up. Instead they spend three years at college and then take a job they would have taken anyway.”

    Financial-services employers echo those views. Bruce Collins, chief executive of Tullett Liberty, a City broker, admits non-graduates to his graduate trainee scheme. “We want inter-personal skills, awareness, attitude, eagerness to learn: are they rounded individuals? What's their social life?” he says. “They've got to come across well, not just talk the numbers but build relationships.” The result, he explains, is a workforce where a “guy with an O-level in woodwork sits next to a guy with a PhD in mathematics”.

    Marks & Spencer whittles down the 6,000 annual applicants for its 200 graduate trainee places entirely through tests of literacy, numeracy, reasoning and personality. This big retailer takes no account at all of the class or subject of degree, or the university attended.

    All that chimes with the Oxford research, which showed formal qualifications featuring in only a quarter of the advertisements in the sample, typically for top-level jobs. In the “sales and personal service” category, less than 10% stipulated educational qualifications. What these posts did require were skills in communication and team-working, and personal attributes such as “good appearance”, “good manners”, “character” and “presence”. Bad luck, then, for those who come across as tongue-tied, crass or nervous, regardless of their academic achievements.

    Assuming, reasonably, that job adverts reflect what employers really want, this neatly explains why education matters less than the believers in meritocracy expected. “If you are selling high-value things like real estate, you will be interacting with middle-class people and you will do better if you are familiar with their style, manners etc,” says John Goldthorpe, one of the paper's authors. “It's not much use having some graceless anorak, however impressive his or her degree. The attributes that these people have from their family background have some real commercial use. It's not nepotism. Employers know what they want.”

    Mike Hill, of Prospects, a state-funded career service, says “universities are encouraging people to develop just these skills—to speak in a businesslike way, to make small talk.” One example is Hull University, where a popular module in “career skills”, includes “the world of work”, time management and how to talk in a business environment. Great stuff—but not necessarily worth spending three years at university and running up many thousands of pounds in debt.
    I think that as more people get higher education the price for that education goes down. That's why higher education isn't the key to social mobility. But the Economist is correct here, and there is a lot wasted on education. Most of what we learn is for nothing.
    I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
    - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

  • #2
    Here's the graph
    Attached Files
    I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
    - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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    • #3
      "Social mobility"?

      I need a translation to English.

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      • #4
        Translation: Will the ignorant peasant scum ever rise above their limited station in life?
        When all else fails, blame brown people. | Hire a teen, while they still know it all. | Trump-Palin 2016. "You're fired." "I quit."

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        • #5
          ROFL @ MtG.


          Kidicious - obviously education isn't everything. But good education will do beyond teaching you material or even teaching you to think.

          Obviously good education will also teach you how to present your ideas well, how to behave, how to handle yourself with people.

          That's exactly why some universities are considered more than others. Usually because of the personal qualities of their graduates.

          The question whether they teach those abilities or seek out people who already have it - is a difficult one. Probably both.

          But I'm sure you can agree that just like not anyone can be a rocket scientist, not anyone can be a manager, or even a public relations person.

          I've met enough secretaries with no people skills what so ever, and that's bad.


          But if you are trying to claim again that the elites preserve themselves, it is a ****ty arguement, since talented and self confident people come from all ends of society.

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          • #6
            I think it depends on what they went to school for. Obviously if someone is aiming to be a CPA accountant or doctor they need the full four years plus more. On the other hand if you had Basket Weaving and Engine Repair as your major then you just might be wasting your time.

            That line about being "ready to start" at 19 is a little farfetched if you ask me, unless he's talking about those few college educated people who become secretaries.

            I've found that a strong mix of both experience and education will help you get a higher job. You just have to show that you actually know something that didn;t come out of a book.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
              Translation: Will the ignorant peasant scum ever rise above their limited station in life?
              Well you did, so I don't see why others won't be able to.
              A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.

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              • #8
                All a formal education really does is reduce the number of doors that would otherwise be shut in your face.

                A formal education can't teach you to think, it can task you, and force you to think. But discipline in the ranks of formal education has been declining for all of my life. So, many grads can neither think nor discipline themselves.

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                • #9
                  Social mobility - moving between what are perceived as different "classes" in society has nothing to do directly with education and everything to do with money, at least in the UK. Money, how much or how little you have, determines where you can live and what is and is not possible as your lifestyle.

                  Education affects this only in how it influences your earning potential. A degree is useful in that employers still specify graduate level when advertising simply to keep a lid on the numbers applying. But there is more to getting a job than just having an academic qualification.
                  Never give an AI an even break.

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                  • #10
                    One must wonder:

                    If companies only seek employees with office skills and not higher education, where do the managers come from? ...Ahh, the sweet happy life of nepotism.

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                    • #11
                      Yup, this only looks at service sector jobs, though of course, this is the biggest sectorsof the economy now. For technical jobs, and government jobs (most), education still matters. And they pay more than service sector jobs, thus moving some people up.
                      If you don't like reality, change it! me
                      "Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
                      "it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
                      "Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Sirotnikov
                        Kidicious - obviously education isn't everything. But good education will do beyond teaching you material or even teaching you to think.
                        According to the data, there could be two possibilities. One, higher education isn't doing that, or two, it can't do that. But I don't think it matters, because education can not create large scale mobility. Wages for some individuals may go up with the level of their education, but if you educated the whole society wages would only go up marginally, and not enough to justify the cost.
                        I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
                        - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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                        • #13
                          The problem Kidicious is with the shape of the economy, not education...the fact is that the most common jobs now do not need a real college education to be done..and they don't pay enough to create real social mobility either.

                          Any poor person who studies medicine or law and becomes a doctor or lawyer, or engineer, or flight technician will see upward mobility.
                          If you don't like reality, change it! me
                          "Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
                          "it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
                          "Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by GePap
                            The problem Kidicious is with the shape of the economy, not education...the fact is that the most common jobs now do not need a real college education to be done..and they don't pay enough to create real social mobility either.

                            Any poor person who studies medicine or law and becomes a doctor or lawyer, or engineer, or flight technician will see upward mobility.
                            Yes, but my point is that if every person were educated in one of those high paying jobs, those jobs would no longer be high paying jobs. So education is not the key to increasing social mobility, or maybe I should say equality.
                            I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
                            - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

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