How will earning a college degree impact your ability to get a job in your chosen career field? How will it impact your economic outcome and the likelihood that you will experience economic inequality? Use the assigned articles to support your statements.
After the high school diploma, getting a college degree increases the chances of getting a job in your chosen career field. And if you choose to major in finance or business then you are likely to acquire a good job in the job market. The finance or business degree will make you proficient enough to work in any field through which you can earn a higher income and have a happy, prosperous lifestyle. Becoming a finance or business expert will help you understand how to survive in today’s economic conditions. Moreover, you will learn how the financial sector of your country works, the mistakes that the government made in the past, and actions to be taken to rectify them.
After becoming a graduate in finance, you will be able to face the challenges that companies deal with in this era and move in the positive direction within the society in a short period; otherwise, you will rely on the experience gained by working in a particular field and then becoming dexterous in it. However, without a college degree, there are very low chances that you will acquire a highly paying job; that is why studying in colleges is very expensive. Therefore, when you earn a college degree you acquire a more stable job than you would if you did not earn a college degree.
The importance of obtaining a college degree, let it be in finance or any other field, has increased so much that people in our society assume that if they are not able to enroll their children in colleges then their children will not be able to a financially stable life. In today’s age, the competition between the individuals getting a high-paying job is fierce and becoming a college graduate makes it a little easier for them to win this competition (Newman and Lennon 2014, 32). Once you acquire a finance degree, you will learn that college education alone cannot help you get employed; the financial stability and the economic policies of the country are the most important factors determining employment and unemployment rates. Moreover, employers prefer those financial graduates who have graduated from private colleges instead of the ones that graduated from public colleges. There is only a handful of firms in America that employ individuals on the basis of their merit.
When you ponder over the financial history of the United States of America, you will observe that whenever there is a financial turmoil, even the college graduates remain unemployed for longer durations. History books do not mark the events where the government made mistakes that led to the higher unemployment rates; instead, it blames the poor and the uneducated for joblessness in the society (Loewen 2014, 31).
Does your chosen career field create opportunities for social mobility? (Hint:think about both inter- generational mobility and intra- generational mobility). Use the assigned articles to support your statements.
Getting higher education will help you get employed in your chose career field, and it will help you become socially mobile. In a society, people acquire differing social positions according to their changing levels of incomes. Social mobility is categorized into vertical and horizontal mobility, and intergenerational mobility and intragenerational mobility. In order to get hold of vertical mobility, you need to upgrade your level of expertise along with becoming more dedicated to your chosen career.
A college degree is likely to help to get your desired occupation; but in our society, obtaining a higher social status relies heavily on your family background (Newman and Lennon 2014, 32). If you come from a poor family background, but you are hard working and intelligent, then there are more chances that your employers will exploit you, because they know that you need money and you will do anything to remain employed. In such situation, you are likely to face horizontal mobility. However, if you belong to a rich family then your employers are less likely to exploit you as they know that if they burdened you with insurmountable work, then you will have no second thought in leaving the job and so, they will lose their asset. In such situation, you are likely to obtain vertical mobility.
James W. Loewen in his article ‘The Land of Opportunity’ states that, history books have given the privilege to Social Darwinism, which supports the idea of rise and fall in the survival of the fittest; whereas in reality, American history books have completely left out social stratification that explains the current data on intergenerational and intragenerational mobility. Intergenerational mobility is the movement in social position of family members from one generation to the next generation; whereas, intrageneration mobility is the movement in the social position of a person within his or her lifespan. For a country to progress beneficially for its citizens, it is highly important that there is more intragenerational mobility than the intergenerational mobility. However, in United States, the unequal distribution of wealth and income has not only slowed down intergenerational mobility, but intrageneration mobility as well. Similarly, a middle-class person has to struggle ten times more than the richer-class person to acquire intragenerational mobility, just because of the reason that he or she belongs to underprivileged family background. The textbooks consider America as a hero; ignoring the fact, that social injustice lingers in the society up to the point why only one per cent of the population handles roughly forty per cent of the entire wealth in the country. It thus proves, that the poorer gets poorer and the rich gets richer, because the wealth remain only in the hand of a bunch of families. No matter how highly qualified you are, the current economic system makes it hard for a common citizen to move vertically on the ladder of social mobility, unless they have close associations with the elite class that posses most of the country’s wealth (Loewen 2014, 31).
Work Cited
Loewen, J. W., (2014). The Land of Opportunity. Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology. 6th. McGraw Hill: NY.ISBN: 9780078026874
Newman K. and Lennon C., (2014). The Job Ghetto. Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology. 6th. McGraw Hill: NY.ISBN: 9780078026874
