Akademiska studier - En väg in på arbetsmarknaden?
Our society has become a society of knowledge. The answer to the question of how to reduce unemployment has become more and more unified: education. In this case, higher education, meaning college and university. With this disposition in our society, how does it affect the students? How does this change of society and our universities affect the students of these institutions?
In this study we have chosen to examine the choices of students in universities in several Swedish cities. We wanted to compare choices students made from educations which lead to a professional degree and students who were undertaking studies from a higher-education course which were not attached to a professional degree. We sent surveys to six different programs and courses, three from each category.
Because our examination paper concerned choices we used rational choice as a concept and we were also interested in how the students social class interacted with the choices they made. We also used Bourdieu?s idea of habitus, along with his concept of field and capital.
The results we uncovered showed us that social class played little part in how students made their choices. We could also see that most of the students from the professionally attached educations were more inclined to have employment as the main reason for studying. The students who studied higher education course were not as high in this opinion but still in a majority. The results also showed that to get educated in their field, to get the proper knowledge required were less important than just getting the job.
This points to a risk that students in our society will, to a greater extent than before, only use education as a stepping stone for employment. The knowledge gained will not be as important as the employment that comes after. Knowledge will in this way take a second place to employment and if this trend continue maybe educations made for knowledge and not employment will be seen as unnecessary.