The Value of a College Degree

Recently there has been a lot of debate about the importance of college education. Students are asking if it’s worth the debt to attend a four year university or community college. Some are thinking what are the benefits of a degree is in the workforce. With college tuition increasing and state fundings lowering, low income students are struggling to attain a higher education. College institutions should have a role to provide students higher education and equal opportunity to students to increase social mobility yet intergenerational reproduction of privilege has produced inequality in education.

However, when a student wants to attend college after high school, the chances of going to any school of his or her choice can seem unfair and have unequal opportunity to other peers. Unfortunately the idea of being limited to attending certain schools has a big influence in chances of becoming successful. Even though higher educations seems to have a direct path for high wages, the access to college can have reverse effects on intergenerational mobility. By limiting access from someone in a bottom percentile to have the possibility to attend a good college harms their upward mobility. In efforts to help breakdown an understanding of how education affects intergenerational mobility, a study called Mobility reports cards show significant findings. Mobility reports cards were conducted by collecting administrative data from more then thirty million college students in the years of 1999-2013. “We obtain rosters of attendance at all Title-IV accredited institutions of higher education in the U.S using de-identified data from federal income tax returns combined with data from the National Student Loan Data System. We obtain information on students’ earnings in early adulthood and their parents’ incomes from tax records.”

In today’s world there are defenders of the current distribution of income in the United States such as the Heritage Foundation, which says that America isn’t a caste society because higher income individuals can possibly have a low income the next year and vice versa (Krugman 146). In response, Krugman states that countering economists, sociologists, and media outlets rather exemplify that it is more of a caste society than people would believe and the gaps have become far wider and difficult to cross (146). It is true; however, that America was once a place of substantial inter-generational mobility compared to today. In 1978 adult men whose fathers were born into the bottom 25 percent, 23 percent of those men made it into

With the growing importance of higher education, more people than ever are attending college. According to a middle-class parent, “[Higher education] seen as a means of developing a career and getting secure employment.” (30, Higher Education, social class and social mobility) Moreover, “parents believe that their children need a university education to get on in life… over the past decades (parents) fearful that without a degree their children will be in danger of downward social mobility. (32, Higher

In America, the prospect of social mobility is near impossible if one does not graduate from college and secure a stable job coming out of college. In the previous generations, many American families could own a house, have a nice Chevy, and work at a nice paying job with a High School diploma. This would not be the case today, many who graduate out of High School will always be stuck at minimum wage careers. This partly due to racial issues, jobs becoming automated and competitive career fields.

Within the U.S., they computed the probability that individuals in different income brackets will reach levels of income in the future which will make them net losers from redistribution” (Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote 19). They make the claim that the probability of upward mobility is major predictor of one’s support for redistribution.

Out of all those families who have a graduate or professional degree become about thirty-eight percent of the families’ head have become millionaires. Where twenty-two percent of families who have a four-year college degree become millionaires and only one percent for those who drop out of high school become millionaires. On the contrary, inheriting money also is a factor where families are already millionaires. As on the graph, “A Little Inheritance Goes a Long Way” it divides families with a head from the ages of thirty to fifty-nine into ten sections. Where ten percent of the families inherit an average of two thousand dollars do not become very wealthy. On the other hand, the families who received about thirty-five thousand dollars inheritance have a net worth over half a million, families receiving one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars inheritance have a net worth about seven hundred eighty thousand dollars and families receiving two hundred thousand dollars inheritance become millionaires on average. These findings was a step Thompson and Surarez took to try to find out why the racial gaps in the U.S. are so big, but the answer is still

Social mobility has allowed many of us to gain an understanding of how social status and financial class play a role in employment. Along with other factors that suggest family structure and education within the home can have a major impact personally and socioeconomically. Gender and race also influence job roles, training, and wage earnings. There are various levels of movement in the workforce, however, some allow more opportunity while others make it more difficult to advance. For instance, opportunity structure “The structure places limits on the possibility and degree of occupational mobility in society” (pg.331Social Inequality). Whereas circulation mobility considers changes that have occurred within the workforce and can allow individual

In a dismal macroeconomic context, the gaping social inequities that the MET aims to alleviate continue with statewide and national declines in median family wealth by education level. In the first place, only 26.4% of Michigan residents 25 or older hold Bachelor’s degrees, which is beneath the national average of 29.3%. Arguably, a sizable part of the 73.6% of Michigan residents who do not hold Bachelor’s degrees must struggle to overcome the socio-economic barrier of the widening family wealth gap. Federal Reserve Bank data show that the gap in median family wealth widened among families with college education in contrast to those without it. Between 1989 and 2013, families holding 2 and 4-year college degrees experienced a slight median

The United States measure social mobility through inequality or intergenerational mobility when the poverty line been portrayed. Base on a selection of factors: education, feminization of poverty, family life, health, mental health, old age, and winnings can decrease or increase one’s chances. When sustaining consistency various social classes may endure life change through exchange mobility. Starting with a higher education level, it appears to benefit one chance. It possibly may play out in a downward or upward social mobility depending on the effort one makes to refrain from status inconsistency. As a final result college education completion ensures restored employment and higher pay grades. How I envision myself in 10 years in an upward

Another defining factor for social class is education especially since education is seen as an achievement toward the American Dream. (Lareau, 235). Younger generations seem to place more emphasis on achieving higher education and the occupational opportunities provided for those who are well-educated (Cherlin, 113). The socioeconomic stratification corresponds to those with differing levels of education such as upper/middle class individuals have a college education while working/lower class have some college and/or minimal high school education (Cherlin, 118-119). These individuals and their given circumstances based on education and income have different values and trends about marriage, family and socialization/rearing of children. (Cherlin, 114-117). Family inequality is then based on direct obtainment for individuals who are head of these households such as employment of fathers and mothers (Cherlin, 111), which in turn affects the childhood/family experience of child within the socioeconomic status of their parents. (Lareau,

Even more restrictive to income mobility in society is the reality of intergenerational inequality: fortune but most often misfortune of income passed down from generation to generation. The scary thing about this term

The United States is now classified as a low-mobility country, which means only half of parental earnings advantages are passed to sons (Smith, 2012). Social mobility and economic growth influence each other. Low productivity and economic growth hamper absolute and relative mobility because growth creates a stronger local tax base for investment in schools and cultivates jobs needed to improve employment (Reeves, 2013). Weak social mobility constrains productivity and economic growth (OECD, 2010) for two complex issues. Firstly, limited social mobility solidifies a semi-permanent welfare class, and this permanence uses a large amount of government funds. While income replacement programs are helpful because they allow individuals to meet present, immediate needs, funds should also be budgeted for infrastructure and job programs that would allow unemployed individuals to leave the semi-permanent welfare class. Secondly, lack of opportunities for upward movement could hurt the labor supply and decrease human capital because when smart kids cannot move up the social ladder, their skills are lost to the economy as a whole (Reeves, 2013). Working-class children tend to attend poorer quality schools than their economically privileged counterparts. The combination of the lack of economic resources and poor quality education hampers students’ ability to attend college, which in turn limits mobility and

My father was a farmer in Sri Lanka and due to his financial situation, he couldn’t attain a proper education. After he immigrated to Canada he worked as a chef at a restaurant and he had financial stability. As a result of an unforeseen car accident, he lost his well-paying job and he works currently as a janitor for minimum wage. I might experience intergenerational mobility as I am currently studying in university with aspirations to become a lawyer. Through this paper I will use the theoretical perspective of conflict theory to analyse how intergenerational mobility can take place. In comparison to the Sri Lankan social structures and education system, the related Canadian system in present time is more fluid and open. This comparison of time periods was chosen because this is the time my father was my age. My current part-time work as a Wal-Mart associate has a higher social prestigious level then my father’s janitorial position. It is a higher social prestigious level because, I handle money and engage in social interaction. In this case, I have already experienced a small amount of intergenerational mobility. This is social mobility because for me this is entry level work and the intention to not work there for the rest of my life, whereas for my father it is his final career. If I manage to become a lawyer, this would mean that I have experienced a significant amount of intergenerational mobility.

There are many factors that play significant role in occupational mobility. Prior studies have focused more on the structural opportunity in order to understand the inequality to acquire higher job status in the labor market. Through self-report, participants compared their job status with their fathers when they were 16 in this study. Focusing on the different factors that facilitate or impede people in occupational mobility is the goal of this study. Education and Socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, marital status, and class position are taken as independent variables in order to understand whether people with different characteristics have a different job status. What this study found is that education does not affect people to have higher job status. Also, age, marital status, class position, and gender predict job status.