Tag Archives: college & university

The decline of men in the American workforce

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The Economist examines some recent figures showing that men, particularly less-skilled workers, have lower levels of participation in the labor force:

The decline of the working American man has been most marked among the less educated and blacks. If you adjust official data to include men in prison or the armed forces (who are left out of the raw numbers), around 35% of 25- to 54-year-old men with no high-school diploma have no job, up from around 10% in the 1960s. Of those who finished high school but did not go to college, the fraction without work has climbed from below 5% in the 1960s to almost 25% (see chart 2). Among blacks, more than 30% overall and almost 70% of high-school dropouts have no job…

The main reason why fewer men are working is that sweeping structural changes in rich economies have reduced the demand for all less-skilled workers. Manufacturing has declined as a share of GDP, and productivity growth has enabled factories to produce more with fewer people. Technological advances require higher skills. For the low-skilled, low demand has meant lower wages, both relative and absolute. This in turn reduces the incentive to find a job, especially if disability payments or a working spouse provide an income.

Men have been hit harder than women by these shifts. They are likelier to work in manufacturing; women have been better represented in sectors, such as health care and education, where most job growth has taken place. Women have also done more than men to improve their academic credentials: in most rich countries they are likelier than men to go to university.

There is a lot to think about here. One reason that the article cites for this trend is the numbers of women (compared to men) who are getting college degrees. This has been noted by others (with some interesting data from the White House here) and it really does seem to be a sizable shift in American society.

A few other questions come to mind:

1. Could politicians promote policies that specifically target less-skilled male workers?

2. What are some of the broader consequences of this trend, such as the impact on community life or family life?

3. How could schools, particularly high schools and colleges, tackle this issue?

A sociological case for scientific innovation

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A physicist makes a sociological case for innovation in the sciences:

So, here is a general, sociological case for why we researchers should always be ahead of our time, even at the cost of frustrating ourselves trying to solve insoluble problems. Suppose that the tank of a given field has another 10 or even 15 years of gas left in it. Why should we abandon the field and try to train our students in a different area? Good training in science doesn’t depend on the subject. But more important, why not enter a new field in which, like almost any subject in the life sciences, the time left to have fun does not have a foreseeable upper bound?…

Scientists are conservative even when their job description could be succinctly summarized as “innovator” because the culture in which we operate is chock full of traditions that represent the opposite of innovation and intellectual freedom. We are still afraid of making mistakes—even simple terminology mistakes!—even though in the age of Google those can be corrected in an instant! We are still organizing our institutions of higher learning around power centers (the departments) that are built like fortresses meant to divide people instead of bringing them together!…

In conclusion, let me offer a note of hope, but of caution, too.

Many of the scientific questions that await answers will, I hope, be solved in the second part of this century. Then, having solved the last of the big puzzles—that is, having explained the origin of life—scientists will turn their attention and the power of their quantitative tools toward explaining the sociological complications that arise when these very complex machines called Homo sapiens interact with each other. Let us hope the fruits of that research will respect the freedom of our minds—and of our bodies too!

Sounds good: a physicist arguing that once some of the big natural science issues are solved, attention should be turned to studying human interaction. However, does this suggest that the view from physics that disciplines that study human interaction, like sociology, aren’t doing an adequate job?

It would be interesting to see a companion piece here that summarizes research regarding scientific innovation: how many scientists do switch fields or even subfields of study, how many feel like they could actually do this, and what do they feel are barriers to this.

Sociological study links reading as a teenager to better jobs at age 33

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Sociologists looking at a long-running British longitudinal study have uncovered a link between reading as a teenager and job outcomes at age 33:

Of all the free-time activities teenagers do, such as playing computer games, cooking, playing sports, going to the cinema or theatre, visiting a museum, hanging out with their girlfriend or boyfriend, reading is the only activity that appears to help them secure a good job.

This is one of the conclusions of an Oxford University study into 17,000 people all born in the same week in May 1970. They are now grown up and in their early 40s and the sociological study has tracked their progress through time.

At the age of 16, in 1986, they were asked which activities they did in their spare time for pleasure. These answers were then checked against the jobs they were doing at the age of 33, in 2003.

Mark Taylor, the researcher at Nuffield College, Oxford found that there was a 39 per cent probability that girls would be in professional or managerial posts at 33 if they had read books at 16, but only a 25 per cent chance if they had not. For boys the figures rose from 48 per cent to 58 per cent if they read books.

This reminds me of a recent argument from two American sociologists that giving college students more opportunities to read and write led to better educational outcomes, which presumably might be related to better jobs down the road.

I suppose this could also lead to an interesting discussion about whether this motivation should or could be used with teenagers. Would teenagers buy into an argument that reading now will help them down the road? My guess is that this argument would be difficult to make as the future and its jobs might seem a long way off. Also, should we be pushing people to read for instrumental reasons (like getting a job) or do they have better life outcomes if they read because of curiosity or for pleasure?

If President Obama kicked teams out of the NCAA tournament for low graduation rates

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The discussion over the graduation rates of men’s basketball players on NCAA tournament teams has grown in recent years. One columnist wondered what President Obama might say if he addressed the issue:

“While nine of every 10 white players graduate on the top-32-seeded men’s teams, only five of every 10 black players graduate. As an African American, I am personally outraged that 21 of the 68 men’s teams have black player graduation rates ranging from 44 percent down to zero.

“Thus, beginning today, I will do my bracket with this new stipulation: I will not write in your team if either your team or black player graduation rate is under 50 percent.

“This decision is not an easy one to make for a basketball purist. It leaves out nearly a third of the teams, including prestigious programs that account for 10 of the last 21 titles. It is with regret that I will leave blank spots for Syracuse, Indiana State, Missouri, Southern Cal, Michigan State, Tennessee, Florida, Nevada-Las Vegas, UC-Santa Barbara, Michigan, Morehead State, Kentucky, Georgia, Temple, Connecticut, Alabama-Birmingham, Texas, Washington, Arizona, Kansas State, and Akron…”

If Education Secretary Arne Duncan already made a similar suggestion, why not the President, who is an avid basketball fan and fills out men’s and women’s brackets on TV?

This is a complex issue that the NCAA doesn’t seem to want to talk about. Instead, they would rather run commercials (one example here) saying that “most [college athletes] go pro in something other than sports.” This may be true in many sports but there are racial gaps in a number of schools in both men’s basketball and football (read about troubles at Auburn here), the major revenue-generating sports.

The Guardian on careers for sociology majors

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I’m not quite sure how this made it into The Guardian but here is an article titled “What to do with a degree in sociology.” Here is a good portion of their description:

One is the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs with responsibility for overseeing emergency relief in disaster-hit areas, the other is a chart-topping singer-songwriter. But what Lady Amos and James Blunt have in common is that both are sociology graduates and have used the knowledge gained in their degrees to forge successful careers…

Sociology is the study of people and how we interact with one another…

Having a good understanding of human relationships can be a bonus in a range of careers, which is probably why sociology graduates can be found across all sectors including the media and arts.

Sociology graduates leave university with a broad range of transferable skills. These include being able to work to deadlines, make reasoned arguments and think creatively.Through doing presentations you will have learned how to present ideas orally and in writing, and developed strong research and IT skills. You will also be able to apply theoretical sociological perspectives to everyday life.

Perhaps not surprisingly, social and welfare professions were the most popular career choices for 2009 sociology graduates – typical jobs include social worker, counsellor and community development officer.

“As a discipline concerned with the study of people and society, it is not surprising that many graduates target people-focused careers such as social work, advice work, counselling, careers advice, youth work, housing and the probation service,” says Margaret Holbrough, a careers adviser at Graduate Prospects.

“Alternative careers can be found in educational, administrative or office-based roles such as teaching and lecturing, social research, human resources management, charity fundraising or within policymaking departments in local or central government.

“Understanding people within society can also be useful in careers such as market research, retail management, the police force and journalism.”

As with all graduates, a high proportion found work in the retail/catering and clerical/secretarial sectors, reflecting the need for many to take stop-gap jobs in the tough economic climate.

Starting with the coolness factor – you too can be a UN or music star! – probably doesn’t hurt. But once you get past the celebrity citations, this lacks excitement. While I would agree that sociology majors have a lot of “transferable skills,” this could also characterize students from a number of other majors. Indeed, a liberal arts college tries to give all of its students these sorts of skills: critical thinking, reasoning, and writing abilities.

Off the top of my head, here are a few things that could be added:

1. Sociology majors are uniquely trained in dealing with and understanding groups and interpersonal settings. While this is applicable to a lot of settings (particularly business), these skills are increasingly necessary in a globalized world where interpersonal interaction still matters and more cultures are interacting. While this major might easily lead into social service jobs, it also is necessary in many other jobs. As a second major, sociology is a great compliment to a lot of other options.

2. Sociology majors are taught to look for broad trends in patterns in society, moving away from anecdotal or individualistic explanations of social phenomena to data-driven descriptions and causal explanations. These data skills, taught in classes like statistics and research methods, should be helpful in a number of settings. Indeed, organizations today have a lot of data and information but often need skilled people to interpret this data. If we want future workers who can help us make sense of the world and not just keep the same old model going, sociology majors could just the people to look to.

3. Some of the comments at the end of this article belie some of the typical stereotypes of sociology majors: they have no “real skills.” Perhaps sociology needs a little imagination as a discipline: our majors could be at the forefront of society, not just working in important occupations that unfortunately are often undervalued as a society. What about using a “sociological imagination” in terms of careers? Could one be a sociological entrepreneur?

Grant Hill, Jalen Rose, and race and class

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ESPN recently aired the documentary The Fab Five which earned the network its highest ratings for a documentary (though its unclear how this stacks up against their typical Sunday night programming). One part of the documentary that has drawn attention are the comments Jalen Rose made regarding Grant Hill, Duke, and race. Here is what Rose said in a short segment:

I hated Duke and I hated everything Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn’t recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms … I was jealous of Grant Hill. He came from a great black family. Congratulations, your mom went to college and was roommates with Hillary Clinton. And your dad played in the NFL — a very well-spoken and successful man. I was upset and bitter my mom had to bust her hump for 20-plus years. I was bitter that I had a professional athlete that was my father that I didn’t know. I resented that more than I resented him. I looked at it as they are who the world accepts and we are who the world hates.

Hill responded to Rose’s comment on the New York Times website. Here are a few relevant points:

In his garbled but sweeping comment that Duke recruits only “black players that were ‘Uncle Toms,’ ” Jalen seems to change the usual meaning of those very vitriolic words into his own meaning, i.e., blacks from two-parent, middle-class families. He leaves us all guessing exactly what he believes today…

This is part of our great tradition as black Americans. We aspire for the best or better for our children and work hard to make that happen for them. Jalen’s mother is part of our great black tradition and made the same sacrifices for him…

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous. All of us are extremely proud of the current Duke team, especially Nolan Smith. He was raised by his mother, plays in memory of his late father and carries himself with the pride and confidence that they instilled in him…

I caution my fabulous five friends to avoid stereotyping me and others they do not know in much the same way so many people stereotyped them back then for their appearance and swagger. I wish for you the restoration of the bond that made you friends, brothers and icons.

While this appears to be a conversation about race, I wonder how much of this might be about social class. While Rose used terms that invoked race (particularly the reference to “Uncle Toms”), what also might have been describing differences in social class: Grant Hill grew up in more of an upper-class family where his dad was a known athlete and his mom had connections. Rose did not have the same opportunities that Hill’s family provided and felt bitter about Duke, a private school known for its wealth (according to the National Association of of College and University Business Officers, Duke is #15 in its 2010 endowment with over $4.8 billion).

In the long run, both men have done well for themselves: Hill is still playing in the NBA while Rose is an analyst for ESPN and also played 13 years in the NBA. But these discussions about opportunities and race and class are ongoing in sociology: is it race that is the primary issue or is it social class? A sociologist like William Julius Wilson has written about this, most recently here, invoking a lot of discussion over the last few decades. How this particular discussion ends up between  Rose and Hill remains to be seen but there will be plenty of ongoing talk about these larger issues.

Gladwell on US News college rankings

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In his latest New Yorker piece, Malcolm Gladwell takes aim at the US News & World Report college rankings (the full story requires a subscription). This is a familiar target and I have some thoughts about Gladwell’s analysis.

Even though I like Gladwell, I found this article underwhelming. It doesn’t give us much new information though it is an easy yet thought-provoking read about indexes (and could easily be used for a class discussion about research methods and rankings). And if his main conclusion is the ranking depends on who is doing the ranking…we already knew that.

Some things that would be beneficial to know (and some of these ideas are prompted by recently reading Mitchell Stevens’ Creating a Class where he spent 1.5 years working in an admissions department of a New England, DIII, liberal arts schools):

1. Gladwell seems to suggest that US News is just making arbitrary decisions. Not quite: they think they have a rationale for these decisions. As the head guy said, they have talked to a lot of experts and this is how they think it works. They could be wrong in their measures but they have reasons. Other publications use other factors (see a summary of those different factors here) but their lists are also not arbitrary – they have reasons for weighting factors differently or introducing new factors.

2. Stevens argues that the rankings work because they denote status. The reputational rankings are just that. And while they may be silly measures of “educational quality,” human beings are influenced by status and want to know relative rankings. Gladwell seems to suggest that the US News rankings have a huge impact – making it a circular status system dependent on their rankings – but there are other status systems that both agree and disagree with US News rankings.

2a. Additionally, it is not as if these sorts of rankings created a status system of colleges. Before US News, people already had ideas about this: US News simply codified it and opened it up to a lot more schools. There perhaps even could be an argument that their rankings opened up the college status system to more participants who wouldn’t have been part of the discussion before.

3. Stevens also suggests that parents and potential students often have to have a good “emotional fit” with a school before making the final decision. Much of the decision-making is made on status – Stevens says that most times when students have two schools (or more) to choose from, they will likely choose the one with a higher status. But the campus visits and interactions are important, even if they just confirm the existing status structure.

Ultimately, this discussion of US News rankings can get tiresome. Lots of academics (and others) don’t like the rankings. Schools claim not to like the rankings. Then why doesn’t somebody do something about it? Stevens suggests it is because if a school drops out of this game, their relative status will drop (and he makes the same argument for athletics: schools have to have some athletics to keep up, not necessarily to win). However, there are a lot of colleges that don’t need the extra applicants that a good US News ranking system would bring. Plus, there are alternative guides and rankings available – there are a number of others that examine different factors and develop different rankings.

Another interesting sociology course: Baseball in American Society

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A student writing in the newspaper of Florida Southern College discusses a unique class on campus:

It is not secret that Sociology professor Dr. Edwin Plowman is one of the most eccentric professors on this campus. His “Baseball in American Society” class has by far been one of the favorite classes. Dr. Plowman has some experiences that none of us will ever be able to call our own and he shares them in every class session. Oh, and my personal library grew with the books he assigned that I just did not ever want to sell back to the bookstore.

A few thoughts about this class:

1. Is the class mainly about baseball and how it fits in American society or about American society through the lens of baseball? Both could be very interesting – baseball has its own logic but the game has both influenced and has been influenced by larger social forces. As a baseball fan myself, this sounds like an interesting course to teach.

2. This is reminder of how students view courses. It sounds like the professor tells some good stories and also assigns  books that a student would want to hold onto after the class. This is what makes this class interesting for this student. (And what does it mean when a student says a professor is eccentric?)

Baylor opens 25% of board to non-Baptist Christians

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American Christian colleges and universities have different structures in place in order to maintain their Christian distinctiveness. Baylor just made a change in their policy for their board:

While a number of Baptist colleges and universities in recent years have loosened or ended ties to state Baptist conventions, the move by Baylor is notable because it is widely considered the flagship university of Southern Baptists. The move came despite opposition from the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which last year voted down a similar proposal by Houston Baptist University to permit the election of a minority of non-Baptist trustees there, with church leaders arguing at the time that allowing non-Baptist trustees would dilute the university’s religious identity…

Of Baylor’s 14,900 students, the university states that nearly 5,287 identify as Baptists — making them the largest religious group, but by no means a majority. The next largest groups are Roman Catholic (2,128), nondenominational Christians (2,091), and Methodists (1,156). Most of the other students identify with various Christian denominations, but the college also enrolls 125 Hindu students, 122 Muslim students, 84 Buddhist students, 22 Jewish students and 43 atheists.

Samuel Schuman, who studied Baylor for his 2009 book, Seeing the Light: Religious Colleges in 21st Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press), called the vote by the university’s board both “significant and inevitable.” He explained that “there has been tension for quite a while at Baylor about aspirations to be a national research university and their strict Southern Baptist tradition, and I think it was almost inevitable that something would have to give a bit.”

If we can take Schuman at his word, then this sounds like a common struggle for Christian schools: maintaining distinctiveness while also pursuing education and status. Baylor is not the only school to struggle with this; the University of Notre Dame is an example of a Catholic institution that a decision decades ago to become a major research school while also maintaining its Catholic identity. Juggling these two identities, research school plus Christian school, takes a lot of work on the ground on a campus.

What colleges can do to avoid situations like the shooting in Tucson

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While much of the aftermath of the Tucson shootings was about political rhetoric and discourse, there has been less focus on how Pima Community College might have helped or stopped Jared Loughner. Lucinda Roy suggests that at first glance, Pima’s actions are an upgrade based on what we learned from the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. But, digging deeper, Roy argues that Pima and other schools could still continue to improve their strategies.