TOPLUMUMUZDA EĞİTİMİN DİKEY SOSYAL HAREKETLİLİĞE ETKİSİ* (İzmir’de Profesyonel Meslek Sahibi Bireyler Üzerine Bir Araştırma)
Articles > Article · 2007
Authors: Turhan ŞENGÖNÜL
SOSYOLOJİ DEGİSİ, National Refreed University Journal, National, 2007, pp 171-208
Summary
<p>This study aims to research the impact of education on upward social mobility. As it is known, education, as one of the major institutions, performs many functions for society. Education can be shortly defined as the individual’s learning knowledge, skill, behavior, and social values. Education provides for the transmission of material and immaterial culture from one generation to the other. According to the liberal theory, the developing science and technology cause rapid changes in the structure of the social division of labor, which tends to become gradually differentiated. In this context, there occurs a relative increase in the individual’s upward mobility opportunities. The growing demand for highly qualified manpower has ensured the expansion of education and given chance to all social classes to benefit from educational opportunities. Therefore, contemporary societies can be characterized more “open” than in the past. Education positively affects the social position of the individual by increasing his occupational status and income level. All of these developments enhance the claims that the social differences decline, the middle-class gradually widens and the inequality of income disappears. Although Marx accepts that the white-collar workers earn better wages than the others, he still claims that this is a temporary case and the white-collar workers will lose their advantage due to the increasing of qualified labor and the expansion of educational opportunities. According to Weber also the increasing demand especially for expertise and management functions enhances the importance of qualified labor. The workforce with a “diploma” ensures more different and superior position than the others. This type workers also benefit from the advantages as they earn relatively high wages, own authority and relative autonomy and more suitable opportunity of upward progress in work place. Weber differs from Marx in identifying the class not in the production, but in the consumption, or rather according to its situation in the market. Marx’s and Weber’s approaches have been confirmed by ours findings, or rather the way how we analyzed and interpreted the findings of our research. That is, 92 per cent of the workers, included in the scope of the research, who are educated and own a diploma, do not own their means of production. Therefore, the diploma does not give them a chance to change their social classes. But the same individuals change classes within the frame of Weberian definition because 80 per cent of the research subjects have obtained the chance of living in better conditions than their parents. </p> <p> </p>