Post Secondary Education Essay

The description “seeing the general in the particular” was referenced by Peter Berger for the concept of the sociological perspective. To elaborate, he meant that the specific and individualistic patterns that occur in society can be broadened and expanded on to be seen in general. Applying this to real life instances, almost everything in our life can be seen in this view. For example, many students go through the transition of whether to pursue post-secondary education—college or university—or not. The decision of whether to pursue post-secondary education and where, is based on a number of factors; for instance, future career goals or aspirations, personal finances, and influence from fellow peers, all represent at least one form of the

A meritocratic education system does this best.”1 In today’s society, the structure of society succeeds at developing potential and merit-worthy students; however, it fails at a functional level as it does not prepare for the older population to work longer before they retire or the influx of students every year who graduate hoping to become a member of the working society. Many students contemplate this before choosing to go to university. A student will more likely go into a program at an accredited university that has a higher probability of a career afterwards such as computer engineering or business, than a student to also attend an accredited university for a program with low probability of a career after, such as space engineering. Thus, a student who has big aspirations or career goals will determine whether university is the right choice for them based on whether society has careers available, and whether they pertain to the

There have been many case studies on the correlation between race and gender and poverty, thus personal circumstance will determine what university to go to, and for what. These circumstances often reflect the social-conflict sociological theory—specifically the gender and race conflict approaches. Although most universities in Canada are considered all equal in terms of “equality” of education, for many the prestige of the university matters. For example, a study was conducted whether university prestige matter in job applications between different races. The researchers made fake resumes with fake names that are both European and non-European influenced. The results proved that “For resumes submitted under non-European names, such as Maya Kumar and Ali Saeed, the choice of university seems to matter more. Resumes listing degrees from research intensive universities such as University of Waterloo and Queen’s were significantly more likely to generate call-backs than degrees from more teaching-oriented institutions. Interestingly, resumes listing a degree from University of Waterloo, Queen’s and University of Toronto had similar call-back rates whether they were submitted under an English-sounding name or a non-European one.” (Woolley, 2012) Although this newspaper article that published this experiment did not indicate where the job