In addition to a discriminatory job market and unrealistic expectations, the youth of today also has to deal with an education system that is in many respects inadequate. Tuition in Canada has nearly quadrupled in the past twenty years (Deschamps 2015), vastly outpacing the amount of inflation over the same time period. This has led to an increasing amount of recent graduates being in debt and unable to find a job. On top of that, universities have not changed very much over the past thirty years, despite the job market changing drastically over the same time span. This has led to a growing disconnect between universities programs and available jobs (Kawaguchi & Murao 2014). As a result, universities today are preparing the population for …show more content…
jobs that no longer exist in today’s job market. Due to their lack of prestige, the trades have become dismissed by many youths as beneath them and have been largely stigmatized in today’s society. In spite of this, many well-paying jobs are available in the trades According to studies conducted by unemployment agency Career Builder, 56% of university graduates are never employed in a job that related to their field of study (Hunt). The significance of this statement is immediately apparent, as this means more than half of university graduates spent four or more years studying something that they would not use again in their life. The plethora of ways that the youth of today is not being adequately prepared for the workforce is outlined above, and partly responsible for increasing In addition to many systematic problems in preparing youth for the workforce, there are many policies in place in the workforce to disadvantage young people searching for jobs.
Informal job hiring is hiring someone based on the employer’s personal relation to the applicant rather than the job going to the best applicant. Meritocracy is the belief that the reward should go to the person with the most merit. Most people will suggest that meritocracy should be the system in place when hiring employees and the practice of informal hiring is a complete violation of meritocracy. If a hiring system of meritocracy is seen as so favourable, then why is formal hiring so …show more content…
widespread? The answer lies in the fact that many hiring managers want to hire people who are similar in social class, race, gender and age to them (Powell). Employment equity has worked to reduce the bias of race, gender, and social class but as previously mentioned, the youth is still being discriminated against. While the growing commonality of informal hiring is contributing to increasing unemployment rates amongst young people, it is not the only way businesses are contributing to this increase. With better healthcare practices, the general population is living longer and the average age in Canada is increasing. With a growing number of people approaching the retirement age, the Canadian government realized it was not prepared to support this growing population of retirees. To try to offset the problem, the retirement age was increased. While this solved the problem of having too many retired people to support, it created a new problem. As people began to put off retiring until later in their lives, the amount of jobs required in the country stayed the same. This creates a problem for people seeking to enter the workforce, as many of the jobs that are supposed to become vacant are not becoming vacant. With fewer jobs available the competition for jobs is much higher. The youth of today already faces a sufficient amount of discrimination in the job market as it is; when the decreasing number of jobs available as a result of later retirement is factored in it becomes apparent why unemployment rates are increasing among young people. Overall, businesses play a significant role in increasing youth unemployment rates. This is achieved through bias against youth in job interviews, informal hiring, and an increasing retirement age. Youth unemployment is a prevalent issue in today’s society.
It is currently increasing in incidence at an alarming rate. Unemployment among young people is increasing predominantly as a result of youth receiving inadequate preparation for the job market and a largely ignored discrimination against youth in the job market. In order to minimize levels of youth unemployment, the education system and current workforce practices need to be analyzed and modified. The education system should be modified so that its degrees and more in line with jobs that are actually available and offer more job experience opportunities. The workforce practices should be modified so that discrimination against youth is minimized as much as possible. This can be achieved through invoking a higher rate of jobs awarded through meritocracy and reducing the amount of informal hiring. It is only after the integration of many of these concepts that youth unemployment levels will decrease. This will be a step towards a world with less inequality and unemployment, a step towards a better
world.
In Frank Bruni’s New York Time’s article, “The Imperiled Promise of College,” he argues that college is no longer a guarantee of success because students are not being properly motivated and guided into the programs that will provide them with jobs.
de Broucker, Patrice. 2005b. Without a Paddle: What to do About Canada's Young Drop-Outs. CPRN Research Report. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. October.
A very dramatic educational development in the past decades has been the global expansion of higher education. Harvard economist Richard Freeman has estimated that the total number of post-secondary students (students who continue school past the required level) fell from 29% to 12% from 1970 to 2006, a 60% decline. In China alone, postsecondary enrollments exploded from fewer than 100,000 students in 1970 to 23.4 million in 2006. The increase over the same period in India was from 2.5 million to 12.9 million students. According to the EPE on average there are 1.1 million American students dropping out of school every...
In this article Nemko is illuminating the issues that our modern society is facing involving higher education. Students are starting off college with bare minimum requirements for next level learning and feeling disappointed when they are not succeeding in their courses. The author acknowledges that the courses being taken by students are sometimes not beneficial to life after college. Nemko states, “A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below ‘proficient’ levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks…”(525). Students are specializing in areas of learning to in turn be denied to working in that field and stuck with unnecessary skills. “Many college graduates are forced to take some very nonprofessional positions, such as driving a truck or tending bar”( ...
Richard J. Braxton is a Ph.D., Director, at Innovation Center –Index Shared Services. The aim of his article is to understand the problem of youth unemployment in the Gulf Cooperation Council region and how best the government can critically address this issue. He gave several options that can be clear solution to the problem. His emphasized that the GCC countries need to adopt effective training and development programs to provide the unemployed youth with the knowledge, skills, and abilities in order for them to compete for job vacancies.. The article also gave many facts elaborating more on the issue, so that his audience gets more interested and engaged in the topic. The articles outlines so many important steps to be considered by the government, and...
“Should Preparing Students For the Workforce Be The Primary Mission Of Colleges and Universities?” Debate.org Phillip & Crystal Ferreira, Web. 16 April 2014.
Is college a beautiful illusion of that if we go then all our problems in life won’t be so hard or is it actually is a place people go to shape and mold themselves into better people. Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, in their essay, Are Colleges Worth the price of Admission? Says that whether or not you go to a public or private institution, the cost of attending college has doubled, compared to when our parents and every other generation before us went to college. They went on and made a few good point by saying how schools should engage the students more, also how they should replace tenure with multiyear contracts, but their arguments about postgraduate training and spreading donations around is where they might had begun to lose their audience.
In Caroline Bird’s “College is A Waste of Time and Money”, it’s argued that there are many college students who would be better off if they were to begin working after high school graduation. Colleges and universities can no longer ensure that one will go on to get a better job, getting paid more than they would have without a higher education. However, high school seniors still stress about where they will be attending college, how they’re going to pay for it and what they’re going to study for the next four years. Bird points out how college has changed over the past few decades and how, in turn, it has set many young adults up for disappointment, if nothing else.
backgrounds, is greater than ever, access and opportunity in American higher education is more complex and a lot less optimistic. Also, the majority of jobs requiring a college education doubled over the past 40 years (Carnevale, Smith, Strohl, 2010). While half of all people from high-income families have a bachelor’s degree by age 25, just
Does meritocracy still exist in America? Are many talented people who have worked hard throughout their lives going to get deserving rewards and promotions? Does the word meritocracy invented by Michael Young in 1958 still make sense to all of us? Many people still think that meritocracy exists in America because America is the land of opportunities. However, meritocracy does not really exist in America because many hard working people still do not have adequate benefits for their lives and an uncertain future.
America’s future lies in the youth and building an educated youth that is interested in their career would benefit society. Rising college tuition is hurting the higher education of America. As more financial pressure is placed on these kids, the more they aren’t able to focus on their goals and dreams. Although inflation is a problem, the students who are able to graduate will benefit society if they worry more about their job. They should be able to satisfy their duty in society and a rise in college tuition will hinder that vision substantially.
The analytical lens that will be constructed aims to allow for an interpretation of how students who are attempting to be upwardly-mobile are helped with moving beyond roadblocks that prevent mobility. This is mobility is achieved through a combination of adherence to meritocratic systems and the borrowing of cultural capital. I will argue that reproduction occurs when reliance on meritocracy in the educational system and the limited cultural capital of the student’s working-class parent/s are solely employed. In order to move beyond a mere reproduction of the parent’s social class, I argue that the student must interact with individuals or groups from higher social spheres who know how to activate cultural capital in specific instances
Perils of Meritocracy Meritocracy defined as a system where power and success are awarded based on ability and achievement. Its core principle is that “if you work hard, you can succeed” – a sentiment that is embedded in the “American Dream” (Hochschild). The system of meritocracy was created to be an equalizer in America, so that everyone can get what they deserve, provided they put in the effort and have “what it takes.” However, achievement has social, political, and economic determinants, which make social advancement less accessible to immigrants and minorities while giving a boost to people from well-off backgrounds. Because believing America is a meritocracy can misplace blame and obscure structural inequalities, the danger of meritocracy is that it perpetuates inequality while
...to the fact the being employed increases college graduation rate and teaches many skills that are not taught with in any level of school. The issue is increased as because many of these teenagers are also not in school. A possible solution to this problem is for companies to offer apprenticeships to promising high school students.
...ing and Youth Labour Markets: A Cross-National Analysis IN: Blanchflower, D. and Freeman, R.Youth Employment and Joblessness in Advanced Countries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.