From Education to Work: Cross National Perspectives

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Structural transformations in the international economy and the restructuring of work have made the transition from education to employment increasingly problematic. School-to-work pathways have become more socially segmented and the risk of underemployment and joblessness have increased for both vocationally and academically educated youth. Continuous passages have become less common and have given way to multiple entries and exits between schooling and working, underemployment, unemployment, and domestic work. This edited volume of empirical studies is based on a series of comparable longitudinal research projects that draw on survey and biographical data from important players in the international economy (the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Germany). The authors analyze the transition patterns of school-leaving cohorts in the last quarter of the 20th century from cross-national, institutional, and individual life-course perspectives. The studies document that social and gender inequality is a persistent structural feature that restricts the possibilities to take advantage of educational opportunities and career options. Furthermore, different institutional arrangements are shown to play a crucial role in distributing transition opportunities in a more equal way. Walter R. Heinz is Professor of Sociology and Social Psychology and Chair of the Life Course Center at the University of Bremen, Germany. He has written and edited numerous books on life-course research, and he has lectured throughout the world.

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Edited by Walter R. Heinz

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. Cambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521594196 © Cambridge University Press 1999 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 This digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data From education to work : cross-national perspectives / edited by Walter R. Heinz. p. cm. Revisitions of papers delivered at a conference at the University of Toronto. April 18-20, 1996. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0 521 59419 7 1. Young adults—Longitudinal studies—Congresses. 2. School-to -work transition—Longitudinal studies—Congresses. 3. Young adults—Employment—Longitudinal studies—Congresses. I. Heinz. Walter R. HQ799.5.F73 1999 305.235—dc21 98-31601 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-59419-6 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-08165-8 paperback

Contents

Contributing Authors

page vii

Preface

ix

Introduction: Transitions to Employment in a Cross-National Perspective Walter R. Heinz

1

Part I Social Origin, Gender, and Transition Patterns 1 Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High-School Paul Anisef, Anton H. Turrittin, and Zeng Lin

25

2 Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions Victor Thiessen and E. Dianne Looker

46

3 New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion John Bynner

65

4 From Education to Employment: Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany Ansgar Weymann

87

Part II Education and Labour Markets: Work Experiences, Skills, and Credentials 5 Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition Pathways in the United States Jeylan T. Mortimer and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson 6 Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults Lesley Andres 7 The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States: Challenges for the School-to-Work Transition W. Norton Grubb

111 149

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8 Creating New Pathways to Adulthood by Adapting German Apprenticeship in the United States Stephen F. Hamilton and Mary Agnes Hamilton 9 Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective Walter R. Heinz Part III

194 214

Changes in the Social Context of Transitions

10 Institutional Networks and Informal Strategies for Improving Work Entry for Youths James E. Rosenbaum

235

11 School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values: What's Changing in Canada? Harvey Krahn and Graham S. Lowe

260

12 Education and Employment in Great Britain: The Polarizing Impact of the Market Frank Coffield

284

13 From Systems to Networks: The Reconstruction of Youth Transitions in Europe Lynne Chisholm

298

References

319

Index

345

Contributing Authors Lesley Andres is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research and teaching interests include the foundations of higher education, sociology of education, and issues of inequality. Paul Anisef is Professor in Sociology; his research fields are education, work, and careers. Anton H. Turrittin is an Associate Professor. His areas of specialization include social stratification, social mobility, the sociology of work and occupations. Zeng Lin is a Ph.D candidate; they all work at the Department of Sociology at York University, Toronto, Canada. John M. Bynner is Professor of Social Statistics and Director of the Social Statistics Research Unit, City University, London, United Kingdom. His research interests are in transition to adulthood, economic and political socialization, and longitudinal study. Lynne Chisholm (Ph.D. London) is a specialist in education, training, and youth transitions at the

Commission of the European Communities in Brussels where she works in the Reflection Group Secretariat. Frank Coffield is Professor of Education in the Department of Education, University of Newcastle, United Kingdom, and Director of the ESRC's research programme into "the Learning Society". His research fields are young adulthood, work, education, life-long learning. W. Norton Grubb is Professor at the School of Education, the University of California, Berkeley. He is also one of the founding members of and a site director for the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at the University of California, Berkeley. His research fields are economics of education, public finance, educational issues, and social policy. Stephen E Hamilton is Professor of Human Development at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. His research is about the influences of school, employment, and community on the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Mary Agnes vn

viii Contributing Authors Hamilton is Senior Research Associate in Human Development at Cornell University. She is concerned with the educational quality of work experience. Walter R. Heinz is Professor of Sociology and Social Psychology and Chair of the Special Research Center "Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course" at the University of Bremen, Germany. His research interests are in the sociology of youth, work and labor markets, and life-course studies. Harvey Krahn is Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His research interests are in schoolwork transitions, the sociology of work and industry, social stratification, and social policy. Graham S. Lowe is Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta who specializes in the study of work, school-work transitions, training and human resource development, new technologies, and employment-related public policy. Jeylan T. Mortimer is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Life-Course Center at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her research interests are in work, family, transition to adulthood, and personality development. Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson is a graduate student in the

Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her fields of interests include gender and employment. James Rosenbaum is Professor of Sociology, Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, Evans ton, Illinois. His research interests are in work and careers, education, and comparative transition studies. Victor Thiessen is Associate Dean at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Dalhousie, University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. His main interest is in interpersonal dynamics within families. He is currently conducting longitudinal research on adolescents' images of work in the context of their parents' work experiences. E. Dianne Looker is Head of the Department of Sociology, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada and Managing Editor of the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Her research is on longitudinal studies on youth, gender issues, rural youth, and sociology of education. Ansgar Weymann is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bremen, Germany and is Chair of the Institute for Empirical and Applied Sociology (EMPAS). His research interests are sociological theory, education, work, labor markets, and life-course research.

Preface WALTER R. HEINZ

The transition from education to work is rapidly changing in postindustrial service societies. Structural transformations in the economy and the restructuring of work have rendered this period of the life course increasingly problematic. This book arose out of my involvement in cross-national research on youth and work over the last 10 years. This work included the collaboration with British, Canadian, and United States researchers David Ashton, John Bynner, Ken Roberts, Jane Gaskell, Harvey Krahn, Graham Lowe, and Jeylan Mortimer. An academic year as Visiting Chair for German and European studies at the University of Toronto, Canada gave me the opportunity to organize an international conference about "new passages and uncertain destinations" in April 18-20, 1996. The papers presented at this conference by leading experts on youth and work provide the basis for this edited volume of comparable longitudinal studies that draw on survey data and case studies of young people in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. The goal of this conference was to examine school-to-work transitions in changing societies and the interrelationships between education and training arrangements in the structuring of job-entry processes. Papers were presented by researchers and discussions were held with educators and politicians - all of whom are concerned with the improvement of job-start arrangements for young people and eager to learn from other experiences in North America and Europe. All the papers were reviewed and thoroughly revised for this publication. The review process included discussions and feedback among all the authors and the editor. I want to thank the authors for their willingness to partake in this review process. The subject matter in this book not only includes experiences of many countries but also includes perspectives from many disciplines including education, sociology, economics, and life-course analysis. Special appreciation is due to Mary Lynne Bratti of the Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto for organizationally supporting this conference. Heartfelt thanks go to the able staff at the Special Research Center (Sfb) "Status Passages and Risks in Life Course" IX

x

Preface

at the University of Bremen, Germany; Ben Veghte who assisted in revising and improving the non-English manuscripts; and to Lisa Bauml who provided secretarial support with never-ending engagement and patience. Lisa provided the vital service of transforming the conference papers into manuscripts for this volume. Cambridge University Press and its staff were reliable and efficient partners in the publishing process. Our editor Julia Hough, the production editor William Grundy, and Hermitage Publishing Services and Kathy O'Moore-Klopf, who were responsible for the painstaking copyeditorial process, not only provided their editorial know-how but also gave us useful suggestions for composing the book. The conference was made possible by generous support from the University of Toronto and its Vice President for Research and International Relations, Heather Monroe-Blum, as well as its Centre of International Studies. Financial assistance also came from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and its North American office in New York.

Introduction: Transitions to Employment in a Cross-National Perspective WALTER R. HEINZ

In the past, research on school-to-work transitions was focused on specific national issues and educational systems. In recent years, however, it has become obvious that comparative studies are the best and perhaps only way to answer urgent questions about the effects of changes in educational participation and labor-market conditions on the transition to adulthood. Are there general trends in company restructuring and nonstandard forms of work that restrict the life chances of the young generation? How do societies respond differently to the decline of entry-level jobs and the upgrading of skill requirements? To what extent do they rely on market forces or attempt to build institutions that structure and support the transition from school to work for different social groups? Are education and training programs sufficient to integrate disadvantaged and marginalized groups, or do we have to restructure the education and labor-market nexus to not only reduce youth unemployment but also offer equal access to careers and options for combining employment, family work, and further education? Finally, how do young people envision and plan their futures and negotiate transitions from education to the labor market in an era with such an unpredictable future? When looking at transitions from a comparative perspective, it is necessary to take into account entire educational systems as well as occupational and skill structures as they change in interaction with the decline of the industrial sector and the ascent of the service sector. Only if we understand how different education-to-work arrangements operate in changing labor markets can international comparison meaningfully illuminate the potential and limits of cross-national learning opportunities. Usually only a few dimensions are selected for comparison, such as the rate of youth unemployment, the quantity and quality of training

2

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

and entry jobs offered by employers, or the cost of apprenticeships versus training young people on the job while paying them minimum wage. Such comparisons become more useful if they take into account the respective social, economic and political contexts: the extent to which employers, government, and unions collaborate in the conception and execution of training programs; the cultural norms that define the relative desirability of different pathways (vocationalism vs. academism); the relationships among technological change, skill requirements, and education; and the changing personal returns for investing in secondary and postsecondary education. Furthermore, comparisons are more useful if there is a conceptual framework that allows a systematic understanding of young adults' changing status in their passage from education to work. This framework should be specified in terms of both gender and type of pathway chosen: there are indeed different paths for students, apprentices, trainees, part-time workers, returners to postsecondary education (who combine the student's and part-time worker's roles), unskilled employees with some on-the-job training, and others who attempt to leave unemployment for casual jobs or by participating in training programs. Each of these paths requires separate analytical treatment because it leads to different levels of social integration. Systematic comparative transition research is rare and is usually focused on employment outcomes relative to levels of education and training by applying survey analysis and/or secondary analysis to labormarket data. This offers advantages relative to single-nation studies, which are based on a ranking of certain indicators, such as academic degrees, vocational credentials, and women in the labor force. When contextualized dimensions are included, it becomes possible to make comparative descriptions and statements about the relationships among institutions of learning, pathways, and the social positioning of the young generation. Comparative case studies that look at transition systems in detail by applying quantitative and/or qualitative methods emphasize the interaction of structure and agency and illuminate the interrelationship between socioeconomic conditions and institutional arrangements in which transition processes are embedded. Case studies have the advantage over statistical surveys of providing richer data about the interaction between institutions and individual careers, though their generalizability is limited. This book presents carefully conceived and executed longitudinal case studies on education-to-employment transitions in the United States,

Introduction

3

Canada, Great Britain, and Germany. In these countries there has emerged a growing concern with the consequences of the fact that increasing numbers of young people are temporarily or permanently prevented from entering the job market and that college and university graduates have difficulty finding adequate employment and social and political integration. The chapters of this book, therefore, do not examine primarily the efficacy of specific school-to-work programs or job-creation schemes but rather the issues surrounding the life course and public policy. They direct our attention to the long-term consequences of different transition regimes on the young person's living arrangements and life goals. The book thus contributes to a true cross-national perspective because it illuminates two key contextual dimensions: the social and economic conditions that stabilize or change the specific institutional fabric of life-course transitions, and training arrangements and employment opportunities provided to differing degrees by the public and private sectors. Taking into account the cultural standards and organizational structures of different national transition systems makes it possible to reach reasonable conclusions about their transferability to other societies (Ryan, 1991). This means not only describing their specific modi operandi (intake, processes, and results) but also documenting the linkages among education and training and employment opportunities as well as the unequal effects of social class and gender on transition patterns and outcomes. Comparative research reduces the tendency to generate simple generalizations about the success or failure of a society's transition arrangement: the German apprenticeship system being fail-safe, the British system being class based and market oriented, the North American system being individualized and flexible. Moreover, the fiction of national homogeneity can be questioned by documenting regional variations in the options young women and men encounter on their path into the employment system (Great Britain/Germany: Bynner & Roberts, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994; United States/Germany: Blossfeld, 1987; Biichtemann, Schupp, & Soloff, 1994; Canada/United Kingdom: Ashton & Lowe, 1991). Transitions and Institutions in a Life-Course Perspective In North America and Europe, youth and early adulthood represent a main field of problem-centered research because the transition to adulthood has become less predictable and more stressful. The decline of stable employment opportunities and changes in the timing of important

4

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

life-course events - such as leaving the educational system, starting a career and/or a family - have led to an extension of adolescence into young adulthood. Whereas the frameworks for transitions are provided by cultural standards and societal opportunity structures, individuals fashion their own life courses by using various pathways and sequences to accomplish a meaningful integration of social roles in their lives. A life-course perspective can shed light on how institutional resources and regulations and labor-market opportunities on the one hand and social class, gender, and cultural norms on the other translate into different transitions from education to employment over time. Research that is inspired by the youth question thus focuses on the life plans and educational as well as work experiences of young people in the context of segmented labor markets and differential job opportunities among young women and men (Buchmann, 1989; Heinz, 1994). Youth transitions differ according to qualification, gender, and household situation and are only relatively independent from social class and institutional selection as well as exclusion processes in the employment system. Labor-market theorists (Osterman, 1989; Ashton, Maguire, & Spilsbury, 1990; Betcherman, McMullen, Leckie and Caron, 1994; Soskice, 1994) analyze job entry and career patterns of young people in the context of the segmented opportunities and economic restructuring of work. In the United States, Canada and Great Britain, young people without a college degree tend to be concentrated in the secondary labor-market segments before they move on to adult jobs in the primary labor market - that is, jobs with more pay and security. This contrasts with Germany and Japan, which have arrangements that create close linkages between the school and the employment system. It has been taken for granted in North America that youth without a college degree will shop around for jobs for quite some time until they have collected enough work experience to become employable for stable jobs (see Borman 1991). This erratic schoolto-work transition, together with the practice of learning on the job, reflects the social forces of a market economy that has established a secondary labor market for youth without a college degree and a primary labor market for college graduates. In Europe, a "floundering period" does not exist for most nonuniversity youth because they either are enrolled in vocational high schools or are apprentices. Both routes are linked to the employment system via an occupational certification system. Though these transition structures reproduce social-class and gender inequality to some degree, they support the psychosocial stabilization of youth during the critical period of identity construction.

Introduction

5

Many analyses of school-to-work problems focus on the effects of economic changes and labor-market segmentation on youth transitions (Soskice, 1994) and do not take into account biographical processes (Irwin, 1995). These two interrelated life-course dimensions are conceptually separated in a private and a market sphere, respectively. This separation limits understanding of the personal consequences of economic strains, the labor-market squeeze, and company restructuring. These effects are visible in education choices, career decisions, and the timing of life-course events. Youth studies and labor-market analysis still take as their reference point the standard school-to-work transition and see it as unproblematic. This point of view emphasizes social problems arising from unemployment but does not consider that the ongoing deregulation of education-to-employment paths will affect the life course of all youths. It has become impossible to predict the most likely careers of young adults because social origin, years and level of education, and occupational credentials have lost their predictive validity for life-course trajectories. Thus, jobs and occupations must be seen as proxies for a variety of potential careers that unfold their life-course consequences through the individual timing and sequencing of transitions. We assume, therefore, that a biographical logic is operating consisting of individuals' response strategies to socioeconomic opportunities and constraints. The contributions to this book converge in the attempt to understand the relationships among young people's experiences, orientations, and living conditions as they influence the timing and sequencing of leaving and returning to school, entering and leaving different forms of employment, and household and family formation. The comparative perspective, then, focuses not only on institutional arrangements but also on life-course processes, careers, detours, and prospects that are framed by the occupational structure and specific labor-market opportunities. Comparative transition research, if informed by the life-course concept, looks at the interaction of social circumstances and individual careers in the context of different school-to-work pathways. This approach is very well expressed by Elder and O'Rand (1995, pp. 31-32): "Life-course theory also assumes that people function as agents of their own life course and development. Within the social constraints and options established by a new situation, people make choices and take action in ways that shape the life course." The life-course framework points at the agency of "life-course travelers." Youth and young adults are not mere carriers of family values, school experiences, and diplomas; they have to organize

6

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

their status passages as well by using educational resources and acquiring additional qualifications as required. Because many youths do not have adequate resources for coping with transition risks, public measures against unemployment and social exclusion have been implemented in North America and Europe (Petersen & Mortimer, 1994; European Commission, 1997). Whereas European welfare-state policy focuses on large-scale training and jobcreation programs (Leibfried & Pierson, 1995), North American societies support short-term work-experience programs and expand vocational education at community colleges (Grubb, 1989b, 1996b). Whereas the policy responses to the youth employment problem differ, employability and individual flexibility are dominant issues in adapting youth to deregulated labour markets and restructured work places. Flexibility has become "the magic word" (Chisholm, chapter 13 in this volume): more individual responsibility and the accumulation of skills and credentials are required to offset declining institutional support of transition processes. Flexibility has different meanings in different cultures and economic contexts. For the United States and Canada, loose links between qualifications and employment and "job hopping" are established social arrangements. This contrasts with Germany, where the linkages between education, vocational education and training, and employment still tend to be highly regulated. As a study comparing Great Britain and Germany (Bynner & Roberts, 1991) has found, there has been more room to maneuver for individuals and institutions alike and careers have been more structured when transitions among education, job entry, and careers were regulated. Whereas formal academic credentials have become necessary but are not sufficient in the United States and Canada in a period of corporate restructuring, in Great Britain further educational diplomas and in Germany, vocational certificates play a more important role. As we have known since the 1970s from the analysis of the "credential society" (Collins, 1979) and the relationship between education and jobs (Berg, 1970: "the great training robbery"), there is an inflation of credentials the more young people acquire and employers require them. Hence, applicants must have credentials and must demonstrate the competence necessary for active and flexible career moves in order to be considered for a job. This "free-market approach" (Grubb, chapter 7 in this volume) to the school-to-work transition goes hand in hand with the institutional mechanism for preparing noncollege youth and young adults to cope with uncertain job entry and career situations. When skill standards are less

Introduction

7

important than educationally based credentials, students and educators have limited access to the hiring criteria that are used by employers. Therefore, in the United States and Canada, with the exception of co-op programs, school leavers and employers have to find out how to match skills with work requirements in a trial-and-error process. Such a process is costly and frustrating: it reflects a tradition that substitutes a transition structure by market-driven flexibility; hiring practices are highly informal and there are few signals for job searchers about what employers expect. In most industrialized service societies, an increasing number of young people remain in secondary and postsecondary educational institutions much longer than ever before. In Europe, transition research has been inspired by the erosion of the youth labor market (Finegold & Soskice, 1990; Furlong, 1992) and the shifting balance between vocational and academic education (BMBWFT, 1996). In the United States and Canada, non-college-bound youth have become the focus of much public and academic concern in the 1980s when the "forgotten half" (William T. Grant Commission, 1988) was discovered. The expansion of postsecondary education in North America occurred simultaneously with the decline of the youth labor market. This made the school-to-work transition for noncollege youth increasingly difficult. Rising youth unemployment led the British government to introduce training schemes in the 1980s. These were modeled on the German system of vocational education and training, but without its nationally recognized certification system. Of all societies in the Western world, Germany has been the most successful in keeping youth unemployment at a low level because of its highly standardized and popular apprenticeship system, which is an institutionalized bridge between school and labor market (Franz & Soskice, 1995; Schmidt, 1997). In industrial service societies, economic turbulence and technological change have restructured the transition from school to employment, with profound effects on the young generation. This also holds for young adults in Germany. Corporate realities (Brown & Scase, 1994) have placed the burden for successful job-entry processes on the shoulders of the young generation. This book not only contributes to the analysis of these changes but also elucidates young people's experiences and aspirations as they navigate their uncertain passages to employment. Transitions and Careers

Analyzing the relationship between life-course dynamics and institutional arrangements requires a cross-national, comparative perspective

8

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

because societal differences create variations in the linkages among institutions, markets, and biographies, as well as between occupations and careers. Transition research focuses on structures and institutional arrangements as well as individual orientations and decisions that are relevant to explain the movements of people from one life phase to another. The timing, duration, and outcomes of transitions depend not only on social origin, gender, and level of education but also on the opportunities for employment and lifelong learning. Access to prestigous schools and universities as well as to attractive occupational careers is determined not only by individual achievement but also by social origin and gender on the one hand and by the relative social closure of the occupational structure on the other. In expanding stratification and mobility research, transition studies combine the analysis of structurally defined opportunity contexts and sociopsychological dynamics - for example, goals, orientations, and action strategies of young adults and their social networks (Roberts 1993; Kerckhoff, 1996). For comparative transition studies, it is important to understand the different cultural meanings of career, occupation, and vocation. The career concept tends to indicate a person's passage through different jobs and statuses. It is associated with the notion of upward mobility but is also used to refer to horizontal and downward movements in the occupational structure. In contrast to the North American meaning of this concept, in Germany a career is thought of as an institutionalized career progression in a big company or in bureaucratic organizations. Empirically, careers are driven by social origin and gender, mediated by education, shaped by specific occupations and labor-market processes and are activated by individual decisions and institutional gatekeeping (Heinz, 1992). Whereas in Germany an occupation is equated with the idea of vocation (Beruf), in North America it is either a job or a profession. The latter requires college or university education, whereas the former is regarded as low-level employment that requires only minimal schooling and on-the-job training. In Germany, the term Beruf (vocation) carries the image of an occupation for life that applies to all ranks in the hierarchy of occupations, from crafts to professions. Only recently, Kerckhoff (1996, pp. 49-50) has suggested "that schoolto-work careers should be more orderly and career lines more easily identified in societies with essentially controlled education systems, a set of nationally recognized/occupationally relevant educational credentials, regularized school-employer relationships, and professionalization

Introduction

9

of manual work." Hence, the United States and Canada are supposed to have fewer clear career lines than most other industrial service societies. This, however, is not that simple anymore, because Germany and other European societies are experiencing heretofore unknown levels of unemployment and industrial and company restructuring (Greinert, 1994). A period of "jobless growth" contributes to an erosion of continuous education-to-employment pathways. This observation corresponds to several general trends that result from the interplay between the economy and technological change, which have created a fragile balance between occupational opportunities and labor-market constraints. As the longitudinal and historical studies by Buchmann (1989) and Modell (1989) have documented for the United States, there is a remarkable diversity of lifecourse patterns that results from an extension and variation of the timing and sequencing of transitions from youth to adulthood. For Germany (Beck, 1992), there is a more recent increase of alternative pathways and of individual choice between socially differentiated opportunities that makes transition biographies more dependent on labor-market dynamics. With the decline of "lifetime jobs" in one company, individual achievements and credentials are becoming more and more important for job entry and careers. The crucial comparative question concerns the relationship between structure and action, the extent to which the linkage between educational institutions and the employment system expands or restricts the room for maneuver for adolescents and young adults in their transitions. As O'Rand (1996, p. 3) points out, "The movement of individuals within and between institutional contexts brings into focus how lives are shaped at social interfaces and, in turn, how institutions may themselves be transformed in response to the social frictions exerted by demographic processes ..." Not only population dynamics, however, but also the economy exerts pressure on institutions, as we witness in the response of schools, universities, corporations, and governments to the globalization of markets. In times of drastic economic change, societies develop quite different strategies to curb youth unemployment and social exclusion. North American societies stress the importance of postsecondary education, Great Britain expands her colleges of further education, Germany modernizes her dual system of vocational education and training, and France aims to create work for all unemployed youth in public service institutions. Whatever strategy is implemented, we must be careful not to draw premature conclusions about its stabilizing effect on the education-to-

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From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

employment transition as long as we do not have longitudinal data that permit analysis of the long-term career consequences of different transition histories. The outcomes of today's protracted and stressful job-entry processes are still critical for the life course. They affect the chances to participate in society and the achievement of full adult status. This is underscored by Furlong and Cartmel (1997, p. 109) in their recent analysis of youth in late modernity: "Young people can struggle to establish adult identities and maintain coherent biographies, they may develop strategies to overcome various obstacles, but their life chances remain highly structured, with social class and gender being crucial to an understanding of experience in a range of life contexts." Overview of This Book Nine of the thirteen chapters are based on longitudinal research in Canada (Andres; Anisef, Turrittin, & Lin; Krahn & Lowe; Thiessen & Looker), the United States (Hamilton & Hamilton, Mortimer & Johnson), Germany (Heinz, Weymann), and Great Britain (Bynner). The remaining chapters are either based on case-study material (Grubb, Rosenbaum) or discuss empirically grounded long-term trends in the political and social economy of the school-to-work transition (Chisholm, Coffield). In the first section, the relationships among social origin, gender, and transition patterns in a period of shifting job opportunities is discussed. In a unique study that has covered 22 years, Paul Anisef and associates examine the school-to-work transition and social mobility with a sample of Canadians who left school in the mid-1970s. Quite in contrast to the current debate about turbulent transitions to adulthood, this study shows a strong relationship between education and careers as well as predictable sociotemporal sequences. The majority of the sample has experienced substantial career continuity or upward social mobility. Furthermore, 20 years after leaving school, the consequences of social origin had declined and have been substituted by active career moves and improved household income. This demonstrates that individual agency and active reorientation in response to changing employment options do have consequences for careers. Another important result of this longitudinal study is specific to countries such as Canada in which a substantial proportion of the population still reside in the countryside. Differences in access to postsecondary education in rural and urban areas create a connection between social inequality and region of residence. Leaving or remaining in one's home community affects the occu-

Introduction

11

pational status in middle adulthood: "Movers" show higher achievement on the career ladder and come from households with at least middle-class status. Lower social origin is associated with less migration: "Stayers" are more likely to come from lower-status families, are less likely to aspire for a university degree, and tend to regard themselves as being less effective people. These mobility histories show a strong contrast to a contemporary cohort. The impact of a changing economic and labor-market context on youth transitions in Canada is documented in Victor Thiessen and E. Dianne Looker's two-level analysis of work, school, and domestic activities over a 5-year period after high school. Also analyzed were the attitudes and expectations of the youth in the sample concerning the timing and sequence of key transitions to adulthood. The young people's normative attitudes concerning full-time employment and household formation showed a high commitment to work and a preference for an orderly sequence - employment first, then marriage and family formation when they were still at school. With the transition progressing, young adults became more open to variant timings and an overlapping of key life events; their individual practices had also become more flexible. Their actual transition documented a high variability of pathways and a blurring of boundaries between part-time work, education, and household activities. There were, however, strong gender influences: while the goal of both young men and women was a steady full-time job and more than half of the sample had moved in and out of school and in and out of full-time and part-time work, women were still assuming responsibility for domestic activities. This study strongly supports the assumption that "gender matters from school to work" (Gaskell, 1992). The interaction between skills and gender in the process of job entry in Great Britain is analyzed by John Bynner with birth-cohort studies that allow comparison of self-assessments of work-related skills with measured functional literacy and numerical skills. The data show clearly that career paths after leaving school differ on the basis of the levels of these basic skills. The earlier young people have left their educational system, the less training they will get; young women who have children are less likely to get training, regardless of when they left school. There are "gendered" exclusion processes: Men with poor basic skills drift among training schemes, casual jobs, and unemployment, whereas women withdraw - or rather are diverted - away from employment routes and toward motherhood and domestic responsibilities. This, in turn, creates a vicious circle because the chances to return to the labor market drop the

12

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

longer women are in the caretaker role. The decline of the British youth labor market and the failure of youth training scheme (Coles, 1995) have left in a precarious transition setting those school leavers who do not enter further education colleges or universities. In the Great Britain there is little work-related training like that in Germany and no community college system like those in the United States and Canada. Hence only half of those in the sample recall at age 33 that they received any workbased training for more than 3 days in their employment history. Instead of having to cope with a steady decline in entry-level jobs as British youth do, young people in East Germany had to cope with a profound breakdown of their life-course plans when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. They were confronted with a sudden shift from state-controlled school-to-work routes to a social-market economy that puts a premium on initiative and flexibility. Ansgar Weymann and his team compare two cohorts of young skilled workers and academics 5 years before and shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because of the shrinking economy, the chances for entering employment declined severely from 1990 to 1994. Apprenticed workers were confronted with a notably higher risk of becoming jobless during this period. An increasing gap between the employed and the unemployed has been created by the interaction of cohort membership and gender. The older cohort and women seem to be better protected from dismissal; however, they have poor chances of reentering employment. In comparison with the experiences of the older cohort in the socialist German Democratic Republic, young adults now experience much less life-course stability and short-term upward and downward mobility. For instance, the construction industry offered many jobs during the first 3 years of reunification, as did the banking and insurance industries. Nowadays, however, these sectors are restructuring and downsizing, with the effect that many young adults have to reframe their biography by becoming more flexible in adapting to labor-market trends. The author argues that the transplantation of the West German transition system and labor-market standards to East Germany has been checked by an unexpectedly slow economic improvement. The next section presents five studies that deal with the linkage between education and the labor market in North America and with the return of apprenticeships in Germany. They focus on the extent to which work experiences, skills, and credentials build bridges between school and the labor market. Jeylan T. Mortimer and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson studied the life-course implications of adolescent work experiences, an issue that tends not to be investigated in Europe, where working

Introduction

13

teenagers are quite unusual. In the United States, the effects of teenage employment on life course are controversal. On one hand, it is assumed that early work experiences may speed up the adoption of adult roles and will turn young people away from college. On the other hand, being able to combine school and work successfully may promote the competence needed to manage multiple roles in adulthood. Mortimer and Johnson argue that the personal meaning, job quality, and social context of working have to be taken into account in order to understand the effects of teenage employment. They studied a cohort of high-school students from grade 12 to 4 years after graduation and based their analysis on a life-history calendar that recorded various activities and status changes that occur in the passage to adulthood. In the first year after high school, most respondents were combining college and part-time work. Four years beyond high school, only a quarter of the young adults were employed full time. As we have seen in studies in Canada and Great Britain, early family transitions reduce involvement in education: Married women or women with children are less likely to be in postsecondary institutions or doing part-time work. By differentiating between the duration and intensity of employment, the study presents intriguing findings on the effect of high-school work on transitions. For instance, low-intensity work in adolescence is related to the highest level of postsecondary participation; short-duration and high-intensity employment correlates with reduced educational attainment. From a European perspective, the high-duration - high-intensity combination could be regarded as a substitute for an apprenticeship that combines organized on-the-job training and vocational education for school leavers (by grade 10) who do not continue on to a university. The main differences between these two patterns are obviously the limited integration of teenage workers into the training firm, the missing link to adult jobs, and the lack of vocational credentials. According to Lesley Andres's study of a cohort in Canada who left high school between 1988 and 1993, participation patterns in higher education and the employment system create modernized sociotemporal patterns in young adulthood. Andres emphasizes that the changing social context of transition and rising youth unemployment influence young people to enroll in colleges and universities. Canada has the highest postsecondary enrollment of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Postsecondary studies play a core role that defines young adults' participation in other fields, most importantly in the labor market. Contrary to less careful studies,

14

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Andres records that part-time work performed in conjuction with education is relatively rare; employment occurs rather mainly during vacations - that is, between university terms. Full-time studies from fall to spring alternate with full-time work in summer. The highly structured North American college and university system requires the "full-time student" who has to restrict his or her participation in the employment system. Women, however, seem to be forced relatively more often to do part-time work while studying in college. This observation is underscored by the result that early marriage and childbearing is a core transition status that is related to less educational participation. Though these data are not yet sufficient for predicting the extent to which men's and women's employment and family career patterns will diverge in the future of this cohort, we can assume that the different participation patterns in postsecondary education, employment, and household activities constitute transition patterns into a gendered life course. The majority of North American young adults enter college or university but do not complete them with a degree. They are a large group of young people with intermediate qualifications - that is, some college education or graduation from a community college. W. Norton Grubb calls this level the subbaccalaureate labor market (SBLM), which consists of different transition paths. He defines this labor market not in terms of age or job conditions but in terms of education credentials. In order to better understand the operation of the SBLM, Grubb conducted interviews and case studies in US communities with educators and employers. Owing to the lack of a transition system, informal hiring is the rule in the SBLM. Though there are a variety of routes for skill acquisition, skill demands are much less transparent than in the baccalaureate market. Inconsistent skill demands reflect the practice of employers: they stress basic skills as well as job-specific skills and demand cognitive and social competence when promoting young employees from entry-level to career jobs. Such a transition setting is somewhat similar to the way the balance between basic and job-specific skills has become problematic in the preparation of young people in Great Britain, as discussed in chapter 3, under the heading of Employability. Grubb argues that free-market mechanisms are operating in the transition from school to employment in North America because institutionalized links between educational providers and employers do not exist, with the rare exception of local cooperative programs or demonstration projects. Employers do not seem to have a valid perception of the quality of local educational providers. Hence incentives for investing in skills and training positions are weak:

Introduction

15

school leavers expect only jobs with low wages and nonstandard employment, and employers do not invest in entry-level occupational training because they do not expect job applicants to have the necessary skills and are also afraid of poaching. The fear of poaching and the reluctance to invest in basic and further occupational training results from market-driven transition patterns in North America and Great Britain that have created a social setting that does not provide valid or trusted signals between the educational and employment systems. This assumption is taken up more systematically by James E. Rosenbaum in the last section of this book. Another much more structured alternative for generating linkages between education and employment is the "German style" apprenticeship system, which is widely regarded by other societies as a model for stabilizing school-to-work transitions. Apprenticeship has never been a major institution in the United States or Canada. Stephen F. Hamilton, whose work has influenced the movement for introducing school-towork programs in United States, and Mary Agnes Hamilton analyze the results of a demonstration project aimed at testing the possibility of adapting apprenticeship to U.S. society. The project consisted of consecutive 2-year periods of study at high schools and community colleges combined with part-time work of up to 20 hours per week. Four cohorts of high-school students were followed and compared with students in college preparatory tracks. The results were not encouraging. Most participants in the cooperative program left the project after high-school graduation. Compared to other students, however, participants reported more often that their work was personally meaningful and demonstrated higher technical and social competence in career planning and adapting to different work situations. A crucial feature of the demonstration project was to find coaches and mentors as adult role models who could convince project participants of the usefulness of combining vocational and academic studies for a successful labor-market entry. In addition to the absence of a training and schooling infrastructure, the reluctance of employers to hire and train young people who came from vocational programs, the lack of a workers' training culture, and the lack of adult trainers combine to explain the limited success of such demonstration projects in the United States. Therefore, the Hamiltons propose a comprehensive school-to-work-opportunity system, not as a program but as a wide range of work-based learning opportunities. The section concludes with a study from Germany documenting the undiminished popularity of the apprenticeship despite declining returns

16

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

in the labor market. Walter R. Heinz has followed a sample of young people from the beginning of their apprenticeship in the mid-1980s until 10 years later. Five years after graduating from vocational and educational training, half of them had left their occupations. Most of them, however, did not experience downward mobility into the casual labor market. Depending on their education level and on the training occupation, they either moved on to postsecondary education, took a full-time job in another trade, or started a family (more young women than men). These young careers document that extended and variable school-towork transitions are becoming normal in Germany, too. An apprenticeship, however, still is the main route for young people who are not university bound for entering the adult labor market and even for buying time to reconsider their original occupational choice and eventually return to higher education. Though the unemployment rate of skilled blue- and white-collar workers between the ages of 20 and 30 has been increasing in the last decade, it still is much lower than the joblessness of young people who did not acquire a vocational training certificate. The study shows that staying in or leaving an occupation cannot be explained by contextual and occupational determinants alone. As a sequence of narrative interviews revealed, career moves are also influenced by biographical action orientations. These orientations consist of experiences in family, school, and training that have socialized young adults to develop different profiles of preferences and goals concerning working and living. The last section concerns more theoretically oriented analyses of the changes in transition organization and options in (post-) industrial service societies. The chapters focus on three major themes of comparative research: improving the linkages between educational providers and employers, the issue of continuity and change in the value orientations of young people, and the relative importance of markets and networks in the "knowledge society." By studying the United States and Japan, James Rosenbaum sought to learn how to create institutional linkages based on a "trusted signals model" between high schools and employers: bridges that support the individual student's precarious transition to the labor market. His communication model emphasizes the importance of signals from both sides as transmission belts for job as well as labor-force information. A successful school-to-work transition system must convey trustworthy signals to employers about youth competence and reliability. For high school students, signals are more important than grades for finding out

Introduction

17

whether school efforts will have a payoff in the labor market. The example of Japan suggests that it is not culture per se but practice that explains the smooth transition from school to work for Japanese youth. Traditionally, hiring decisions tend to reaffirm the mutual commitment between schools and companies for now and in the future. In North America and in Great Britain, employers do not consider grades to be relevant for predicting work behavior. Rosenbaum argues that in societies with no organized transition system, interpersonal relations between teachers and employers are crucial for opening the door to entry jobs. Building on contacts with employers, teachers can act as matchmakers when they guarantee that jobs and skills will match. This is a very informal and at the same time selective process of transition support that is the result of a market system that does not provide a structured period of vocational education and training and organizational socialization. One of the most popular arguments among policy makers and employers for explaining transition problems is that the young generation has lost interest in work and careers in favor of postmaterialistic values and highly individualized lifestyles. Two of the most experienced youth and labor-market researchers in Canada, Harvey Krahn and Graham S. Lowe, look at these supposed changes in the value orientations of youth. With longitudinal data, they question the assumption derived from the concept of "individualization or risk society" (Beck, 1992). Does the young generation represent a postmodern habitus by creating and living a ''patchwork'' biography that is primarily driven by personal preferences? In comparing two recent cohorts of college and university graduates in Canada who were confronted with an economic recession at different stages of their transition to the labor market, Krahn and Lowe found that social class - and gender-related values are still more important than cohort differences. Though the two cohorts encountered different employment opportunities after graduation, they do not show significant value differences. Both cohorts believe strongly that postsecondary education will have a high return in the labor market. In contrast to the individualization thesis, the belief of being entitled to an adequate full-time job has become even stronger in the younger cohort. This expectation, however, contrasts with their actual situation in the labor market. In 1994, almost half of the young adults were employed in nonstandard jobs. They respond to the restructuring of the labor market by staying in the educational system while being in part-time and temporary employment. They create a socially innovative, though complicated role: the "student worker" who is attempting to improve his or her

18

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

level of education and build a job-search network. This contrasts with the transition culture in Germany, where an apprenticeship still is regarded as a good investment for finding a job with career prospects and, if necessary, as a steppingstone to reenter the educational system. In Canada and the United States, the faith of educators and students alike in the higher-education system is a much more established guideline for the school-to-employment transition, regardless of labor-market conditions or an imputed postmodern trend of individualization. In Europe, we also observe that young people stay in the education system longer than earlier cohorts. This can be explained as a response to the decline of the youth labor market and to the public debate about the cognitive requirements of the "knowledge society" (European Commission, 1997). As Frank Coffield argues in his analysis of the contemporary transition setting in Great Britain, the language of education is more and more dominated by market jargon and concepts that belong to the discourse of technocratic industrialization. The reduction of public investment in education and training is justified with the claim that this will produce efficiency gains and increase individual responsibility for becoming employable or perhaps self-employed. Coffield observes a tension between the vision of the knowledge society and the political economy of education markets, which will bring about an increasing social and economic polarization in the United Kingdom. He bases his argument on data that show that the low-skill and high-skill transition paths are drifting apart in terms of both economic security and personal wellbeing. In order to close this widening gap between unemployed and insecurely employed youth, he argues that basic-skills education, retraining, and work-creation programs will lead to higher returns for society than expanding further-education colleges and postsecondary institutions. Though we observe declining overall unemployment in Great Britain and the United States, compared with rising unemployment in Germany, there is a much greater polarization in the two marketdriven societies between the full-time employed (the working rich) and the working poor, both in terms of household income and quality of life. There is at least some evidence suggesting a convergence of provisions of school-to-work programs but not of transition structures and policies in Europe and North America. The welfare states of Europe struggle with the problems of financing publicly organized and institutionalized school-to-work systems, whereas simultaneously there is a call for more institutionally organized transition arrangements in the United Kingdom (National Vocational Qualifications) and initiatives toward more compa-

Introduction

19

rable standards for school-to-work programs in North America that go beyong local cooperative programs (Rosenbaum et al., 1992). British educational scientist Lynne Chisholm, working with a think tank at the European Commission in Brussels, is drafting a long-term scenario of the possible effects of knowledge production in modern societies on the future of socially differentiated transitions to jobs. She suggests that there is a social reconstruction of the youth phase in the making that will lead to a new balance between formal and nonformal credentials and at the same time to more polarization of life chances in the systems of education and employment. A "feminization" of individual transition biographies will spread in the young generation, Chisholm predicts, because nonlinear transitions with poor exchange values in the labor market will become more frequent for young women and young men. Processes of social polarization and reflexive modernization are at work, producing a multiplication of discontinuous career patterns that reach far into adulthood. In order to give support and orientation to young people, Chisholm proposes establishing community-based and case-centered vocational and career counseling. More decentralized services can help create transinstitutional networks for job searches, further education, and career stabilization. Conclusion The results of these longitudinal studies from four societies document that social and gender inequalities are reproduced in the different transition arrangements. Although youth have more autonomy, often out of necessity, in selecting, combining, leaving, and returning to various school-to-work paths, they are confronted with increasing job risks and career discontinuity. They not only are "working under different rules" (Freeman, 1994) but also are confronted with different "socially provided channels of attainment" (Kerckhoff, 1996). The institutional diversity of transitions operates in different ways in North American and European societies because they either have formalized training arrangements that are connected with an occupationally centered labor market or build their transition system on comprehensive schools and liberal arts colleges that at best have weak linkages to the labor market. This is the main conclusion of the studies presented in this book. Vocationalism cannot compete with the expansion of higher education in North America and of further-education colleges in Great Britain. In Germany, in contrast, the relationships among vocational education and training,

20

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

university studies, and the labor market are still influenced by the occupational structure's foundation in the apprenticeship system. The prospects for job entry in Germany are therefore different. In North America, apprenticeship may lead to a successful transition into employment only if it is linked with community colleges, whereas it is successful in the German "dual system" because it is connected with the secondary school system and the workplace. Because the image of vocational education has been declining in North America and Great Britain with the expansion of postsecondary education, these societies are responding much too slowly to the vanishing youth labor market. Germany, on the other hand, attempts to adapt to international competition and the deregulation of labor markets by combining more general education with occupational specialization by modernizing the apprenticeship transition. This creates linkages between school and employment because the transition itself delivers signals for young adults as well as employers about skill profiles and potential career destinations. Whatever linkage is put in place, social origin and gender are still implicated in transitions from school to work. Work experience, training, and vocational education, as well as postsecondary education, are organized in institutional and market contexts that reproduce social class and gender divisions. Social practices and personal orientations reflect labor-market segmentation and contradictions between employment and domestic careers. If we want to endow all students with skill profiles that are useful to manage change in the workplace and to self-organize their life course, a transition structure at the school-work interface is a prerequisite. This requires public investment in basic training, job creation, and further education for all young people, instead of short-term work experiences and on-the-job training programs. Education and training cannot solve the problems of life-course turbulence and social exclusion that are caused by market competition and state nonintervention. Nevertheless, vocational and academic transition systems that promote life-course skills and portable and certified qualifications can at least stabilize young people's precarious passages to adulthood. Whether we like it or not, education has been and will continue to be influenced by occupational requirements and career concerns. Comparative transition research, therefore, must also turn its attention to the relationships among general education, occupational and professional training, and the extent to which educational pathways are permeable and connected with different segments of the labor market. A democratic transition

Introduction

21

arrangement that equalizes the access to different routes between education and employment is also a way to stop the marketization of education and to curb the increasing social division between non-college-educated youth and young adults who acquire college degrees. A deregulated labor market requires that the private and public sectors join in providing the resources that the young generation needs to have a chance to respond to jobless growth with competence and initiative. Otherwise, a growing number of young adults will be excluded from full social participation and citizenship.

PARTI

Social Origin, Gender, and Transition Patterns

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School PAUL ANISEF ANTON H. TURRITTIN LIN ZENG

Sociologists argue that all societies are stratified, meaning that social positions or roles are differentially structured in terms of access to power, wealth, and social status. Furthermore, there is a set of rules that governs who gains access to these different social positions (Matras, 1984). Speaking somewhat metaphorically, stratification manifests itself in a series of ladders or shifting positions that provide for social mobility within the existing but also changing social structure. For individuals and groups, social mobility is problematic in at least three ways. First, one must compete for, find, and hold one's place in the stratification system. This aspect of stratification highlights life course and manifests itself most commonly as an occupational career. Second, as social structure changes, the ladders are altered and rearranged some disappearing altogether - thus changing the bases for competition. This aspect invites comparison between the current generation and past ones and what is called intergenerational mobility. Finally, people also desire to help and provide for their own progeny and seek to make the process of social mobility more secure and predictable for them. This suggests that the process contains elements of risk when moving up or down or changing ladders of mobility. These risks can be minimized by drawing on family resources and building institutional forms favorable to mobility (e.g., accessible higher education) through political and community action (Matras, 1984, p. 8; Beck, 1992, p. 94; Heinz, 1991b, p. 11). Generally, in postindustrial societies like Canada, stratification is largely produced through the occupational structure of the economy. As a consequence, career and social mobility mainly reflect the occupations people hold over their life course, but entrance into an occupation is itself contingent on formal schooling. In recent decades, further formal education qualifications and personal career mobility appear to be increasingly intertwined (Erikson & Jonsson, 1996). Thus, an under25

26

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

standing of career and social mobility requires a careful examination of the school-to-work transition to reveal how education is linked to the occupation structure as young people negotiate their early years of education into employment. Since the end of the World War II, the education system in Canada has grown substantially and has become more multilayered, a tiering that closely matched the expanding occupational structure of the prosperous postwar decades. In this tiering, a high-school education was adequate for many blue-collar, service-sector, and lowerwhite-collar occupations. Community colleges, called colleges of applied arts and technology (CAATs) in Ontario, provided additional and generally vocationally specific training, whereas universities offered a general liberal arts education or training in a number of professions. The education system was linked to a hierarchy of occupations that could be literally rank-ordered in terms of social prestige and wage and salary earning capacity (Anisef, Ashbury, & Turrittin, 1992). The postwar public demand for postsecondary education reflected both the high value attributed to education and parents' belief, not unfounded at the time, that obtaining diplomas, certificates, and degrees would provide the means for their children to enter better paying, secure, high status, and interesting jobs. For Ontario, and elsewhere in Canada, the education system's ability to retain and promote youths into and through postsecondary education was so successful that by the mid-1970s, it became evident that the highly qualified were beginning to overwhelm the job market (Anisef, Bertrand, Hortian, & James, 1985). The ability of diplomas, certificates, and degrees to guarantee good jobs began to decline in the early 1990s as the rate of technological change and attendant productivity increased. This weakening of job markets has been compounded in the 1990s by the shrinkage of the public sector, downsizing in the private sector, and the export of some jobs outside of Canada's borders (Krahn, 1996). Clearly, these changes in the economy have lessened occupational opportunity, potentially threatening career and social mobility and raising questions about the role of education in postmodern society. This chapter focuses on preliminary findings about the careers and social mobility of a sample of Ontario youth first studied in the spring of 1973. The research began as a study of the education and occupational aspirations of a random sample of 2,555 grade 12 high school students in Ontario who were followed through their postsecondary education and into the labor market by way of two follow-up surveys carried out in the fall of 1973 and the fall of 1974. These same youth were again studied in 1979 as young adults (1,522 were restudied). Most were employed by

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School then, with the exception of a few who continued with professional studies. Contact was again made with 1,129 subjects in 1987-1988. By then, this survey had become the longest longitudinal study of its kind in Canada. In 1995, we went back to our members of the "class of '73," as we called them, and were able to relocate 788 of our original sample. Most of the respondents in 1995 were 40 years of age, married, and had children of their own. This allowed us to obtain some insights with respect to their career and social mobility. First, we have obtained information on their education history and first full-time jobs, in addition to their occupations in 1979, 1987-1988, and 1995, which provided us with data on career or intragenerational occupational mobility.1 Second, in 1995 we asked respondents to report on the occupation of their fathers when their fathers were 55 years of age. The data on fathers' occupations, along with respondents' occupations in 1995, provided the basis for a comparison of occupations that documents "intergenerational occupational mobility," a concept that we shall use interchangeably with "social mobility." Mobility Research in a Life-Course Perspective Changes in occupational structure in Canada's economy have long been tracked by Statistics Canada with particular detail provided by decennial population censuses. Interest in intergenerational occupational mobility preceded career studies, as social mobility studies were launched in the 1970s to assess the impact of such factors as class, gender, ethnicity, and education on occupational opportunities (Boyd et al., 1985) and has been maintained in subsequent studies and analyses (Creese, Guppy, Meissner, 1991; Wanner & Hayes, 1996). Statistics Canada has considered the link between education and the labor market by focusing on a series of studies evaluating the jobs of postsecondary school leavers (Davies, Mosher, & O'Grady, 1994). Several studies examining the school-to-work transition have evolved into longitudinal studies that have permitted researchers to examine longer-term occupational careers (Thiessen & Looker, Krahn & Lowe, Andres, in this volume). Our present research falls in this latter group. Analyzing social and career mobility from the standpoint of lifecourse theory requires factoring in social structural and personal agency dimensions in understanding education choices and occupational pathways (Gambetta, 1987). The social structural dimensions most often cited in the Canadian school-to-work transitions literature are social class and

27

28

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

gender (Krahn, 1996). Another important dimension is location. Although the major trend has been toward urbanization, the actual number of people living in rural areas has increased significantly, almost doubling since the 1950s (Biggs & Bollman 1994). Location has received limited attention by life-course researchers, however, and its effects are not particularly well documented (Looker, 1995). Several important aspects of personal agency include the decision made by youth to pursue a particular kind of education, to enter the labor force after high school, or to pursue some combination of work and education; and then as young adults, the decision to either remain in their home community and build a life or change location in an effort to enhance career mobility opportunities. Looker (1995) indicated in her study of Hamilton, Halifax, and rural Nova Scotia youth that the decision by rural youths to pursue higher education or to access larger labor markets resulted in their leaving their homes and moving into urban centers. Research on internal migration patterns showed that migrants were distinctive in that they tended to be young adults with above-average education and high socioeconomic status (SES) (Shulman & Drass, 1979). An effective metaphor for conceptualizing education choices and school-to-work transitions would involve a group of adolescents confronting a river into which they must plunge, with different opportunities represented by different points along the far shore. Some are stronger swimmers and easily reach desirable objectives. Other less accomplished swimmers may obtain their objectives, but only after an arduous struggle. The point of this is to recognize the simultaneous dimensions required to make one's way along a life course, with people exercising personal agency within a dynamic and frequently changing social structural context. Our quantitative and qualitative data reveal aspects of both agency and social structure, though the two are not so easily distinguished or untangled. A framework for connecting geographical mobility with a life-course perspective was provided by Jones (1995). She emphasized that the first leaving-home event for young adults is part of a process in the transition to independent living. Furthermore, leaving the parental home needs to be understood with reference to the historical context of the times. Thus, for recent generations of young people, returning to the parental home, does not necessarily signal continued dependence but may be part of an increasingly common process of making transitions to adulthood, albeit over a longer stretch of time than in previous postwar decades. In contrast, members of the class of '73 grew up in a time of greater economic

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School certainty and opportunity than experienced by later generations. For these people, leaving the parental home was a life marker that more closely designated the beginnings of full independence. Some, after carefully considering their options, accepted the challenge of leaving their community in order to enhance their personal opportunities. Others, after due reflection, decided to remain at home and pursue personal aspirations within their community. Research Questions In our study, we focused on the degree to which members of the class of '73 experienced career and social mobility and asked: What occupations have they had, as they moved from first full-time jobs obtained between the years 1973 and 1978 to occupations in 1979, then 1987-1988, and finally 1995? We also explored how education attainment was related to the sorts of occupations entered in each phase of the study and to the process of career mobility. An exploration of this relationship is especially important because it sheds light on the role played by personal agency and social structural factors over the life course. Gender, social class, and urban versus rural origins were included in the analysis of career mobility. In addition, we analyzed intergenerational social mobility for the class of '73 by comparing the SES of male and female respondents with that of their parents. A final series of questions pertained to the relationship of geographical and career mobility. In tracing career mobility patterns, we asked: Are there substantive and long-term effects of having grown up in a rural as compared with an urban environment? What role did leaving home play in enhancing or altering the occupational pathways of youths who grew up in rural versus urban areas? Finally, if leaving home played a significant role in enhancing life chances, can we identify important distinguishing sociological and psychological characteristics of people who are or are not geographically mobile? Analysis and Discussion of Results Career or Intragenerational Occupational Mobility

Our data on career mobility were derived from three of the six phases of our class of '73 longitudinal research. As mentioned earlier, in our most recent survey of 1995, we asked respondents about the occupations of

29

30

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

their parents when they were 55 years of age, which would likely have referred to an occupation in the period between 1975 and 1980 when respondents were 20 to 25 years of age. We have taken the occupation of the father at age 55 as a baseline against which to measure the occupational mobility of respondents. We compared the father's occupation at an advanced stage in his career with his son's or daughter's occupation at age 40, nearly the midpoint of a respondent's occupational life course. Our 1979 survey, undertaken when most respondents had completed their postsecondary education, inquired about members' first full-time jobs and current jobs. These occupations provided us with a baseline to examine career mobility and illustrated their employment patterns at the point of transition from education to the labour market. Career movement was further tracked by our surveys of 1987-1988 and 1995. Stratification research regards first full-time jobs as significant in terms of careers because certain initial or entry-level jobs may be steps on job ladders, some ladders having significant future payoff in terms of status and earning power and others having more limited economic opportunities. In 1979, 79.5% of the class of '73 members were in the labor force, of which 5.5% were unemployed (n = 779). Less than 5% were working part time. In addition, 15.1% were still full- or part-time students. Almost 50% of the women in our sample were married, as were about 33% of men, but only about 20% of the married women did not combine homemaking with being in the labor force or with being a student. The type of employment, however, varied by level of education attainment. It is useful at this point to examine the first full-time jobs held by respondents before turning to the data on occupations in 1979. For most of our respondents, first full-time jobs followed the completion of an educational program. Thus, for those who did not seek further postsecondary education but completed high school and then entered the job market, the modal year of first full-time jobs was 1973. For those completing community college, the modal year was 1976, and for those completing university, first full-time jobs commenced in 1978. Using the occupational categories developed by Creese, Guppy, & Meissner (1991), we determined that 89% of those members of the class of '73 who did not go on to postsecondary education prior to 1979 entered upper and lower white-collar and blue-collar jobs. Only 6.1% entered occupations in any management, professional, or semiprofessional/technical categories. If first jobs are an indicator, the community colleges primarily trained their students to enter semiprofessional/technical and upper-white-collar occupations. By contrast, 44.8% (n = 156) of university graduates started

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School in high or midmanagerial, professional, or semiprofessional/technical categories. There were some significant gender differences in first jobs. Few women entered any blue-collar occupations, and about 53.0% of female university graduates (n = 83) obtained first full-time jobs in the upper- and lower-white-collar categories. Table 1-1 compares the distribution of occupations of members of the class of '73 by gender for first full-time jobs and occupations held in 1979,1987-1988, and 1995. Comparing first jobs with occupations in 1979 revealed the beginnings of career movements as the class of '73 started to shift to higher-status, better-paying jobs. For example, women shifted out of lower-white-collar work and increased their proportions in upperwhite-collar and semiprofessional/technical employment. For men, the proportion of those employed in lower-blue-collar jobs declined, whereas the proportions in upper-blue-collar and in midmanagement positions increased. There were also important differences in occupational distribution by educational achievement. By 1979, few men with only secondary education had moved into any kind of managerial, professional, or semiprofessional/technical occupations. The proportion of men in the upper-blue-collar ranks increased by 50%, however, with a corresponding decline at the lower-blue-collar level. The proportion of women with only secondary education also increased in the upperwhite-collar category and decreased in the lower-white-collar sector. Male community college graduates increased their presence in the semiprofessional/technical, upper-white-collar, and upper-blue-collar categories, whereas the distribution of female community college graduates did not change. At the university level, male graduates started to increase their proportions at the semiprofessional/technical and middle management levels compared to first jobs, and female graduates began leaving lower-white-collar positions and increased their presence in the semiprofessional / technical category. A comparison of occupations held by members of the class of '73 in 1979 and 1987-1988 (Table 1-1) reveals a major increase in the number of professional positions. This increase was not a trend but rather reflected the fact that in 1979 those pursuing professional education were still in school. By 1980 or 1981, they had completed their education and had entered professional occupations. Several trends did emerge when we compared respondents' occupations in 1979 and 1987-1988, however. There was a small increase in men employed at high management levels, an increase in people occupying midmanagement positions, a decrease in the number of respondents in upper-white-collar occupations, and a

31

Table 1-1 Occupational Distributions by Gender of Respondent for Occupations in 1995,1987-1988,1979, Occupation, and for Father's Occupation at 55 Years of Age

First Full-time

Occupational

Occupation in

Occupation in

Occupation in

First Full-Time

Father's Job at

Distribution

1995 (%)

1987-1988 (%)

1979 (%)

Job in 1973-1979 (%)

55 Years of Age (%)

M High-level management Professional Midmanagement Semiprofessional/technical Upper-white-collar Upper-blue-collar Lower-white-collar Lower-blue-collar Agriculture % total Total n F = 1 female; M = 1 male.

F

M

F

M

F

M

F

M

F

6.1

4.9

3.0

0.7

1.0

0.4

1.5

0.6

6.2

7.4

15.6 19.3 14.1 9.8 20.7 3.5 8.4 2.6 100 347

16.7 13.4 22.8 17.6 1.2 18.8 4.3 0.3 100 329

14.4 13.5 13.2 8.1 24.0 8.7 10.5 4.5 100 333

18.5 7.5 23.5 22.1 1.8 20.6 4.3 1.1 100 281

8.3 5.7 15.0 12.7 28.7 7.3 17.0 4.3 100 300

6.4 1.9 24.6 38.6 1.1 23.5 3.0 0.4 100 264

8.3 2.8 11.3 10.7 19.0 11.7 28.8 5.8 100 326

4.6 1.4 19.2 28.9 1.4 38.4 5.2 0.3 100 349

9.3 9.6 4.3 7.1 24.2 6.8 22.0 10.2 100 322

12.6 10.6 4.3 8.3 23.2 5.2 17.8 10.6 100 349

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School decrease in the proportion of men in both blue-collar categories. These trends continued to 1995. The proportion of both men and women at both levels of management rose, with decreases in upper- and lowerwhite-collar employment for women and upper- and lower-blue-collar and lower white-collar jobs for men. The long-term impacts of education were also evident in our most recent 1995 survey. University graduates were disproportionately located in the high-level manager occupational category, with twice as many men as women occupying these positions. Equal proportions of men and women were found in the professions. Almost all in the professional category were university graduates, comprising almost 40% of both male and female university graduates. The number of male university-educated midmanagers remained steady (compared to 1987-1988), though the number of female university-educated midmanagers increased. Still, only half as many women as men were in this occupational group. There was some decline in the number of university-educated men and women in the semiprofessional/technical category. Male and female community college graduates increased their presence as midmanagers. The proportion of men increased at the semiprofessional and technical level and held steady in the ranks of upper-blue-collar work, whereas the proportion of women declined somewhat at the semiprofessional and technical level and in the upper-white-collar category but held steady in lower-whitecollar occupations. For those with a high-school education only, about 11% of men and women were midmanagers in 1995. There were increases in the semiprofessional/technical categories for both men and women, decreases at both the upper- and lower-blue-collar ranks for men, and increases in the upper-white-collar but decreases in the lower-white-collar categories for women. We believe that the job experiences respondents gained over time likely provided entrance into high-level management positions for university graduates. Similarly, job experience allowed people of limited educational background into midmanagement positions. Thus, access to management positions appears to be significantly age related, with high-level management positions reserved for people with university and professional backgrounds. Table 1-2 provides a crude index of career mobility by comparing first full-time occupations with 1995 occupations, using quite broad occupational categories.2 Career changes, as shown under "All education levels" of Table 1-2, present a mixed picture for our respondents, given our very broad occupational categories. Members of the class of '73 who started out in high-level management/professional occupations tended

33

Table 1-2. Career Mobility by Education Attainment Education in 19795 High school

CAAT

University

Occupation in 1995 (%) First Full-Time Job in 1973-19796 1. High-level management/professional 2. Midmanagement /semiprof essional/ technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers 1. High-level management/professional 2. Midmanagement / semiprofessional / technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers 1. High-level management/professional 2. Midmanagement /semiprofessional/ technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers

All education 1. Hi-level management/professional levels 2. Midmanagement / semiprofessional / technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers All 1995 occupations CAAT = College of Applied Arts and Technology.

Total % Row %

1

2

3

4

20.0 10.0 3.9 10.8 28.6 10.0 18.4 2.7 81.3 31.4 27.8 29.6

20.0 60.0 28.6 20.8 28.6 66.7 34.7 43.2 14.1 51.0 47.2 40.7

40.0 20.0 46.8 32.5 14.3 11.7 32.7 29.7 3.1 11.8 8.3 18.5

20.0 10.0 20.8 35.8 28.6 11.7 14.3 24.3 1.6 5.9 16.7 11.1

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

2.4 4.7 36.3 56.6 4.6 39.2 32.0 24.2 36.0 28.7 20.2 15.2

5 10 77 120 7 60 49 37 64 51 36 27

72.7 18.6 12.6 13.4

15.6 60.5 35.5 28.2

6.5 12.4 35.0 30.6

5.2 8.5 16.9 27.8

100 100 100 100

12.7 21.3 30.2 35.7

77 129 183 216

21.8

35.7

25.0

17.5

100

n

605

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School to stay at this level of the occupational structure; similarly, those who started off in the midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical category tended to remain with those kinds of jobs. The data show substantial occupational category changes for those who began as skilled and unskilled workers, however. They tended to move into the skilled worker or midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical categories if they originally started out in unskilled jobs, or into the midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical category if they began in the skilled worker category. We have already noted that the variation of occupational careers held by respondents depended on level of education attained, and this pattern is again shown in the bivariate data of Table 12. Some 65% of university graduates began and continued their careers in the top two occupational categories shown in Table 1-2, and of those who had first jobs in the other two job categories (skilled and unskilled occupations), 70% or more moved into the top two occupational categories by 1995. Fully 70% of community college graduates began in midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical or skilled worker jobs and another quarter in unskilled occupations. By 1995, the majority of those who had started in the midmanagement/semiskilled/technical category still remained there. There was, however, a substantial career change into the midmanagement /semiprofessional /technical categories from the skilled worker category or into the skilled worker or midmanagement/ semiprofessional /technical categories from unskilled occupations. Over 90% of respondents with only a high-school education entered skilled or unskilled work. By 1995, the careers of almost 33% of those starting with skilled jobs had gone into midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical work, and over 50% of those who began in unskilled work had moved to skilled or midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical occupations. Only 13.1% of the class of '73 experienced downward career movement between first full-time jobs and 1995 occupations; 42.6% continued in their broad occupational category, and 44.3% shifted upward in terms of occupational category (n = 605). The career data just reviewed suggest a fairly tight linkage between education and the labor market in Ontario for the class of '73, which especially favored university and professional-school graduates. Where career shifts are revealed in Table 1-2, they are primarily out of the unskilled and skilled categories to adjacent occupational categories. The midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical occupational categories provided opportunities for class of '73 members with a limited education to achieve career mobility likely based on experience in the labor force.

35

Table 1-3 Intergenerational Occupational Mobility Son's Occupation in 1995 (%) Father's Occupation at 55 Years of Age 1. High-level management/professional 2. Midmanagement/ semiprofessional / technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers 5. Agriculture Column % Total n 1. High-level management / professional 2. Midmanagement/ semiprofessional / technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers 5. Agriculture Column % Total n

1

2

3

4

5

Total %

33.3

35.4

18.8

10.4

2.1

100

16.1

48

38.6 17.2 17.9 13.3 22.7

36.4 36.6 31.0 13.3 32.4

18.2 35.5 35.7 36.7 30.4

6.8

10.8 15.5 10.0 11.4

0.0 0.0 0.0

100 100 100 100 100

14.7 31.1 28.1 10.0 100.0

44 93 84 30 299 299

68

97

91

34

26.7 3.0 9

Row %

n

Daughter's Occupation 1995 (%)i 35.6

28.8

20.3

15.3

0.0

100

20.7

59

17.5 18.2 11.9 41.9 22.8

47.5 35.2 37.3 29.0 35.4

10.0 19.3 23.9 12.9 18.6

25.0 27.3 26.9 12.9 22.8

0.0 0.0 0.0 3.2 0.4 1

100 100 100 100 100

14.0 30.9 23.5 10.9 100.0

40 88 67 31 285 285

65

101

53

65

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School

37

Intergenerational Mobility, Occupational Structure, and Gender

Another way to evaluate career movement is by considering intergenerational occupational mobility. Table 1-3 compares the occupation of fathers at 55 years of age with the occupations of sons or daughters in 1995. These data reveal an even greater level of upward intergenerational mobility than upward career mobility.3 Comparing fathers and children shows that 17.7% of male respondents were downwardly mobile, 28.8% had occupations similar to that of their fathers, and 53.5% were upwardly mobile. The comparable proportions for women were as follows: 26.7% downwardly mobile, 26.7% with similar occupations, and 46.7% upwardly mobile (n = 285). Whereas 18.3% of respondents' fathers were employed as high-level managers/professionals, 22.8% of respondents had occupations in this category; 14.5% of fathers were employed in midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical occupations, whereas 33.8% of respondents fell into this category; 31.0% of fathers were skilled workers, as were 24.7% of their children; 25.9% of fathers were unskilled workers, but only 17.0% of their sons and daughters did similar work. Finally, whereas 10.4% of fathers were in agriculture, only 1.7% of their children remained in farming (n = 584). Thus, there was a marked shift in occupations between the generations, particularly from blue- and whitecollar unskilled and skilled work to high-level management and professional occupations and midmanagement/semiprofessional and technical occupations. Members of the class of '73 had made progress on two fronts compared with their parents. First, they had experienced career mobility that had also resulted in upward social mobility. In this regard, respondents took advantage of a shift in the occupational structure, which began in the 1960s and saw the proportion of managerial and professional occupations increase substantially (Krahn & Lowe, 1993a, Table 3.3). Second, we have already demonstrated that postsecondary education became the means by which to achieve occupational ends. Here, the contrast could not be more evident. Whereas about 25% of respondents' fathers and mothers had some university or college education or a university degree or higher, the proportion of respondents with those kinds of educational attainment approached 75%. Whereas 14.4% of respondents' fathers and 5.5% of their mothers had a university degree or higher (n = 788), 33% of our sample attained a university degree or higher. Finally, more than 50% the class of '73 members reported in 1973 that their mothers were then employed. By contrast, in 1995, 86.5% (n =

38

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

788) of the class of '73 women reported being employed, self-employed, or both. The class of '73 women clearly bear the dual responsibilities of managing a household, children, and work. Only 13.5% of women with children were not employed in 1995 (n = 289), though 22.8% of working mothers were working only part time (less than 35 hours per week). By contrast, only 2.0% of men reported part-time work in 1995, if employed (n = 351). Somewhat more than 50% of women not working in 1995 reported that the main reasons for not working were family responsibilities or not being able to arrange child care. Almost 75% of the class of '73 women reported voluntarily choosing not to work one or more times between 1978 and 1994; this applied to only 15% of men. Women (46.5%) also reported having experienced unemployment somewhat more frequently than men (37.4%) between 1978 and 1994. The concentration of men and women in different kinds of jobs in 1995, as shown in Table 1-1, reflects delayed careers for women and shows up as differences in the average Blishen4 scores for men and women. The class of '73 men who were employed in 1995 had an average Blishen score of 52.26, whereas for women the average Blishen score was 49.38. Personal incomes differed markedly for men and women. The median income for men employed full time in 1995 was $50,000 to $59,999, whereas for women the median personal income was between $30,000 and $34,999. Socioeconomic Status and Rural/Urban Origins

In considering factors affecting life-course transitions and careers, social background is a critical element. For the class of '73, the key social background factors were SES, rural/urban origins, and gender. We have already considered some of the main impacts of gender. SES, as measured by the kinds of occupations parents had, parents' educational attainment, and parents' total income proved to be significant factors but made their impact in complex ways early in an individual's life. In 1979, SES had direct impacts on selection of programs (academic vs. nonacademic) and grades achieved in high school, self-concept of academic ability, level of occupational expectation, and level of education attained, and indirectly, on level of expected education which in turn strongly affected level of education attained (Turrittin, Anisef, & MacKinnon, 1983). SES continued to have an impact on current occupation as reported in 1987-1988 (Anisef et al., 1992). But the major long-term effects of SES appeared to work through education, which, as we have shown, profoundly sorted class of

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School '73 members into different career trajectories. Thus, trichotomizing SES showed that by 1979, 50% of the low SES group had no postsecondary education, 25% had received a community college certificate or diploma, and 16% had graduated from university. For the middle SES group, 20% had graduated from university, 20% had obtained a community college certificate or diploma, and 40% had completed high school only. Of the upper SES group, 50% had graduated from university, 17% had obtained a community college certificate or diploma, and 18% had only secondary schooling. By 1995, at 40 years of age, class of '73 members had already attained a new SES for themselves, however, reflecting their own achieved levels of education, occupations, and household incomes. Another significant background variable was geographical origin within Ontario. In the original 1973 survey, high schools were classified by degree of urbanization of their location, using four categories. The first was metropolitan Toronto, the second and third divisions consisted of other large and medium-size cities (including suburban areas), and the fourth division consisted of high schools generally in small towns serving small towns and rural areas. We have shown in previous work that geographical location impacted 1979 educational attainment through such variables as program in high school, self-concept of academic ability, level of occupational expectation, and expected level of education (Turrittin et al., 1983). For example, if we compare metropolitan Toronto, other cities, and small towns and rural areas, 50% of the class of '73 members from Toronto graduated with a university degree, compared to 33% from other cities, and 18% of small town/rural members. Some 14% of Toronto respondents obtained a community college certificate or diploma, whereas 20% from other cities and somewhat more than 25% of small town/rural respondents got certificates and diplomas. Twenty-five percent of the class of '73 members from Toronto had no further postsecondary education by 1979, compared to almost 33% from other cities, and almost 50% of small town/rural members. The effect of geographical location can in part be understood in terms of access to postsecondary institutions. Universities in Ontario are concentrated in only a few urban centers, whereas community colleges are widely dispersed across the province. Attending university in a city where one does not reside or that is beyond commuting distance was likely a financial barrier to class of '73 members who did not live in or near university locations. In terms of occupational mobility after completing their education, the data (not shown here) indicate that urban class of '73 members maintained an advantage over those from rural and small towns with

39

40

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

respect to first full-time jobs and 1995 occupations. A higher proportion of respondents with urban origins were employed in high management/professional and midmanager/semiprofessional/technical job categories in 1995. Stayers and Movers: Leaving One's Home Community

We have already mentioned that members of the class of '73 occupied a SES distinct from the SES background of their parents. Similarly, their current geographical locations often differed from where they lived when they attended grade 12 in 1973. We developed a two-value variable that classified class of '73 members as either "stayers" or "movers," with stayers remaining in or near the community where they attended high school and movers indicating a 1995 residence not in or near where they attended high school. We should underscore that being a mover is not an indicator of a geographical shift from a rural to an urban destination but could be such a shift in perhaps the reverse direction. Table 1-4 shows how geographical mobility is related to occupational mobility from first full-time job to occupation in 1995. This table demonstrates that being either a stayer or mover did not affect our participant's first jobs, though being a mover did improve their chances of starting out in the midmanagement/semiprofessional/technical category. By 1995, however, being a mover strongly tipped occupational achievement toward the two higher occupational status categories. For example, for those entering the labor market in the skilled category, moving led to entering management or professional positions more frequently than for those who remained in their community. There were no significant gender differences with respect to being a stayer or a mover. We speculate, however, that moving from one's home community demonstrated an intensive search for improved employment opportunity, even for female members of the class of '73 whose economic status largely depended on their spouse's occupation. We found some additional characteristics associated with being a stayer or mover. Whereas stayers and movers were evenly divided within the high SES origin group, among the middle SES group, 56.5% became stayers and 43.5% became movers (n = 260); within the lowest SES origin group, 62.6% remained stayers and only 37.4% were movers (n = 265). Thus, lower SES is associated with less geographical mobility. When we examined geographical mobility in relation to socioeconomic mobility, comparing social-origin SES with achieved SES level in 19955

Table 1-4 Geographical Mobility and Occupational Careers First Full-Time Occupation .A.

XJ.

i_7 W

-1»

W4X1

-L JLJLJk

1.V—

1. High-level management / professional 2. Midmanagement/ semiprofessional / technical 3. Skilled workers 4. Unskilled workers 5. Agriculture Column % Total n

Occupation in 1995

Geographical Mobility

1

2

3

4

5

Total %

Row %

n

Stayers Movers

64.0 57.1

16.0 28.6

12.0

8.0 9.5

0.0 0.0

100 100

6.7 7.8

25 21

Stayers Movers Stayers Movers Stayers Movers Stayers Movers Stayers Movers

10.5 21.8 12.7 18.4 10.0 18.9

64.9 50.9 27.1 36.8 28.1 30.6 14.3 20.0 32.1 36.2

10.5 12.7 41.5 27.6 33.8 22.5 28.6 60.0 31.0 21.3

12.3 12.7 17.8 17.1 27.5 27.0

1.8 1.8 0.8 0.0 0.6 0.9

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

15.2 20.5 31.6 28.4 42.8 41.4

57 55 118 76 160 111 14 5 374 268 642

7.1

20.0 14.4 22.4

114

217

4.8

173

7.1 0.0

20.1 19.4

127

42.9 0.0 2.4 0.7 11

3.7 1.9

42

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

for each class of '73 member, we discovered that being a mover enhanced one's chances of improving one's SES and helped to retard downward movement in socioeconomic terms. Being a mover was also associated with entry into high-level managerial and professional occupations especially for class of '73 members from either low SES or rural backgrounds, or both, in contrast to being a stayer. By 1995, movers were significantly more likely to acquire a university degree (42.7%; n = 342) than were stayers (26.9% n = 446) and stayers were more likely to have completed high school only (33.0%) than were movers (19.0%). This relationship holds true even when SES category is controlled. Finally, in our 1979 survey, members of the class of '73 were asked to describe themselves using a series of adjectives known as a semantic differential. Movers were significantly more likely than stayers to describe themselves as "important," "effective," and "interesting." By way of illustration, 56% of movers and 42% of stayers characterized themselves as effective persons. Conclusion In this chapter, we have argued that an understanding of the school-toemployment transitions of younger generations can benefit from a look back at the pathways taken by previous generations. Although we adopted the major premises of life-course theory - that is, that individuals construct their transitions from school to employment within the context of social origin and other social dimensions - we posit the usefulness of adopting the language and employing the techniques that allow us to identify patterns of social, interoccupational, and intraoccupational mobility. In applying these techniques, we have replicated gender and social class findings typically found in North American stratification and mobility studies. Members of the class of '73 had good reason to be hopeful about future prospects as they moved into their high school years. In 1970, Ontario Canada's "industrial heartland" - had the country's lowest unemployment rate, and those with jobs had higher real incomes and better working conditions than had any previous generation (Ray, 1985). Conditions were changing in Ontario, however, and by 1975, the unemployment rate rose to 6% higher than that of three other provinces, though low by today's standards (Ray, 1985). Though our data analysis of social mobility exclusively focussed on full-time employment, we do note that an increased minority of respondents turned to part-time work and selfemployment, especially women. Furthermore, a greater proportion of

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School women than men experienced periods of unemployment between 1978 and 1994. Our findings also showed that respondents in the middle level of SES background were particularly vulnerable to change, with over 60% either moving up or down the ladder of success with respect to intergenerational mobility. Yet, a minority (22%) of respondents from more humble origins took advantage of economic opportunities and moved into upper socioeconomic positions. It is also important to note gender differences that favored greater occupational inheritance among men and the tendency for the gross mobility patterns of women to be quite distinct from those of men. It is also quite clear that the impact of geographical location and the decision to leave home should be taken into account when examining mobility patterns. Living in a city clearly favors upward mobility, and moving location serves to enhance both intergenerational and career mobility. Thus, respondents from lower socioeconomic origins who moved, in contrast with those who remained in their community, measurably increased their SES. A subsequent analysis of those who remained versus those who chose to move revealed structural and psychological correlates. Thus, in comparison with movers, stayers are more likely to be drawn from lower socioeconomic origins, are less likely to positively assess their chances of graduating from university or to acquire a degree, and are less likely to assess themselves as effective, important, or interesting. Our analysis of career mobility for participants who held full-time jobs revealed that the class of '73 did move up the occupational hierarchy, with the proportions in unskilled and agricultural skilled occupations steadily decreasing by 1995. Less than a 33% experienced no occupational mobility from first full-time to current full-time occupation. Movement up or down was incremental. Both men and women experienced a pattern of upward career mobility, though the pattern appeared somewhat stronger for men. It is also important to note that the career impact of socioeconomic origins via education proved more prominent in the long run, favoring those of higher socioeconomic origins. Residence and geographical mobility also proved of some importance in understanding career mobility patterns. Thus, respondents with city backgrounds experienced greater occupational mobility than did rural participants and movers were more likely than stayers to derive benefits from leaving their community by midcareer. In examining the class of '73, we were struck by both the complexity of life-course transition entries and exits made by participants and the degree of uncertainty they expressed at various phases of the project as

43

44

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

they moved from adolescence into adulthood. Given the even more frequent nonconventional pathways that we expect to emerge among the younger generations of the 1990s, however, life-course researchers wishing to employ conventional social and occupational mobility concepts will likely encounter methodological or practical difficulties. For example, between 1975 and 1994, the part-time employment rate for young women aged 15 to 24 years more than doubled, from 22% to 48% (Krahn, 1996; p. 16), making the use of full-time occupations to measure social mobility problematic. As deskilling, that is the under-utilization of acquired skills, continues and self-employment increases, issues regarding how to rank occupations on a scale that reflects both skill and educational requirements of occupations will arise. These measurement problems need to be thought through carefully if useful and valid comparisons across generations are to be made. Notes 1. Both inter- and intragenerational occupational mobility require a measure of occupational status. This is conventionally done by grouping occupational titles. Respondents' occupations in all our surveys were coded using the four-digit numbers of the Canadian Classification and Dictionary of Occupations (CCDO). In turn, these CCDO codes were used

to place a respondent's occupation into an occupational status classification scheme developed by Pineo, Porter, and McRoberts (Creese, Guppy & Meissner, 1991, p. 34). This classification is a 16-category scale, a rank-ordering of occupations from the highest (selfemployed professionals) to the lowest (farm laborers) in terms of years of schooling and income. The Porter-Pineo-McRoberts Scale was subsequently revised by Creese, Guppy, and Meissner. Taking into account changes in the labor force, the nature of gender segregation in occupations, and patterns of inconsistency, the 16 categories were reduced to 10 (Creese et al., 1991, p. 36). Occupational mobility itself is shown by comparing father's occupation with the occupational attainment of son or daughter. In the 1995 Phase Six survey, we asked subjects to report their current occupation if employed and the occupations of their parents when their parents were 55 years of age if employed. The PorterPineo-McRoberts Scale is more effective for discerning gender differences than the measure derived from factor analysis, so we employ it in this section. 2. For Table 1-2, the high-level manager category is combined with the professional category, midmanagers are combined with semiprofessionals/technical, upper white-collar and upper blue-collar workers are combined into a skilled worker category, and the lower white-collar and lower blue-collar categories are combined into an unskilled worker category. 3. On the basis of respondent's education and occupation (Blishen score), spouse's education, and family income, factor analysis was also used to construct a separate measure that reflects class of destination as a Blishen score. 4. The Blishen score is a two-digit index number attached to each of Statistics Canada's approximately 500 occupational titles and roughly reflects the different compositions of incumbents' education and income within that occupational category (Blishen, Caroll & Moore, 1987).

Social and Geographical Mobility 20 Years after High School

45

5. As in the case of the socioeconomic (SES) status variable that was created through a factor analysis of the 1973 data on parents7 education, parents' occupations, and parents' total household income, a new SES variable was created through factor analysis to indicate the SES of each member of class of '73 as of 1995, based on subject's education, spouse's education, family income, and subject's occupation included as a Blishen score.

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions VICTOR THIESSEN E. DIANNE LOOKER

This chapter looks at the attitudes and experiences that youth have of a series of transitions as they move from their teenage years to become young adults. This examination is informed by the life-course perspective, which, as Heinz (1996a, p. 3) notes "focuses on socially recognized sequences of transitions/' Heinz also notes the importance of longitudinal research to "uncover the dynamics of various transitions as they construct or feed into life trajectories" (Heinz, 1996, p. 3). Our analysis presents data from a longitudinal study of Canadian youth to help describe some of these dynamics. Relationship to the Literature The life-course literature (Abeles, 1987; Callahan & McClusky, 1983; Clausen, 1986; Dragastin & Elder, 1975; Elder, 1974; Elder, 1985; Heinz, 1991a; Hogan, 1981; Jones & Wallace, 1992; Kerckhoff, 1990; Oppenheimer, 1981; Rossi, 1985; Troll, 1985) emphasizes the importance of transitions. These include transitions within and between educational and occupational and marital-familial paths (Elder, 1985). This perspective also recognizes the relevance of the historical and structural context in which individuals undertake these transitions. "People make social history even as they are influenced by historical change" (Elder & Caspi, 1990, p. 108). Different transitions make up what life-course theorists see as careers or trajectories, "social strands of a life course in which persons invest themselves or (into which they, (V.T./E.D.L.) are thrust" (Clausen, 1986, p. 30). Focus on a particular cohort facilitates transitional analyses because, as Hogan states, "... [individuals] in a birth cohort age chronologically at the same pace and experience historical events at the same age ... A cohort level of analysis is therefore an appropriate method of discerning the effects of social-structural conditions on the transitions behavior of individuals" (1981, p. 33). We undertook just such a cohort analysis, discussed in this chapter. 46

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

47

One important issue in the analysis of the life course is whether various transitions are "on time'' or "off time" (Abeles, 1987). This issue involves two components that we will examined in this chapter. The first has to do with subjective definitions of what the important, normative transitions are and the appropriate order of these transitions. The second is the order in which individuals actually undertake these transitions and how making one shift has implications for other transitions. Adolescence is a time of multiple changes (Greene & Boxer, 1986). It is a time when youth complete their compulsory schooling and face the prospect of moving into a variety of adult roles. As Wyn (1996a) notes, however, age alone does not define either youth or adulthood. Such a conceptualization "cannot adequately deal with the immense differences between groups of young people in the nature of the transitions to adult life" (Wyn, 1996a: 33). Rather, it is important to document the different patterns (Looker & Dwyer, 1998a) that young people expect and in fact create as they move into adult roles. Several researchers recently have emphasized the importance of examining gender differences in these transitions (Baker, 1985; Coles, 1996; Day, 1990; Looker, 1985; Looker & McNutt, 1989; Mackie, 1987; Mandell & Crysdale, 1993; Moen, 1985; Rossi, 1985; Thiessen, 1996). Not only do young women and young men undertake some different transitions, but the ones they share may happen at different times and/or in different sequence. The meaning of and the costs associated with various transitions are also likely to vary by gender (Looker, 1993). Recent analyses have recognized the fact that many of the transitions to adulthood are becoming extended (Dwyer, 1996; Krahn, 1996; McGrath, 1996; Sharpe, 1996). The transition from school to work is becoming more complex (Coles, 1996, Coles, 1995; Jones & Wallace, 1992, Roberts, 1996; Wyn, 1996b) and multidimensional (Krahn, 1996; p. 7). As Thomas (1993, p. 126) commented for much of the population, transitions between the roles of student and employee have become "multiple in time and increasing in variety." We sought to document some of the complexities of youth transitions and the ways in which work, education, and family transitions are interlinked, in both the normative expectations and the actions of youth. Data Collection This was a longitudinal cohort study of youth living in three areas of Canada: Hamilton, Ontario (to permit a comparison with an earlier study

48

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

[Looker, 1994]; Halifax, Nova Scotia (to permit a regional urban comparison); and rural Nova Scotia (to permit a rural-urban comparison). The rural sample included information from 11 school districts, chosen to be representative of their economic regions (see Looker, 1993, for details). Names and addresses of all youth born in 1971 in their catchment area were obtained from the school boards. These lists included school leavers as well as those who had already graduated. A random sample of 400 youth was drawn in each of the three sample areas. In-depth face-toface interviews were completed in 1989 when the youths were 17 years of age, turning 18. The response rates were 78% in Hamilton, 71% in Halifax, and 72% in rural Nova Scotia. The interviews explored youths' experiences in family and school and visions of their future life, particularly their educational and occupational aspirations and expectations. Primarily as a means of updating our records concerning their current mailing addresses, we sent a short questionnaire to our respondents in 1992. Then in 1994, we sent a detailed interview to the corrected addresses. We were able to obtain data 1 from 838 respondents in 1994, representing 68% of the original sample. The 1994 questionnaire documented, retrospectively, their education and occupational histories in 4month increments. Additionally, many of the questions asked in 1989 were repeated, giving us the necessary information to tap both uncertainty and change. Historical Context

The time period during which these data were collected coincided with a number of profound changes taking place in the Canadian economy. The 1980s were a time of deep recession followed by a short-lived recovery and then a downturn (Krahn, 1991). This situation contrasted markedly with the economic expansion that characterized the 1960s and 1970s (Anisef, Okihiro, & James, 1982; Rashid, 1993). The 1990s brought in another recession, during which youth unemployment and underemployment rose dramatically (Krahn & Lowe, 1990; Redpath, 1994). Despite the demographic shifts related to the postwar baby boom that lead to a decrease in the population of 15- to 19-year-olds in Canada, the early 1990s saw an increase in high-school completion rates (Krahn, 1996) and an increase in postsecondary participation, such that Canada had the highest university participation rates among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (Oderkirk, 1993). The 1990s also brought a shift to more jobs, being located in the service sector

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions (Osberg & Grude, 1995) and an increased reliance on part-time as compared with full-time work (Krahn, 1995). A mix of school and work became more and more common (Krahn, 1996, p. 24). Labor-market instabilities meant that more and more youth experienced bouts of unemployment and/or were pushed out of the labor force (Krahn & Lowe, 1990) Prior to the 1980s, more men than women attended university in Canada. By the time of the 1981 census, this situation had shifted so that equal numbers of women and men attended, at least at the undergraduate level, although men still dominated postgraduate work (Statistics Canada, 1981). By the early 1990s, women were slightly overrepresented in undergraduate enrollments (Statistics Canada, 1994). There were also shifts in the gender composition of the work force during the 1980s and 1990s. Women were employed in a wider diversity of positions in the later years (Armstrong & Armstrong, 1983; Boulet & Lavallee, 1984; Hughes, 1990,1995). The Areas

Hamilton is located in the highly industrialized region of southern Ontario. It is itself very much an industrial city, with a range of industrybased businesses, including two major steel plants. By contrast, major sources of employment in Halifax are the various levels of government (municipal, provincial, and federal). In addition to being the provincial capital, Halifax boasts several postsecondary educational institutions. Hamilton is home to one university and a large community college; being located in southern Ontario, it is within commuting distance of several other postsecondary institutions. Rural Nova Scotia is more heavily dependent on primary industries than are either of the two urban areas, and it has chronically high levels of unemployment, exacerbated in the 1990s by severe cutbacks at the fishing industry. Although there are universities and community colleges close to some of the rural respondents, the majority of respondents have no direct access to either university or community colleges without leaving their home community. The recession that was to influence many areas of Canada in the late 1980s had not yet hit Hamilton or Halifax when the first data collection was being undertaken in 1989. Unemployment in both Hamilton and Halifax was about 9%. In this, Hamilton reflected the employment scene in much of the region of southern Ontario. Halifax, on the other hand, was an oasis in what some would see as a desert of unemployment. 2 Being the provincial capital and relying so heavily on government posi-

49

50

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

tions, Halifax did not feel the full crunch of the recession until the 1990s, when governments at all levels intensified programs of restraint and retrenchment. Measurements

We divided transitions into two types: (1) activity transitions, or those that eat up daily hours, and (2) lifestyle transitions, such as leaving the parental home. In the former, we included specifically full-time work, part-time work, full-time school, part-time school, unemployment (but looking for work), full-time (unpaid) homemaker, part-time (unpaid) homemaker, full-time child care (own children), part-time child care (own children). In the summer of 1994, our young adults were asked to indicate which of these activities they did within each 4-month time block, starting with January to April 1989 and ending with January to April 1994, for a total of 16 time blocks. We defined an activity transition as a change within an activity domain between two adjacent time blocks, either by initiating such activity or terminating it. For each domain, our measures could range from 0 (no transitions into or out of that activity over the whole time period) to 15 (indicating alternating entering and exiting of that activity between each successive time period). This measure can be thought of as capturing the extent of discontinuities in a given domain. Measures of the youths' attitudes to normative sequencing of transitions and their own expectations about these transitions came from precoded questions in the 1989 interview and the 1994 questionnaires. Details of question wording, where relevant, are included with the corresponding table. Because one purpose of our analysis is to indicate changing expectations and attitudes, we include only those 1989 respondents who also responded in 1994. Given the focus on this subset of the 1989 youth, the results reported in this analysis differ to some extent from other analyses of the 1989 data set. Findings Normative Attitudes

We began our analysis of transitions norms by examining the respondents' attitudes to various key transitions. As we have said, there are dif-

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

51

Table 2-1. Percentage Who Would Feel Bothered by Not Experiencing Certain Transitions, by Gender, 1989 and 1994 1994

1989 Role Experience* Full-time job Marriage Children University graduation*7

% Male (n)

% Female (n)

% Male (n)

% Female (n)

99(344) 82(342) 82(342) 70(337)

96(465) 85(463) 84(459) 75(459)

98(287) 80(286) 84(286)

93(405) 86(404) 89(405)

fl

For the role experiences of full-time job, marriage, and children, respondents were asked to indicate how bothered they would be if they did not have these experiences. The percentages indicate combined responses of "bothered a great deal" and "bothered a bit." For the question about university graduation, respondents were asked to indicate how much they agree with the statement "I will be disappointed if I don't graduate from university. The percentages are those who either "strongly agreed" or "agreed" with this statement. *This question was not asked in 1994. Percentages in bold type indicate statistically significant gender differences (p < .05).

ferent "markers" that are used in young peoples7 negotiations of adult status. These include obtaining a full-time job, getting married, having children, and obtaining a university education. Any one of these, depending on the context, may be sufficient for considering oneself to be an adult. Looker and Dwyer (1998b) reported that two thirds or more of a sample of Australian youth saw having a secure job, being married, becoming a parent, and completing one's education credentials as important to claiming adult status. A similar number saw moving out of the parental home as an important part of the transition to adulthood. Table 2-1 shows the normative agreement on the importance of each of these markers to the young people in the Canadian sample areas. Virtually all male (99%) and almost all female respondents (96%) in 1989 said they would be bothered if they never had a full-time paid job. This is particularly telling for the young women. By this measure, they are almost as committed to having paid work as are their male counterparts.3 This commitment to work remained high over the following 5 years: by 1994, when the respondents were between 23 and 24 years of age, 98% of the men and 93% of the women gave the same response. This high level of consensus is evidence of a strongly held social norm. Part of the expectation that young adults have is that they will work, and work full-time.

52

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

The apparent commitment to work was virtually unanimous in our sample, but respondents' commitment to marriage and parenthood was also very high. In other questions, we established that all but a handful (less than 10%) expected to marry and have at least one child. Here we see that they considered these transitions important enough that upward of 80% said they would be bothered if they never married and/or never had a child. In 1989, there was no statistically significant gender difference in the responses to how bothered one would be: only 2% to 3% more women than men indicated they would be bothered if they never got married or if they never had any children. Over time, several things happened with respect to beliefs about both marriage and parenthood. First, a small but statistically significant gender difference emerged for both topics; by 1994, a higher percentage of women than men stated they would be bothered if they did not experience marriage and/or parenthood. For the issue of marriage, this gender difference was created by a slight decrease in the percentage of men and a slight increase in the percentage of women who stated they would be bothered if they never got married. With respect to parenthood, the percentage of both men and women who stated they would be bothered if they never had a child increased, but the increase was greater among women than men. The last row of Table 2-1 gives us information on the youths' commitment to pursuing a particular form of postsecondary education, more specifically a university degree. Unfortunately, this question was asked only in 1989, so there can be no examination of shifts over time. Nevertheless, at 17 years of age, at least 7 of every 10 of the youths saw obtaining a university degree as a sufficiently important goal for themselves that they would be disappointed if it did not happen. Beyond expectations that they would make these important transitions at some point, the youths also had fairly consistent images of the appropriate order of the transitions. We again have measures of how bothered they would be by certain scenarios, particularly focusing on the relative timing of marriage. Table 2-2 gives the relevant results. A complex series of gender and maturation/time differences characterized our respondents' feelings about having out-of-sequence transitions. First, in both time periods, statistically significantly higher percentages of young men than young women felt they would be bothered if they got married before finishing school (85% vs. 80% in 1989; 68% vs. 51% in 1994). More men than women (83% vs. 64% and 77% vs. 48%) would be bothered if they got married before they got a full-time job. Other analyses (e.g., Looker, 1993) have shown that marriage has

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

53

Table 2-2. Percentage Who Would Feel Bothered by Out-of-Sequence Transitions, by Gender, 1989 and 1994 1994

1989 Sequence

% Male (n)

Marriage before finishing school 85(336) Marriage before full-time job 83(338) Children before marriage 90(339)

% Female (n)

% Male (n)

% Female (n)

80(461) 64(460) 87(462)

68(285) 77(283) 69(286)

51(406) 48(405) 65(407)

Percentages in bold type indicate statistically significant gender differences (p < .05).

quite different meanings for young men and young women. Men still see themselves as responsible for providing for the financial security of the "family" once they marry. Marriage for young women restricts some options, particularly those that would involve geographical mobility, but it does not push them into the labor force (and therefore out of schooling) as much as it would young men. Marriage has implications for the work that young women can pursue, but it does not (as it might have in earlier eras) mean they will be pushed out of the labor force, nor does it mean, as it seems to for young men, that they would be pushed into the labor force by the financial responsibilities of marriage. With respect to having a child before getting married, the same gender tendency exists but does not reach statistical significance in either year. Table 2-2 also shows that for both genders, there are substantial declines in the percentages of our respondents who would feel bothered by having any of the out-of-sequence transitions. For example, in 1994, fewer men (69% vs. 90% in 1989) and fewer women (65% vs. 87% in 1989) would feel bothered by becoming a parent before getting married. This decline in concern with age may reflect a changing attitude to formal marriage as the youth matured. The data in Table 2-1 suggest that it does not reflect a decrease in the importance of marriage. It is interesting to note that women are not more likely than men to be bothered by having a child before marriage. Given that mothers, not fathers, tend to have responsibility for a child in a single-parent household, one might expect that the young women would be more concerned about the relative ordering of these two events. This was not the case. There was no statistically significant gender difference in attitude in either 1989 or 1994. A possible interpretation of this pattern could derive from other infor-

54

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

mation in the data set. Few, if any, of the youths or their parents anticipated negative outcomes, such as divorcing, being on welfare, or experiencing unemployment. If the pattern of anticipating positive rather than negative outcomes extended to the youths' attitudes to marriage and childbearing, we would expect that they did not anticipate unplanned pregnancies. Rather, their child would be planned and wanted - and whether the two partners are formally married at the time would be less significant than their willingness to make the commitment of having a child together. We cannot, with the current data, test this last suggestion, but it would help explain the absence of an otherwise expected gender difference. By 1994, many of the young people surveyed had in fact already pursued some postsecondary education. For those (particularly rural youth) who had to leave their home community to pursue advanced education, marriage at 24 years of age, when they had already made the move, was less of a threat to their schooling than it would be at age 17 when they were in high school, living at home. Given their progression in terms of postsecondary education, the decline in concern about the effect of marriage on their education is not surprising. As with the relative ordering of education and marriage, the order of full-time work and marriage was an issue for fewer of the respondents in 1994 than it was in 1989. They were closer to having their education credentials at 24 years of age, so the financial implications of marriage were less problematic than they would have been for a teenager. In fact, the number of women concerned about the order of these two transitions sank to just under 50% by 1994. Overall, our data on normative expectations suggest that despite variations by age and gender, there was a high degree of consensus among the youths on the importance of higher education, full-time work, marriage, and parenting. They also had some fairly clear ideas about the appropriate normative sequencing of these events. Anticipation of "outof-sequence" transitions did not sit well with these young people. Individual Expectations

The next stage was to look at what these same youths said about their own expectations with respect to these transitions. Did they see themselves as undertaking these important transitions? Did they see these transitions as being in the near future or as distant goals? Table 2-3 shows us the percentage of youth who expect to be married by 24 years of age.

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

55

Table 2-3. Marriage Expectations by Gender Expect to Be Married by 24 years of Age" 1989 responses 1994 responses n

% Male 34 16 344

% Female 46 33 465

Includes respondents who have already been married, divorced, or widowed. Gender differences are statistically significant (p < .05) in both 1989 and 1994.

Given the well-established practice of there being an age gap in favor of grooms being older than brides, it is not surprising that more of the young women (46% vs. 34% of the men) say they expect to be married by 24 years of age. We will see later (under "Transition Experiences") how many men and women have in fact made this transition by 1994, but here it is relevant to note the shift in the expectations over time. When they were interviewed in 1989, the youths were at a very different stage of their life course than they were in 1994. As 17-year-olds, most of them were in school and very few of them (and presumably few of their friends) were married or had children. They planned to marry at some point, but questions about the likely age of marriage were likely to be tapping into their beliefs about the normative age at which marriage is most likely to occur. The youths had moved into a different point in their developmental trajectory by the time they were contacted in 1994. At that point, most of them had graduated from high school and undertaken some postsecondary education; many had worked either summers or during the school year. Legally, they were adults and were able to participate in many areas of adult life from which they were earlier barred. Marriage is a more viable option at 24 years of age than at 17. Asking them at this point about likely age of marriage is essentially asking them whether they have immediate plans for making this transition or whether it is still a few - or many - years off. One third of the young women and one sixth of the young men either are married or see marriage in their near future as of 1994. Applying the norms to their own life situation apparently calls for some flexibility. Table 2-4 gives the youths' expectations, for both 1989 and 1994, about number of children by 24 years of age. Only a small minority (12% of the men and 5% of the women in 1994) say they plan to have no children.

56

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Table 2-4. Number of Children Expected, by Gender, 1989 and 1994 Number of Children Expected None 1 2 3 >4

n

1989 % Male 6 10 57 18 9 334

1994

% Female 8 9 48 21 14 456

% Male

% Female

12 10 55 17 7 278

5 13 57 18 7 389

Most of these are the ones who are in the group in Table 2-1 that said they would not be bothered were they to remain childless. Having examined the youths' plans for marriage and parenting, our next step was to look at one more transition: to postsecondary education (Table 2-5). The majority said they expected to obtain some form of postsecondary education, most commonly from a university. University education is touted by parents, teachers, and particularly high school counselors as the path to take after high school: 72% of the youths said their counselor thought it best that they go to university; 67%, 66%, and 73% said the same of their fathers, mothers and teachers, respectively. In 1989, 68% of the young women expected to take this route; 19% of them expected to go beyond a first degree to postgraduate work. The young men matched this percentage for postgraduate studies, although somewhat fewer young men planned on stopping after an undergraduate degree (39% of men vs. 47% of women). Only about 1 in 10 men and women planned to stop their formal education after high school (12% of men and 10% of women in 1989). Yet, these figures also show the diversity of youths' expectations. Although more than 50% planned to go to a university, about 25% also saw other forms of postsecondary education as viable options. By 1994 there was an upward shift in the expectations of many of the youths. Only 7% of both men and women then said they were willing to stop with no more than high school. More of them than in 1989 planned to pursue a postgraduate education, but again, many saw nonuniversity programs as meeting their needs. Indeed, nonuniversity programs were chosen by more respondents in 1994 than in 1989, although substantially

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

57

Table 2-5. Educational Expectations, by Gender, in 1989 and 1994 1989 % Male High school or less Some nonuniversity Nonuniversity certificate Some university University undergraduate degree Postgraduate Total n

12 3 24 1 39 21 100 330

1994

% Female % Male 10 1 22 2 47 19 100 444

7 27 9 6 19 32 100 309

% Female 7 17 10 4 18 44 100 405

Gender differences for 1989 are not statistically significant; gender differences for 1994 are statistically significant (p < .05).

fewer men and women then expected to obtain a nonuniversity certificate. Details on the specific programs and their length indicate that even within the postsecondary options, there was a wide range of paths that the youth expected to take. To summarize, as youth moved from being teenagers to being young adults, their expectations for the future changed. Marriage became less definite an immediate option as they moved into their twenties. Parenting was still seen as important, but the time frame tended to be postponed, and the number of youth saying they planned to have more than four children dropped. Meanwhile, these young adults were turning toward more and more postcompulsory education. Few anticipated stopping after high school; more than half planned to get at least one university degree. We saw evidence of a blurring of expectations, however. There were patterns, but nowhere near the 80% to 90% or more consistency in response that we saw in Tables 2-2 and 2-1. Transition Experiences

The data on youths' attitudes presented thus far in this chapter suggest consensus on norms surrounding several of these transitions. The section on expectations shows that the youths had a range of options they were pursuing. Some of the variation reflects the social location of the youths (see Looker, 1993; Thiessen & Looker, 1993); some reflects the choices the youths and their parents made. The next phase of the analy-

58

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Table 2-6. Work, School, Homemaking, and Child-Care Transitions Experienced by 24 years of Age, by Gender Respondent's Gender Transition Full-time job Part-time job* Unemployment Full-time student Part-time student Finished all education Left parental home* Marriage* Parenthood* Full-time homemaker* Part-time homemaker* Full-time child caretaker* Part-time child caretaker

% Male 82 64 42 78 20 40 52 13 6 0 1 0 1

% Female 77 73 38 83 25 47 65 23 15 9 8 11 6

n = 812. *p < .05.

sis describes the transitions that the youths had in fact made by the time they were 23 or 24 years of age. Table 2-6 documents the different transitions that the youths reported at the time of the 1994 data collection. For all transitions except experiencing unemployment, statistically significant or nearly significant gender differences (p < .10) appear. By 24 years of age, women are substantially more likely than men to have left the parental home (65% vs. 52%), gotten married (23% vs. 13%), become a parent (15% vs. 6%), and consequently engaged in the traditionally female tasks of homemaking and child care, on either a full- or part-time basis. In analyses not reported here, we established that leaving home, marriage, and parenthood had quite dissimilar consequences for men and women. Marriage, and particularly parenthood, introduced young women, but not young men, to domestic roles of homemaking and child care. Less than 10% of the men who were married or had children reported taking responsibility for homemaking or child care. By contrast, about half (47%) of young women experienced homemaking or child-care roles if they were married, and about three quarters of them (78%) did so if they were mothers (data not shown).

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

59

Table 2-7. Transitions Into and Out of Work and School Between 1989 and 1994

63 7 15 3 2 3 1 2 100

%

Part-time Schooling

24 17

78 9 2 4 0 1 0 1 100

7 2 4 4 31 100

CJl

38 14 13 7 6 3 5 4 10 100

%

Full-time Schooling

CJl

Total

31 13 11 6 6 4 8 3 19 100

%

% Part-time Jobs Unemployment

CJl

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 >8

%

Full-time Jobs

CJl

Number of Transitions, 1989-94

n = 812. A transition is defined as reported movement into, or out of, a given status. The

No large differences emerged regarding labor-force participation variables. Women and men were almost equally likely to have held a full-time job, at least for the period between 1989 and 1994. This is a transition about which they indicated considerable concern in Table 2-1. It is not clear, however, that having had such a position for one time period was sufficient. The goal (which is clear from other data, not shown, on their preferred and expected jobs) was to have a steady full-time job. There was little gender difference in the numbers of youths reporting bouts of unemployment during this time period. Unemployment was clearly seen as a negative outcome. Only a handful of the rural youths saw bouts of seasonal employment supplemented by "unemployment insurance" as in any way desirable. Presumably, this was seen as a viable option to these rural youths because it is a recognizable survival strategy in areas with chronically high levels of unemployment. With recent restructuring of the unemployment provisions by the Canadian federal government, however, such an option becomes less viable. Despite its negative status, about 4 in every 10 of the young men and young women had experienced unemployment, even by 24 years of age. For at least some of the youths, these experiences of unemployment pushed them back into school, either as a holding pattern or in an effort to increase their employability by securing additional credentials, hence the large numbers of women and men still in school in 1994.

60

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Table 2-7 goes one step beyond Table 2-6 to indicate the number of transitions in and out of a particular activity the youths experienced in the period from April 1989 to May 1994. Nineteen percent of the youth had moved in and out of eight or more full-time jobs. Ten percent had had as many part-time jobs. Thirty-one percent had moved in and out of education programs. Most of this movement reflected students' ceasing their studies in the spring, working (or being unemployed, or both) in the summer, then returning to school, but it also highlighted the overlap between school and work. The youths moved in and out of school, in and out of full and part-time work, and often combined schooling and paid work. There was no one consistent pattern; indeed, we were struck by the variability in the patterns. Many youth experienced no full-time work; others experienced several sessions in which they were employed full time. Some, but not all, ventured into part-time work and/or part-time schooling. Here, we see some of the evidence of both the complexity of the youths' experiences and the blurring of the boundaries between the different transitions. This complexity comes through more clearly in the visual patterns in Figure 2-1. There are three main patterns in Figure 2-1 that are relevant to our discussion. The first is the relatively consistent pattern of part-time work. Although there was some variation, the rate of part-time employment tended to stay at about 30%, regardless of the time of year. Full-time work and schooling varied more over the different time periods. The percentage of youths undertaking full-time studies went down in the summer months, then back up in the fall when they returned to school. There was a peak in the numbers going into full-time work, corresponding to the drop in the number of students during the summer period. The other trend to note is the gradual funneling of the youths' activities, so that during each successive September, fewer returned to full-time studies and more had shifted into full-time work, until the two groups seemed to converge. Although over 90% were in school full time between January and April 1989, less than 50% said the same 5 years later. The flip side of this is that less than 10% were in full-time work at 17 years of age; one third said they had a full-time job between January and April 1994. Sequencing of Transitions

We saw above in Table 2-2 that there was some consistency in the youths' attitudes about the appropriate order of these events. This consistency

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions

61

Full-time work Part-time work Full-time student

Figure 2-1. Transitions between full and part-time work and full-time student activities, January 1989 to April 1994. was more evident in the 1989 responses when the respondents were teenagers. More flexibility was evident in the responses from 1994 in Table 2-2. Table 2-8 shows the order in which these youth have experienced some of these transitions. The first thing to note about Table 2-8 is that most of the transitions that the youths had undertaken were either in the appropriate sequence or within 12 months of each other. The other side to this pattern is that some youths (up to 24%) violate this normative sequence. There is considerable variation in which sequences are followed and which are more likely to be violated. Norms surrounding the order of marriage and other transitions were most likely to be followed. The exception to this statement is the ordering of parenting and marriage; 12% (all women) were parents more than a year before they married. Next in the adherence to the normative sequencing was having children relative to finishing one's education, starting full-time work, and leaving home. For many, especially women, having a child put a stop to their educational plans. For others, especially men, having a child forced them into the labor force, even if it meant taking a less than perfect job. It is interesting that only 64% of the youths were classified as being "in sequence" in terms of becoming a parent and leaving home. Fifteen percent were still at home more than a year after having a child.

62

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Table 2-8. Pairwise Order of Transition Experiences % In Sequence

Marriage - children Full-time work - children Leave home - children Finish education - children Full-time work - marriage Leave home - marriage Finish education - marriage Full-time work - leave home Finish education - leave home Finish education - full-time work

78 78 64 85 80 63 81 54 74 70

% Same Time"

% Out of Sequence

Total% (n)

11 11 22

12 11 15 10 7 1 7 24 16 11

100 (85) 100 (74) 100 (74) 100 (82) 100 (70) 100 (73) 100 (75) 100 (406) 100 (437) 100 (481)

CJl

Transition Sequences

13 36 12 21 10 20

The assumed normative sequence is identical to the order in which the sequence transition pairs are listed. "Defined as within 12 months.

In fact, the data in Table 2-8 show that "leaving home" was the one transition that seemed to be most often made "out of sequence" by these young adults. Only about half of them waited until they had left their parents' home to start full-time work. Sixteen percent (19% in urban areas) were still at home while completing their education, but note that virtually none (only 1%) lived with their parents after getting married. This norm is consistently followed. If the youths had not moved out by the time they were married, they did so within the year. Conclusion Our examination of the transitions that the youths had undertaken leads us to a number of conclusions. First of all, it is clear that the different transitions they make on their path to adulthood were linked to one other. These young people did not make decisions about their education and work in isolation from decisions about marriage and parenting. Several of these decisions have implications for the timing of leaving or returning to the parental home. Second, it is clear that these transitions were neither unidimensional nor one-way. These young people moved in and out of schooling and in and out of full-time work, part-time work, and "unemployment," they moved in and out of their parental home. Although few (< 1%) had moved "out of marriage," they moved in and out of the role of full-time

Diverse Directions: Young Adults' Multiple Transitions homemaker and child minder, depending on other pressures present and the resources available to them. Finally, there are some interesting and persistent gender differences in the patterns we have observed. Women and men see the world differently in terms of the normative constraints they perceive. The combination of marriage and parenting carries a different weight depending on one's gender. Men appear to live in a more unidimensional world - work is the issue for them. They pursue education to get a good job; they feel they need a job (preferably a "good" job) before they marry and before they take on the responsibility of parenting. Their see their responsibility in marriage and parenting as being the financial provider. For women, adulthood is more of a balancing act. Women appear to live in a more multidimensional world. More of the women are married and more of them have children at 24 years of age. More of them have taken on the role of being full or part-time homemaker and/or full or part-time child minder, yet as many or more of them aspire to and expect a university education; as many of them see full-time work as an important part of their future. These results document the fact that many stages of the life course are still very gendered. Becoming an adult woman is quite different from becoming an adult man. The types and timing and sequencing of transitions vary by gender. The implications of these transitions also vary. In addition to data on the sequencing of transitions, this chapter has presented empirical evidence on the attitudes of a sample of Canadian youth to the norms about this sequencing. There appear to be some strongly held norms, as evidenced by high levels of consistency in the youths' responses. The longitudinal data show that these norms shift over time and that not all young people are able to follow the prescriptions they acknowledge, however. Rather, the patterns of their life courses reflect the contingencies that they face - as young women and men in the 1990s. Notes 1. For 108 respondents, this information was obtained on a "short version" of the questionnaire, which included only a few key questions. For about half of these, the information was obtained indirectly from another source, usually a parent, rather than directly from the youth respondent. 2. Data from the 1986 census indicates that both Hamilton and Halifax had unemployment rates lower than the 10.3% national rate. The corresponding rate for Nova Scotia that year was 13.5%. Rural Nova Scotia rates are consistently higher than those in the Halifax

63

64

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

area, unemployment rates for rural youth are particularly high - up to 30% in some areas. 3. Although only 3% fewer women than men stated they would be bothered by never having full-time paid employment, this difference is nevertheless statistically significant because of the low standard deviation occasioned by the extreme skew in the responses.

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion JOHN BYNNER

No clear or strong relationship can be evidenced between qualifications and employer needs. Deficiencies are noted in relevance, access responsiveness, flexibility and cost effectiveness. Some are apparently attributable to the structure of qualifications, others to the content. The studies do not reveal distinct major and minor occupations, nor distinct vertical hierarchies. Level of qualifications is predominantly relevant in recruitment and selection. It seems to become an issue for employers only when it interferes with utilization and supply (Pearson & Marshall, 1996). This quotation from a recent report on skills utilization by British employers indicates how loosely the system of vocational preparation in Great Britain (Vocational Education and Training, or VET) and the certification it produces is linked to labor-market demands. In line with what social-exclusion theorists tell us about the employment value of qualifications and skills (e.g., Collins, 1979), British employers appear to use qualifications more as a means of sifting young job applicants in terms of the broad abilities associated with educational attainment, as much as by their accredited skills. Thus, academic qualifications, with no direct relevance to employment, are often prized over vocational qualifications and the certification produced by youth training because of the personal qualities they are perceived to signify in the individuals who possess them. In their absence, such qualities need to be demonstrated in other ways: Personal recommendations, appearance at job interviews, and especially evidence of work experience itself may all count as much as if not more than - vocational qualifications in convincing the employer of the young applicant's suitability for the job. Thus, in what Hamilton (1994) described as "permeable" employment systems, employers do not use qualifications to erect barriers to access to particular kinds of jobs so much as use them, when the local economy is contracting, to ration job opportunities overall. Such systems, common to North America, Great Britain, and the countries of southern Europe, contrast strikingly with those of northern European countries, such as 65

66

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Germany and Sweden, where gaining the relevant vocational qualification is a prerequisite for entering a particular skilled job. This chapter uses data collected in large-scale longitudinal studies to examine the relationships of three types of skills - basic skills (literacy and numeracy), work-related skills, and work-specific skills - to employability in the modern labor market. The aim is to reveal the part these different types of skills play in the processes of employment integration and exclusion. The New Labor Market Labor-market changes globally have muddied the water even further. As the rate of technological change has accelerated, the skills and qualifications required for entry into different kinds of employment have begun to continually change. This puts a strain on vocational preparation systems everywhere because, except in the most static kinds of crafts or trades, a large number of the skills acquired through VET are likely to be out of date by the time the young person is able to offer them in the workplace (Jallade, 1989; First Dilic, 1991). Even if trainers were able to upgrade their training continually to match employer demands, it is unlikely that employers would be able to specify precisely what their skills needs were, for as Pearson and Marshall (1996) note, "The nature of the relationship between skill change, qualification change and utilization and the processes of employment remains essentially obscure." Moreover, the very idea of training for lifetime occupations, along the lines of the German Beruf, loses salience as increasingly, skilled workers face the prospect of occupational change and continual reskilling to retain employment. In such a scenario, described by German social theorist Ulrich Beck as the "risk society" (Beck, 1992), single occupations give way to "occupational portfolios" (Gershuny and Pahl, 1996) as the means of maintaining lifetime employment. The transitions of the past, dictated by such structural factors as social class, gender, and ethnicity, give way increasingly to individualized routes to employment (Evans & Furlong, 1996; Roberts, Clark, & Wallace, 1994). Young people keep their options open, building up the human capital embodied in qualifications and work experience (Becker, 1975), rather in the nature of vocational insurance to protect themselves against the risk of an uncertain future in the labor market. Despite the uncertain connection between labor-market demand and training for skill, most countries have felt since the early 1980s the need to meet the challenge of labor-market changes by "upskilling" their work-

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

67

forces. In Great Britain, there was a burgeoning of training schemes in the 1980s, for early school leavers, culminating in the national Youth Training Scheme (YTS), initially to keep young people off the unemployment registers and subsequently to equip them with the new skills that industry was supposed to need (Coles, 1995). Subsequently, these were followed by the introduction in Great Britain of the country's first curriculum to be taught in schools and a system of accredited national vocational qualifications (NVQs). Those countries with highly institutionalized forms of vocational preparation, such as Germany and Sweden, sought to reform their systems by loosening occupational boundaries and reducing the number of occupations for which training was offered (currently in the order of 360 in Germany); they also experimented with British-style training initiatives. More recently, the general trend has been for young people in all industrialized countries to stay on in education. In the 1970s, two thirds of young people in Britain left the education system at the minimum age, 16, to move directly into jobs. By 1993, two thirds were staying on in education to try to get some qualifications before trying their luck in the labor market (DES, 1988; DfE, 1994). Pointing in North American directions, higher education entrance doubled over the same period from 15% to nearly 30%. More complex patterns of vocational insurance were evident in such countries as Germany, where many gymnasium (grammar school) graduates (Abiturienten) were signing up for an apprenticeship to acquire vocational skills before cashing in their Abitur by going to a university (Heinz, 1990). The net effect of these changes is the extension of the transition to adulthood for ever larger numbers of young people. At the same time, there are increasing tendencies toward "polarization," as those without credentials are marginalized into the limited range of unskilled, often part-time, jobs that are still available. A notable feature of the response to labor-market change in Great Britain was the lag in taking educational opportunities behind the collapse of the youth labor market at the end of the 1970s. Even by the end of the 1980s, about half of British young people were still leaving school at 16 years of age to seek employment, over half of whom ended up in training schemes instead (DfE, 1994). Under poor labor-market conditions, the destination of a large proportion of these trainees subsequently was unemployment (Banks et al., 1992; Bynner, 1992a). Social Exclusion and Employability Such examples of labor-market difficulties for some groups reflect the counterpart to individualized career routes and the accumulation of

68

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

human capital as vocational insurance. As the transition to adulthood extends and an ever-higher premium is placed on education qualifications, those who drop out from education or, for other reasons, fail to acquire the attributes that employers demand have increasing difficulty getting jobs: They are forced to seek work on the margins of the labor market or exit from it altogether. Such processes of "social exclusion" are not experienced uniformly but tend to be concentrated in particular groups and families, characterized by "economic, social, cultural, spatial or political disadvantage" (CEC, 1995). Social exclusion is mediated by the personal attributes the individual presents to employers. The question arises, therefore, as to what constitutes employability in the modern state and what role vocational preparation systems can and do play in facilitating it. In line with others who have tried to elucidate the concept of employability (e.g., Brown, 1995; CBI, 1989; Krahn, 1996), we can conceptualize employability as comprising three types of skills: basic skills, work-related skills, and work-specific skills. Table 3-1 sets out the three types of skill schematically. Basic skills and some work-related skills are at a premium in gaining entry to modern employment, and work-specific skills are at a premium in changing jobs. Traditionally, employers required possession of the basic skills of literacy and numeracy as the minimum entrance standard for anything other than completely unskilled employment, though even in this type of employment, according to a recent United Kingdom survey of employers (Atkinson & Spilsbury, 1993), such skills are increasingly expected. Under modern employment conditions, the basic skills of literacy and numeracy need to be extended to include keyboard skills and "computer literacy" Other work-related skills, such as working from instructions and plans, computational skills, teaching skills, and finance skills are increasingly at a premium. A wide range of more generic work-related skills are also coming to be demanded, such as flexibility, adaptability, creativity, teamwork, and leadership, described by Jallade (1989) as "horizontal skills" and by Brown (1995) as "charismatic skills". Brown argued that one of the reasons why modern employment practice has increased class-based social exclusion is precisely because such skills are central to a middle-class upbringing. These changing skills demands reflect the demise of the unskilled jobs associated with traditional manufacturing and the move toward information technology-based employment. They have been accompanied by the expansion of part-time or "patchwork" employment (Heinz, 1991).

69

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion Table 3-1. Components of Employ ability

Component

Constituent Skills

Basic skills

Old

Literacy Numeracy Oracy

Type of Capital Formation = Experience Exposure x Time

Source Family

Human capital

Education

Social capital Human capital

Family

New

Work-related skills

Keyboarding Computing Old Teaching Counseling Finance Supervising Organizing Punctuality Recordkeeping New

Work-specific skills

Adaptability Flexibility Leadership Teamwork Creativity Using tools Using plans Joinery Hairdressing Fitting Electronics Plumbing Etc.

VET

Human capital, Employment capital

Employment

VET = Vocational Education and Training.

They have also affected men and women differently. Men without the core requirements for employability face a limited range of casual unskilled work or unemployment. Women with poor skills leave the labor market early, typically to have children (Ekinsmyth & Bynner, 1994). Such changes raise a number of questions about employability, which the rest of this chapter will address: What are the skill components of employability? How does their absence or presence, singly and in combination, affect the process of inclusion into or exclusion from employment at different stages of the life course, and what form does

70

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

this exclusion take? Are there differences between men and women both in the kinds of skills that constitute employability and in the forms social exclusion takes? Data Sources To answer the questions posed above, I draw on findings from a program of research on skills, involving two large-scale longitudinal research resources, the 1958 and 1970 British birth-cohort studies, known respectively as the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) (Ekinsmyth, Bynner, Montgomery, & Shepherd, 1994; Bynner & Steedman, 1995; Ekinsmyth & Bynner, 1994; Bynner, 1996; Bynner, Morphy, & Parsons, 1996; Bynner & Steedman, 1995). The NCDS comprises a cohort of all people born in a single week in 1958, and the BCS70, a cohort of all people born in a single week in 1970. The subjects were followed from birth to adulthood at 5, 7, 11, 16, 23, and 33 years of age (NCDS) and at 5,10,16, and 21 years of age (10% sample, BCS70). In the 23-year-old and 33-year-old NCDS surveys and in the 10% BCS70 21-year-old sample survey, a large number of questions were asked about the cohort members' perceptions of their basic skills problems. Up to 12% acknowledged some kind of difficulty (Ekinsmyth & Bynner, 1994), of which the most common were writing and spelling. Cohort members also completed an inventory requiring them to assess how good they thought they were at 15 work-related skills, (drawn up with the help of Department of Employment officials) on a scale: "good," "fair," "poor," or "don't have the skill" (full details are given in Bynner & Fogelmann, 1993, and descriptive results in Bynner, 1994). Much information was also collected on occupational and family histories back to 16 years of age (the statutory minimum school-leaving age) and a range of other personal characteristics. In the BCS70 21-year-old sample survey, the cohort members' "functional" literacy and numeracy skills were also assessed. All sample members completed tests comprising 16 literacy tasks and 14 numeracy tasks encompassing the use of literacy in such everyday situations as reading instructions, extracting information from a timetable, working out the area of a room, and working out the cost of discounted items in a shop (full details are given in Ekinsmyth & Bynner, 1994). From the responses obtained, it was possible to compute functional literacy and numeracy scores that were standardized to a scale of 0 to 10. To allow those respondents who were most lacking in basic skills to be separated out from

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion those most proficient in them, respondents were the classified into three groups with boundaries representing natural breaks in the distribution of scores and where maximum discrimination between the group's other characteristics was evident. The low-literacy group was defined by scores in the range of 0 to 5.2 (6% of the total sample), the medium group by scores in the range of 5.3 to 9.0 (77%), and the top group by scores in the range 9.1 to 10 (17%). The comparable grouping for numeracy was low, 0 to 3.6 (18%); medium, 3.7 to 7.9 (66%); and high, 8 to 10 (16%). The differences in the percentages falling into the low-literacy and lownumeracy groups reflects the much greater prevalence of poor numeracy in the British population. For the purposes of the analysis reported here, I focus on the comparison between the low-scoring group and the total sample. Basic Skills and the Transition to Work Functional weaknesses in literacy and numeracy impede all education attainment in school and restrict access to the further and higher education that follows it. They originate typically in disadvantaged home circumstances, where parents have low education achievements themselves and have difficulties in providing reinforcement for their children's school learning (Bynner & Steedman, 1995). In the BCS70 21-year-old survey, 60% of those with the lowest literacy scores had parents who had gained no education qualifications and 66% had gained no education qualifications themselves: 90% had not gotten beyond the basic 16-year school-leaving standard - the ordinary level ("O Level") of the General Certificate of Education (GCE). At 16 years of age in the mid-1980s, BCS70 cohort members had the opportunity to stay on in education or leave. If they stayed on at school in the sixth form or moved on to a further-education college, they might embark on A-level courses leading to higher education or take vocational courses as a preliminary to seeking work. If they left, they might get a job directly or after doing some youth training, ideally with a potential employer first. The less successful could experience a mixture of training and unskilled casual jobs interspersed with unemployment; others might leave the labor market altogether. Entry into these different routes varied from one part of the country to another. Although much the same proportions stayed on in education, the prospects of obtaining employment after leaving was also strongly dependent on the state of the local economy. In the 16-19 Initiative Survey, over 35% of 18-year-olds in economically

71

72

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Table 3-2. Career Routes and Low Literacy and Numeracy Scores After 16 Years of Age Literacy Scores Low Numeracy Scores Low Trajectories Staying on Academic Vocational Leaving Job

YTS Job Mixed n (100%)

%Male '% Female

% Male % Female

All Respondents % Male % Female

0 15

0 21

0 14

3 21

15 18

16 29

32 15 12 41

23 19 26 53

28 15 14 96

20 19 19 188

30 12 9 759

12 11 12 864

YTS = Youth Training Scheme.

depressed Liverpool, Sheffield, and Kirkcaldy were in the halfway house of training schemes, casual work, and unemployment, compared with 10% in economically buoyant Swindon (Bynner, 1992a). Table 3-2 shows, for the BCS70 sample, the percentages of male and female cohort members in the low-literacy and the low-numeracy groups whose early careers, over the 2 years since the end of compulsory schooling (16 to 18 years of age), followed these different career patterns. Table 3-3 shows the percentages, at the time of interview, of those in three nonemployed statuses: unemployment, homemaking, training. As we might expect, Table 3-2 shows that compared with the sample as a whole, much higher proportions in the low-literacy and low-numeracy groups left school at 16 years of age (85% of men and 79% of women, compared with 67% of men and 55% of women in the sample as a whole). Of those who left, under half had gotten jobs; the rest of the young men had resided mainly in YTSs, and the young women, in the "mixed" category of unemployment, homemaking, and casual work. In the total sample, of those who had left education, over three fifths had obtained employment. The consequences of these early transition experiences are show in Table 3-3, which also highlights the different response of men and women to labor-market difficulties. At 21 years of age, 35% of men in the low-literacy group reported that they were unemployed, compared with 8% of women; 34% of women reported that they were "at home" caring for their families, but none of the men described themselves as in this category. This compares with 13% of men unemployed in the sample as a

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

73

Table 3-3. Labor-Market Status at 21 Years of Age and Low Literacy and Numeracy Scores Literacy Scores Low Numeracy Scores Low All Respondents Market Status Unemployment Homemaking Training n (100%)

% Male % Female 35 0 2 41

8 34 4 53

% Male 25 2 4 96

% Female %Male % Female 7 22 2 188

13 0 1 759

6 12 1 864

whole and 12% of women engaged in homemaking. Although there was no tendency for those in the low-literacy group to marry early, having children was associated with low literacy: One in 5 women in the low-literacy group had 2 or more children, compared with 1 in 20 in the sample as a whole. Among the men, there was no relationship between low literacy and having children. In these figures, we see signs both of the exclusion effects of poor basic skills and the characteristic forms of exclusion for men and women. Men, whose poor basic skills put them in the most vulnerable labor-market positions, drift between training schemes, casual jobs, and unemployment; women more often move on to the alternative career path of motherhood and home care. The consequences for these women may be not long-term unemployment so much as continuing disadvantage in the labor market. Women tend to return to the labor market, after having children, at a lower level than when they left it, often into such service jobs as cleaning (Joshi & Hinde, 1993); those who start at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy tend to stay there. Work-Related Skills We have seen that poor basic skills appear to impede entry into employment and to limit access to a restricted range of low-level jobs. Women with poor basic skills are especially disadvantaged in this respect; many withdraw from the labor market, often to have children. Poor basic skills not only limit opportunities directly, but also serve to inhibit the development of human capital in other respects. To what extent is this manifested in failure to develop the wider range of work-related skills, and how do they affect relations to the labor market? Such skills represent the more concrete elements of human and social capital, some of which

74

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

potential employees bring with them to a job and some of which they acquire through work itself. As noted earlier, in the BCS70 21-year-old survey and the 33-year-old survey in NCDS, cohort members indicated how good they thought they were at 15 work-related skills (Table 3-4). Possession of the skills differentiated men and women, with more men claiming to be good at using tools, working with plans, constructing, and calculating, and more women claiming to be good at writing, keyboarding, computing, teaching, advising, speaking, and caring. In the BCS70 survey, there were no differences with respect to selling, organizing, supervising, and finance. Notably, these latter skills were all claimed to a greater degree by men than by women in the NCDS survey at 33 years of age, suggesting that men were acquiring them as they progressed through employment to a greater extent than women were. Lack of some of these skills (i.e., any response other than "good" to the question about the possession of the skill) was associated with poor basic skills (reading and numeracy): for men, writing, using plans, keyboarding, computing, and calculating; for women, these skills plus speaking, teaching, supervising, advising/counseling, organizing, finance. For three of the skills, the relationship was in the opposite direction. Among the young men, poor basic skills were associated with being good at "using tools" and "constructing things," and among the young women, being good at "caring." Possession of these latter kinds of skills characterizes people whose employment opportunities are most limited: among men, because in Great Britain's unregulated labor market, at least, practical skills associated with the building trade are the only kinds they are able to offer as a basis for casual (often self-) employment (Bynner, 1994), and among women, because of the child care in which many who exit the labor market are engaged. Table 3-4 and 3-5 extend the picture to the relationships between workrelated skills and labor-market status for men and between work-related skills family status for women. Statuses are classified as signifying exclusion or inclusion in labor-market terms. That is, for both men and women, inclusion is represented first by full-time employment and second by full-time education, because of the good employment prospects full-time (usually higher) education at 21 years of age brings. For men, the excluded categories are unemployment and self-employment. For women, "at home" replaces unemployment; having children is also included with and without a partner because of the exit from the labor market this typically represents for 21-year-olds. Part-time work and

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

75

Table 3-4. Percent of Men Without Work-Related Skill by Employment Status at 21 Years of Age Exclusion

Skills Writing Using plans Keyboarding Computing Calculating Finance Supervising Teaching Advising Organizing Sales Speaking Caring Constructing Using tools n (100%)

Inclusion

Unemployed

Self-Employed

7

Full-Time Employed

67 62 89 81 75 90 85 85 79 85 81 53 79 54 52 52

72 60 91 96 70 80 69 76 64 75 69 59 87 55 27 54

63 47 56 75 66 82 68 75 67 83 75 54 88 56 43 71

7

Full-Time Education 48 44 77 56 35 74 81 78 58 81 90 41 85 69 63 408

of

Total 63 50 77 77 65 82 72 76 67 83 78 54 86 56 45 721

Figures in bold face display percentage differences between exclusion and inclusion cateories > 14% (P < .05).

self-employment are treated as halfway, intermediate categories because they involve choices for some women as well as exclusion pressures for others, brought about by lack of employment opportunities. Of course, being at home at 21 years of age, with or without children, may also be a matter of choice, as may self-employment and unemployment for men. In this respect, the exclusion comes from the lack of independent access to personal income or job security, or both. Being at home and having children are not mutually exclusive categories, so some of the same women appear in both of them. Mothers without partners are also a subset of all women with children. The striking feature of the relationships shown in Table 3-4 is their similarity to those just reported between the basic skills and the workrelated skills. Thus, compared with men in full-time employment and full-time education, those who were unemployed or self-employed reported lack of such skills as using plans, keyboard work, and computation. They also reported lack of finance skills, supervising skills, teaching

Table 3-5. Women Without Work-Related Skill by Status as a Parent and Employment Status Exclusion Skills Writing Using plans Keyboarding Computing Calculating Finance Supervising Teaching Advising Organizing Sales Speaking Caring Constructing Using tools n (100%)

Exclusion / Inclusion

Home

Children*

%

% Employed Part Time

Self-Employed

50 82 81 90 89 92 81 57 63 94 92 43 26 81 68 88

46 (52) 78 (77) 77 (83) 87 (96) 85 (88) 89 (92) 77 (76)

25 75 75 82 71 93 68 57 54 74 57 21 50 86 59 32

39 69 75 79 86 75 61 61 57 68 54 39 54 82 46 28

%At

58 (55)

65 (64) 94 (94) 89 (86) 43 (40) 32 (36) 83 (72) 73 (69) 132 (52)

%

Inclusion %

Employed 35 68 50 57 74 73 64 68 49 86 70 35 64 86 66 448

% Full-Time Education

Total

23 56 68 78 69 86 63 50 37 78 78 18 58 84 70 80

35 69 59 67 75 79 66 63 51 85 73 35 55 83 65 832

%of

Figures in bold-face display percentage differences between exclusion and inclusion categories > 14% (p < .05). ^Figures in parentheses relate to women with children and without partners; the figures to the left refer to all women with children.

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

77

skills, and advising skills. Compared with those who were in full-time education, they also said they lacked writing skills and speaking skills. They appeared to be superior only with respect to constructing and toolusing skills, the skills identified with poor literacy and numeracy. For women, the picture changed again. Table 3-5 shows that compared with those in full-time education and employment, those at home and engaged in parenting reported absence of the same skills that differentiated the employed from the unemployed men and of two of the additional skills that were more prevalent among women - teaching and advising. The only skill for which women at home appeared to be superior to the women in full-time employment or education was "caring/' again the skill most closely identified with poor literacy and numeracy. In almost every case, those in the halfway category of part-time work and self-employment held an intermediate position with respect to skills absence. The only exceptions were writing and speaking, where those in part-time work were superior both to women at home and to women in full-time employment and full-time education, and sales, where superiority rested with both the part-timers and the self-employed. Work-Related Training

People bring skills with them into jobs, but the kind of work-specific skills they need to perform in the job itself will typically be acquired through the process of employment itself. One of the main means of doing this is through the training employers provide. Such training represents a significant - and to a certain extent risky - investment for employers. It not only helps employees acquire the skills that will enable them to do the job better but also improves their opportunities for promotion and for moving on to other employment. Fear of "poaching" is said to be one of the main disincentives for British employers to train. To examine work-based training, one needs to access to more extensive experience of employment than 21-year-olds had had in BCS70. Accordingly, for this purpose, I use the much longer period of the life course - from 16 to 33 years of age - offered by the NCDS 33-year-old survey. Only half of the NCDS sample had in fact received any workbased training lasting 3 days or more. Figures 3-1 and 3-2 show the percentages of NCDS men and women, with and without children, who had attended work-related training courses (lasting 3 days or more) for different ages of leaving education. Two features of the figures are notable. The first is the paradox that the

78

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Higher Education -

—

mmmmammmmm

i

Age 18 • Children Age 17 -

No Children

•

••MM|

Age 16 or Earlier -

20

40

60

80

100

Figure 3-1. Women and work-related training: percent attendance for training courses by age at which they left education and status as a parent.

earlier people leave education, the more time they have spent in the labor market, yet the more time they have spent in the labor market, the less training they get. This applies for both men and women, but in the case of women, another effect to that of having children - is also apparent. Although for men, parenthood appeared to be, if anything, positively associated with getting training, women who were parents were consistently less likely to get training at all school leaving ages. This applied regardless of how long the women had spent in the labor market, but only at certain levels of the occupational structure. Figure 3-3 shows that when the sample was restricted to those who had at least 11 years in employment, in the higher occupations that women tended to enter (professional, associated professional, and managerial), more women without children actually received training than did men. In the lower "women's" occupations (clerical, sales, and personal services), substantially fewer women than men reported receiving training, and women with children received the least training of all. It is notable that over 70% of the women who had left school at 16 years of age entered clerical, sales, and personal services jobs - that is, the jobs for which training was least likely to be had.

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

79

I Higher Education -

i

Age 18 -

•

Children

•

No Children

Age 17 -

i

Age 16 or Earlier -

20

40

60

80

100

Figure 3-2. Men and work-related training: percent attendance for training courses by age at which they left education and status as a parent.

Skills as Human and Social Capital Possession of particular work-related skills at 33 years of age did not show any clear pattern of relationships to the types of jobs the NCDS cohort members had. Although certain skills, such as using tools, were associated with craft occupations and caring was linked with the associated professions (which include nursing), the main differentiation was by gender. In other words, the cohort members saw themselves as bringing different types of skills to the work they did, rather than identifying their skills closely with the job they had. On the other hand, the more skills they claimed to possess, the higher the occupational level they were on. Thus, management and professional occupations were associated with high levels of virtually all skills except tool using and caring; plant and machine operation work, followed by personal service and "other occupations," was associated with the lowest overall levels of skills (Bynner, 1994). The skills in aggregate also related to labor-market status. The more skills the cohort members claimed to possess, the less unemployment they

80

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Personal/Services

Sales

-

Clerical/Secretarial

Assoc. Professional

Professional

Managers & Admin. -

Women with Children Women without Children Men

Figure 3-3. Effects of having children on percent receiving work-related training for men and women with a minimum of 11 years in full-time employment. were likely to have experienced; the fewer skills they possessed, the more likely they were to be out of employment (unemployed or at home). It seemed that over and above the protection particular skills appeared to provide against labor-market difficulties, in combination they also differentiated cohort members in terms of their abilities to get work. In this sense, they could be seen as representing the human and social capital carrying a premium with employers - that the cohort members had acquired. This effect is strikingly evident from charting overall workrelated skills against employment status from 16 to 33 years of age. Each cohort member was given a score representing the number of workrelated skills they claimed to possess, and the overall scores were then divided into four quartile ranges (Bynner, 1996). The percentages of cohort members in each of the cohort ranges who were unemployed was than plotted for each of the years from 16 to 33 (Bynner, 1996). Quite different patterns were apparent for the men and the women. For men, from 16 years of age, a gap developed across the skills' quartile ranges in unemployment level, with those in the lowest quartile range

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion showing the highest unemployment, reaching a peak in the early twenties. This was in the early 1980s when unemployment was very high in Great Britain. From then on, the unemployment rates in all four groups declined, reflecting the improving economy, but the gap between the high-skills group and the low-skills group remained. In other words, overriding the effect of economic recession, those cohort members reporting the fewest skills remained more vulnerable to unemployment than did the others. For women out of the labor market and at home, the picture was in some respects similar and in other respects quite different. As for the men, from 16 years of age, a gap developed in unemployment rates across the skills' quartile ranges, with those in the lowest skills quartiles leaving the labor market in the largest numbers. This time, however, the overall levels did not peak in the early twenties but continued to rise until the late twenties, the most common age period in Great Britain for having children. At this point, the gap between those with the least and those with the most skills reached a maximum, which then persisted, whereas the overall level declined. Here, we see confirmation of the earlier point that at every age, women with the least skills leave the labor market most. By the late twenties, this effect was paralleled by a more general life-cycle pattern in which increasing numbers of women were leaving the labor market to have children. Although there was a clear tendency for them to return to employment, presumably as the demands associated with child care declined, those with the fewest skills were least likely to return. These results also confirm what others have observed (e.g., Ashton & Maguire, 1986): that the recession of the early 1980s affected men much more than women. The kinds of jobs women held, from secretarial work to cleaning, were more resilient to the pressure of the economic recession than were the unskilled manual jobs men held, which disappeared in large numbers over this period. New Routes to Integration and Exclusion? The birth-cohort studies data enable reappraisal of the role of skills in labor-market inclusion and exclusion processes and give pointers to the appropriate forms of vocational preparation for school leavers. Basic skills provide the foundation stones of employability. Without them, the likelihood of being out of the labor force is greatly increased and acquisition of the wider range of work-related skills - the building blocks of

81

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From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

employability - is also impeded. This is supported by the results of multiple regression, which showed the literacy and numeracy scores to be the best predictors of all the skills measures examined here in predicting (negatively) the amount of unemployment experienced since leaving school (Bynner, 1996). The lower the basic skills scores, the higher the experience of unemployment. The position of women with poor basic skills is particularly difficult in this respect, especially if they have ever had children. Except at the highest occupational levels, women get less work-based training than do men, and women with children get the least training of all. This reinforces past evidence for the gender gap in employment prospects for men and women (e.g., Melamed, 1995.) It also points to a polarization process taking place among women themselves that has perhaps been insufficiently acknowledged in the past. Women without children and with the most human and social capital, as represented by the jobs they are in, lag only a little behind men with respect to the work-based training received, and in certain occupations, these women may surpass them. Those women with very little human and social capital, and especially those with children, lag substantially behind men at every occupational level, but especially at the lowest occupation levels, which 70% of women with poor basic skills enter. Work-related skills themselves divide along gender lines. The kinds of practical and computational skills men claim to possess are less common among those with basic skills deficiencies than among others. Similarly, the kinds of interpersonal skills women generally profess to be good at are less prevalent among those with poor basic skills. These differences carry through to relations with the family and the labor market. Much the same skills that are impoverished by basic skills difficulties are also less prevalent among men who are unemployed or self-employed and among women who are at home and who have children. Particularly notable are keyboarding skills, computing skills, working with plans, and finance skills, which are central to modern employment and in a sense define integration into it. The only exceptions are the traditional skills involving "using tools" and "construction" for men and "caring" for women, which are more common among both those with basic skills deficiencies and those not currently employed. Table 3-6 illustrates schematically the relation of the different types of skill to the kinds of status identified with social exclusion. Social exclusion for men was typified by unemployment. For women, it was characterized by exit from the labor market and the "patchwork" employment

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

83

Table 3-6. Employability and Social Exclusion Social Exclusion After 1975 Employability

Before 1975

Men

Basic skills absent Work-related skills absent Work-specific skills absent

Women

Women with Children im.ninMm.iinlmfn.nnnmHm.iiinmiiWmii

Socially excluded Part-time or patchwork employment Socially included

that many take up to survive. Since the mid-1970s, the lack of skills has affected these statuses differently. The increasing significance attached to the wider range of work-related skills, including "charismatic skills" (Brown, 1995), is a product of the information technology revolution that took off at that time. The question arises, though, as to whether being out of employment, unemployed at home, or looking after children, are correctly described as forms of social exclusion. Insofar as those in these categories seem to be propelled into them rather than enter them by choice, they are "excluded" from the economic and other benefits that employment brings. The skills data also show that excluded women perceive themselves to have far fewer of the work-related skills than do those who are actively engaged in the labor market. They are also substantially lower than the others in self-esteem (Bynner, 1994). As for with men, the origins of their basic skills deficiencies lie typically in a combination of difficulties experienced in early childhood at home and at school (Bynner & Steedman, 1995). As young women, their typical biographies involve an early exit from the labor market, frequently to have children, and a subsequently return to it at the lowest levels to undertake such work as child minding and cleaning, which enable them to combine earning money with child care. It is acknowledged that to describe child care and being at home for women as "exclusion" might appear to deny the clear choice that many women make to opt for parenthood as an occupation, in place of paid employment, at a certain stage in life. Although such choices are avail-

84

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

able to most women, however, by 21 years of age it is those who have the most limited human and social capital who tend to withdraw from the labor market first. In this sense, the early move into home and family does appear to manifest a form of social exclusion. It is notable that in societies with highly institutionalized forms of labor-market entry, such as the Scandinavian countries, marriage and family is postponed much later than in such countries as Great Britain without such a developed VET system. The average age of marriage in Denmark in 1990, for example, was 29.4 years for men and 27.7 years for women. In Great Britain, the comparable ages were 26.4 and 24.2 years, respectively. Conclusion The data point clearly to work-related skills as embodying not so much specific competencies of interest to employers as indicators of human and social capital, which are their primary consideration when recruiting people to jobs. So where does this leave the different VET models and what should their goal be? The first point to acknowledge is that the specific occupational competencies, which typically provide the main focus for VET programs, are far less important in employability terms than, on the one hand, the basic skills (enhanced to include computer literacy) and, on the other, the wider range of personal attributes and broader competencies of the kind considered here. These arise from a combination of sources, including the education system, the family, and work itself. This points to work experience as pivotal in effective vocational training and to the (largely unacknowledged) value of the work experience young people gain privately through the weekend and holiday jobs that many do (see chapter 5 in this volume). Also, the effective European systems of vocational preparation, such as the German one, need to be viewed in a new light. Ostensibly, the goal of German apprenticeship is to equip the young person with the skills necessary to enter a particular occupation. The system is full of paradoxes, however - not least that most young people who undertake an apprenticeship do not end up with the employer who trained them, and a large proportion move to a different area of employment from the one in which they were trained. Moreover, in a comparative study of transition to work in Great Britain and Gemany, young British people reported far more independent work-based experiences than did their German counterparts, suggesting that the young Germans - even as apprentices - saw themselves more in a quasistudent role than in a worker role (Bynner, 1992b).

New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion

85

What the German system is better seen as doing is building up the young person's employability within the highly motivating framework of gaining a Beruf. It includes much exposure to work practices through work experience and work-based training (Hamilton, 1994) and socializes the young person within a protective environment into employment itself (Blossfeld, 1992). Even if a majority of young Germans do not stay very long with the employer who trains them - or even if they continue practicing the occupation for which they have been trained - most are able to establish positive careers in the labour market (Bynner & Roberts, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994). This is because all interested parties in Germany, especially employers, trade unions, and politicians (the "social partners"), are committed to making the system work. Without such an apprenticeship or equivalent vocational experience behind them, young people in Germany have a problem getting employers to take them seriously. This is why, in the 1980s, the whole system has both broadened and extended to provide the maximum opportunity for every young person to participate in and complete the training it offers. Those who remain outside it consequently suffer a form of exclusion that is perhaps more difficult to sustain than in a less institutionalized system. Such developments in the German "dual system" (apprenticeship) provide pointers to those needed in the "vocational schooling" systems (vocational educational track) of Scandinavia, the "schooling" systems (general education track) of North America, and the "mixed" systems of such countries as Great Britain (vocational education and youth training/apprenticeship). Insofar as these systems develop curricula for all young people comprising basic and work-related education coupled with work experience in increasing amounts, they would appear to be enhancing employability. Insofar as they pursue the route favored in the early version of youth training in Great Britain, which dispensed with any curriculum element other than the specific competencies believed to be necessary for particular jobs, they are unlikely to succeed. There is an irony in the fact that in the economies of the United States and Canada, prosperity has been achieved while paying the least attention of all nations discussed here to the VET issue. Their great strength, as Hamilton (1994) points out, is the "permeability" of employment opportunities, where absence of particular vocational qualifications is no barrier to the offer of a job. Either work-based competencies are assumed by employers or it is seen as employers' responsibility to equip the new recruit with these competencies. The signals they look for are those bound up with human and social capital of the kind that American col-

86

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

lege education produces, which accounts perhaps for the fact that 90% of Canadian youth aspire to go to college (Ashton & Lowe, 1991). As critics point out, however, in the modern world, the problem lies at the level below college, where little attention is paid in the school curriculum to employment outcomes and little guidance is given to young people as to how to equip themselves for jobs. Reform of the high-school curriculum for all students - along Swedish lines to include large amounts of scheduled exposure to work and to give more attention to work-related skills of the kind examined here - would appear to offer one solution. What matters most is that young people are given the opportunity to keep their options open and build up the human and social capital that will lead to successful entry into and retention of employment. They may not stay in the first job - nor even the same occupation - for long. What they are able to do, though, is take advantage of labor-market opportunities when they arrive and the training that employers provide.

From Education to Employment: Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany1 ANSGAR WEYMANN

...for a sociologist nothing else is as fascinating as the collapse of a society (Ganpmann, 1993; p 172). Hardly ever in history has a process of rapid and radical social change been as much the object of continual observation and analysis by the social sciences as the modernization and transformation process of the former Soviet bloc. Numerous large- and small-scale projects have been launched to investigate this secular historical event in various countries. With respect to the destiny of Europe, historians like to compare the breakdown of the Soviet bloc with the French revolution of 1789 and the Russian revolution of 1917, both of which split the continent; the revolution of 1989 tore down the dividing lines of confrontation, however. In the case of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a parallel is drawn between 1989 and the German bourgois revolution of 1848 (Kocka, 1995). After 1989, Germany reassumed her uncomfortable position in the center of the continent. In terms of sociological theory, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the subsequent dramatic social change in a number of countries is seen by scholars from different schools as an instructive example of postponed modernization, a rectifying revolution of an erroneous pathway (Collins & Waller, 1993; Habermas, 1990a, 1990b; Joas & Kohli, 1993; Zapf, 19962). Since the end of Soviet hegemony over central and eastern Europe, civil societies of the Western type have been restored or established for the first time. The 1989 revolution also paved the way for the reestablishment of the nation-state (Offe, 1994). The ongoing modernization is characterized by the development of representative democracy, elaborated capitalism, welfare states, and mass consumption (Hettlage & Lenz, 1995; Zapf, 1994). Modernization promotes economic, social, and cultural differentiation of the social structure (Bertram, Hradil, & Kleinhenz, 1995; GeifJler, 87

88

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

1993, 1996; Glatzer & Noll, 1995; Schafers, 1995; Weidenfeld & Korte, 1996). On the institutional level, the East German legal (Hettlage, 1995) and economic (Freese, 1995; Ftirstenberg, 1995; Wiesenthal, 1995) infrastructure has been transformed or fully replaced by West German models. A continual change in the cultural realm (Engler, 1992,1995), religious beliefs (Pollack, 1993), and in norms and values (Meulemann, 1996) can also be observed, as can the individualization of life courses and biographies (Diewald & Mayer, 1996; Huinink et al, 1995; Trommsdorff, 1995a). Within this historical and macrosociological context of new interrelations among social structure, institutions, and life course (Sydow, Schlegel, & Helmke, 1995; Weymann & Heinz, 1996), what can we learn if we look in detail at passages from education to work and at outcomes of vocational careers, focusing on East Germany? The case of East Germany is in a sense unique (Hirschman, 1993; Waldrauch, 1996; Weidenfeld & Korte, 1996) because the incorporation into the Federal Republic set goals and rules for the transformation process, which was not the case in other post-Soviet societies. As a result, the GDR transformation led to a tremendous increase in income and standards of living within just a few years. At the same time, however, the labor market lost millions of jobs because of the monetary union, which led to a revaluation of the East German mark due to the lack of competitiveness of many products and services on the world market, increasing wages yet persistently low productivity, and the transformation of the economic base from agriculture and industry to services and consumer-goods production (Konig & Steiner, 1994; Lutz & Schroder, 1995; Schmidt & Lutz, 1995; Siebert, 1993). The transformation in other post-Soviet societies has followed the formula "bad things first; good things postponed/' but in the GDR, this sequence has been reversed: "good things first; bad things later" (Wiesenthal, 1995: 25). The result is a decline in personal happiness and political consent as well as a dramatic drop in the birth rate (Bertram, 1995; Youniss, 1995; Zapf, 1994). The rapid replacement of institutions after 1989 has been successfully managed and the East German social structure is adapting quickly to the West German standards, but culture and people "lag behind" the speed of this revolution (Pollack, 1996; Reipig, 1993; Schmitz, 1995; Trommsdorff, 1995b). Along with the protracted cultivation of a competitive economy, the profound reorganization of the labor market and the occupational structure, a considerable devaluation of qualifications and skills occurred (Dewes, 1995; Hartmann, 1995; Kornbichler & Hartwig, 1994; Olbertz, 1995). A new problem in the transition from education to work

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

89

emerged, to which people were not accustomed. The former state-regulated interlinking of education and employment disappeared, along with the state-guided - even guarded - low-mobility career pattern. The West German education, labor-market, and employment systems offers much weaker institutional guidance than do those of the centralized, socialist GDR. The Study: Vocational Careers in East Germany Our research group is conducting a longitudinal study of the transition of individuals from education to employment and their subsequent occupational careers from 1985 to 1999 in two panel waves. The analytical focus is to what extent occupational mobility and success or failure, depend on (1) the level of education, (2) cohort, (3) gender, (4) labor-market segment, (5) occupation, (6) personnel management by private and public employers in expanding and shrinking new and old industries, and on (7) biographical coping strategies. In this chapter, we focus on the occupational development of skilled workers and academics who graduated from vocational education and training or from a university either in 1985 or 1990. The older cohort had its first job entry under socialist conditions; the younger, under labormarket conditions after German reunification. Both cohorts represent the new East German generation that, via generational change, provides "the opportunity for social change to occur" (Ryder, 1965: 844; see also Mannheim, 1928-1929). Two sets of data have been collected: a macropanel and a micropanel. The data of the macropanel are drawn from a quantitative, retrospective, standardized written survey, designed as a life event-history analysis. The random sample size is 2,130 subjects. The macropanel analyzes the life course by means of transition rates, transitions from event to event, and from status to status. The data were collected on a monthly basis in a first wave during 1994. Data from a second wave were scheduled to be available in 1997. The micropanel consists of qualitative interviews, designed as biographical case studies, drawn from a random sample of 80 subjects. The micropanel analyzes the subjective perception of the subject's biography, the awareness and meaning of opportunities and constraints, and the logic of biographical coping strategies. The micropanel data were collected on a monthly basis in two waves, in 1992 and 1995. The present state of the project allows for a 10-year window of observation. The observation will be extended to 13 years; the next wave was in 1997.

20

15 -

Io 10

5 -

r i

1990

i I I i i i i i | i i i i i i I i i i i I i i i i

1991

1992

\

\

I

i

i

r

i

i

I

i

I

n

i

l

1993

time Figure 4-1. Unemployment rates of apprenticeship and university graduates.

i I r i i r i I I

1994

i T

\ \ i I

1995

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

91

We report here only some of the results from the study: regarding transitions from employment to unemployment or vice versa, upward and downward occupational mobility within certain labor-market segments and professions, and coping with biographical discontinuities. Transitions from Employment to Unemployment and Vice Versa

First, we look at the unemployment rates of some subgroups of our sample over a period of time. Tremendous differences can be found between the unemployment rates of apprenticeship versus university graduates, beginning in 1990 with 6% for both groups, and ending in 1995, with 15% for skilled workers and 4% for academics (Figure 4-1). Compared with this, gender differences in unemployment rates are minor (Figure 42), and the difference between the pre- and the postunification cohorts (Figure 4-3) approaches zero and is hence insignificant. At first glance, careers predominantly depend on the level of education achieved. Gender and cohort effects are of minor or negligible importance. The traditional impact of education on careers - and thereby on stratification - is salient and stable even through the turmoil of the present social transformation processes in Germany. The life event-history design permits an analysis of the impact of education, gender, and cohort on careers in a useful way: we can distinguish between entrance into and departure from a status. It is possible to differentiate between the risk of a transition from employment to unemployment on the one hand and the chance of a transition into employment on the other. Both events may vary independently: People can be well or poorly protected from dismissal, and they might have good or poor chances for (re)employment. Various combinations of transition rates are possible, which will result in very different life courses: for example, long-term stable employment combined with long-term or transitory unemployment, or unstable employment combined with good or poor chances for reemployment. The following tables show the transition rates from employment to unemployment and vice versa in more detail. Table 4-1 shows the transition rates from employment to unemployment between the years 1990 and 1995 for the whole sample and for the three subgroups. The risk of losing a job was highest in 1991 (.0114) and lowest in 1994 (.0064). Because the figures indicate risk on a monthly basis, the annual unemployment rate can be calculated by multiplying the figures by 12 (months), which results in an unemployment rate of 13.7% in 1991

20

15 -

o

10-

5-

r

1990

T

iI i Iii 1 ii|i ii i II rI i ii|ii1 irn

1991

1992

ii ii| ii ii iiiri

1993 time

Figure 4-2. Unemployment rates for men and women.

F

i |ii i i

1994

1995

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

93

Table 4-1. Transition to Unemployment* (Piecewise Constant Exponential Model) Model 1 Transition rate 6/1990-12/1990 1/1991-12/1991 1/1992-12/1992 1/1993-12/1993 1/1994-12/1994 Variables Men

Cohort 1985 Graduation from apprenticeship

0.0077* 0.0114* 0.0085* 0.0065* 0.0064* -29%* -18%* 135%*

Log likelihood, -8,176,84; number of episodes, 3,547; number of censored episodes, 2,632; number of subjects, 2,112. ^Reference group: 1990 female university graduates without children. *Significant at the 1% level.

and 7.7% in 1994. Putting these figures into the denominator provides the figure for the average period of employment before the transition to unemployment takes place: for example, 87.71 months (7 years 3 months) in 1991 and 156 months (13 years) in 1994. It is apparent from these figures that the risk of losing one's job has generally decreased since 1991. In a closer look at the risks of the subgroups, this general result has to be modified as expected. The most important observation is that graduates from the apprenticeship system run a 135% higher risk of losing their job than do university graduates. Further, women run a 71% higher risk than do men, and the cohort of 1990 has a significantly higher risk of dismissal than does the 1985 cohort. We conclude that the risk of unemployment decreased over the years of observation; apprenticeship graduates face by far the highest risk of losing their jobs. The portrayal in Table 4-2 of the transition rates into employment shows the opposite tendency. The chances of a transition into employment deteriorated from 1990 to 1994, the longest average duration of unemployment being in 1993. During the same period - see Table 4-1 the risk of dismissal decreased; thus, the combination of these two tendencies widened the gap between jobholders and the unemployed, ere-

20

15 -

1 10 4 cohort 1985

5 -

i i I i I I

1990

i i i i i i I i i I I i i i i i i i r

1991

I T

i l l

i i i I i ( I

1992

Figure 4-3. Unemployment rates of cohorts.

1993 time

i i i I i I i i i i i i r i r i r n

1994

i i

1995

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

95

Table 4-2. Transition from Unemployment to Employment* (Piecewise Constant Exponential Model) Model 1 Transition rate 6/1990-12/1990 1/1991-12/1991 1/1992-12/1992 1/1993-12/1993 1/1994-12/1994 Explanatory variables Men

Cohort 1985 Graduation from apprenticeship

0.1033* 0.1039* 0.0848* 0.0800* 0.0843* 67%* -35%* -22%*

Log likelihood, -9299.07; number of episodes, 1,433; number of censored episodes, 540; number of persons, 833. ^Reference group: 1990 female university graduates without children. *Significant at the 1% level.

ating new and severe inequalities. An improvement in the labor-market situation has not been forseeable until now. What are the chances of transition into employment for each of the subgroups? Although apprenticeship graduates run a tremendous risk of being dismissed, their chances of reemployment come much closer to those of university graduates. We conclude from this observation that the main difference in the unemployment rate of the two groups is mainly due to the risk of dismissal rather than to the chance of reemployment. As we have seen, women are relatively well protected from being dismissed, but Table 4-2 shows that their chances of getting a job are poor. Whereas older cohorts are better protected from dismissal, younger cohorts have better chances of employment. In this case the situation is reversed when one looks at transitions into unemployment (see Table 4-1). Our conclusion from the data presented in Tables 4-1 and 4-2 is that the risk of dismissal does not covary with the chances of getting a job: groups with the smallest risk of being fired are not identical to the groups with the best chance of being hired. From the data, we found that career paths depend mainly on the level of education attained, but also - to a smaller degree - on cohort and gen-

96

From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Table 4-3. Transition to Unemployment" (Three Piecewise Constant Exponential Models) Basic Model Transition rates 6/1990-12/1990 1/1991-12/1991 1/1992-12/1992 1/1993-12/1993 1/1994-12/1994 Explanatory variables Men With children (< 6 years) With children (< 3 years) With children (< 6 years) With children (< 3 years) Married Cohort 1985 Graduation from apprenticeship

0.0077** 0.0114** 0.0085** 0.0065** 0.0064** -29%**

Model 2

Model 3

0.0083*5 0.0122*' 0.0092*' 0.0069*'f 0.0068*'

0.0082** 0.0124** 0.0096** 0.0073** 0.0072**

-21%** 60%**

-23%** 69%**

-25%** -18%** 135%**

-10%** -15%* 116%**

-26%** -38%** NS 107%**

NS = significant. Log likelihood for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: -8,176.84, -8,143.64, -8,137.83; number of episodes for basic m odel, model 2, and model 3, respectively: 3,547, 3,805, 3,822; number of censored episodes for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: 2,632, 2,874, 2,883; number of persons for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: 2,112, 2,112, 2,112. ^Reference group: 1990 female university graduates without children. *Significant on 5% level; **Significant on 1% level.

der. With respect to the impact of gender, it would be interesting to know if gender is a salient factor per se or if parenthood and child rearing are the life events that actually matter in differentiating career chances between women and men. Table 4-3 and 4-4 again give the transition rates into employment and unemployment, but they distinguish between three models of data analysis: the basic model, model 2, and model 3. The basic model is the one we have already discussed. Model 2 presents the results for women with children up to 6 years of age. At 6, children enter elementary school and are no longer at home for at least half the day. Model 3 gives figures for women with children up to years of age 3. At 3, children can enter kindergarden, and most do. Table 4-3 shows the unemployment risk of women with dependent children. What can we learn from these data? Married people generally have a 38% to 40% lower risk of unemployment. For men, the unemployment risk is reduced by another 21% to 29%. Although for women, hav-

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

97

Table 4-4. Transition from Unemployment to Employment" (Three Piecewise Constant Exponential Models) Basic Model Transition rate 6/1990-12/1990 1/1991-12/1991 1/1992-12/1992 1/1993-12/1993 1/1994-12/1994 Explanatory variables Women With children (< 6 years) With children (< 3 years) With children (< 6 years) With children (< 3 years) Married Cohort 1985 Graduation from apprenticeship

0.1726* 0.1736* 0.1417* 0.1336* 0.1409* -40%*

Model 2

Model 3

0.1779* 0.1751* 0.1463* 0.1415* 0.1514*

0.1798* 0.1781* 0.1498* 0.1432* 0.1512*

-23%* NS -36%*

-35%* -22%*

NS -26%* -33%*

-28%* 52%* -47%* -24%* -28%* -32%*

NS = not significant. Log likelihood for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: -9,299.07, -9,282.35, -9,283.16; number of episodes for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: 1,443,1,472,1,490; number of censored episodes for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: 540, 569, 587; number of persons for basic model, model 2, and model 3, respectively: 833, 833, 833. ^Reference group: 1990 male university graduates without children. *Significant at the 1% level.

ing children increases the unemployment risk, especially when the children are young, having children decreases the risk for men. Again, the cohort effect is of minor importance, and the level of education exceeds all other factors by far. This effect is influenced only to a very small extent by having children. We conclude from the data that marriage is an advantage for both genders, but having children disadvantages women and advantages men. The impact of education still exceeds all other factors, however. Although marriage reduces the risk of dismissal, it does not increase the chances of employment (Table 4-4). By contrast, having children positively affects the chances of employment for men, albeit not for women. In a look at the subgroups, it is apparent that this positive effect of having children depends on gender: women with children had a lower chance of employment (36% to 47%, depending on the age of the child),

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From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

whereas men with very young children (under 3 years of age) had significantly higher chances of employment (52%). We conclude that marriage does not affect the chances of employment positively, whereas having children does positively affect employment chances, but only for men. Occupational Mobility

In this section, we examine the careers of the two cohorts in terms of upward and downward occupational mobility. First, we analyze the mobility of the two cohorts for the first 4 years after graduation, then the mobility of vocational and professional groups within certain segments of the labor market over the same period.3 Figure 4-4 reveals the structure of upward and downward mobility of both cohorts for the first 4 years after graduation. For both cohorts, graduating in 1985 or 1990, the rate of downward mobility was higher than the rate of upward mobility. In both groups, the second move counteracted the results of the first: Only a small proportion of the individuals descending in the first move descended a second time, whereas a larger proportion ascended; only a few of the individuals who were upwardly mobile in the first step moved further upward in the second step, whereas a larger group descended. Within both cohorts, social differentiation increased progressively over the first 4 years of their careers. In looking for cohort-specific ratios of distribution, significant differences between the cohorts become evident. The first is the change in nonmobility rates of both cohorts - that is, the share of people who experience neither downward nor upward mobility in the first and second steps. This nonmobility rate decreased in the first move from 60.8% (1985 cohort) to 50.9% (1990 cohort). With the second move, this percentage decreased again, independently of whether people had been upwardly or downwardly mobile in the first step. For example, the nonmobility rate of former downwardly mobile individuals dropped from 77.7% to 57.5% and the nonmobility rate of former upwardly mobile individuals dropped from 71.7% to 63.0%. Thus, the main difference between the two cohorts was the increasing likelihood of upward and downward mobility versus the first cohort's horizontal vocational life path that remained in the same social stratum. The stability of social rank throughout the life course is apparently disappearing. This can be explained mainly by structural changes in the labor market, due to German reunification, that result in cohort effects

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany starting point

cohort 1985

1. move

2. move

starting point

1. move

99

2. move

cohort 1990

[22.1%]

12 [1089=100%] 2

[63.0%l 13

[24.5%]|

31

[33.0%]]

[50,9%]|

[57.5%]

[27.0%]

33

[9.5%]

sample =2009

Figure 4-4. Percent upward and downward mobility. Individual career resources or earnings potentials are operationalized by occupational status of all job episodes and measured by the Wegener magnitude-prestige scale. Reference group: 1990 male university graduates without children. 1 = upward mobility; 2 = no mobility; 3 = downward mobility.

on occupational opportunities. The 1985 cohort entered its first job under socialist conditions, which meant not only conditions of social and vocational stability and security but also few occupational opportunities. By contrast, the 1990 cohort entered its first job under market conditions, which meant not only conditions of continuous social and technological change and competition but enlarged occupational opportunities as well. The comparison of cohort mobility shows salient cohort effects of the transformation process on careers. Career mobility depends further on the occupation and labor-market sector the graduates chose on the basis of their education. In the transformation process, all economic sectors have changed greatly in size and importance, and occupational groups have correspondingly gained or lost shares of the labor market. Upward and downward career mobility of individuals depends on the changing occupational structure in the transformation process. The following fig-

100 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives S\\

0.2

'medical science'

1 i i i i I i i i i i I i i i i i I i i i i i | i i i i i | i i i i i | i i i

time (months after job entry)

Figure 4-5. Upward mobility of vocational groups: product - limit estimation of the survivor function and its derivates (Blossfeld & Rohwer, 1995; 66-79).

ures show the mobility of some large vocational groups within 48 months of their first job entry. The upward mobility processes show a great deal of variety, depending on the occupational groups to which individuals belong (Figure 4-5). Over 50% of individuals in administration and nearly 30% of those in the social sciences and humanities experienced upward mobility within the first 6 months. Thereafter, little mobility can be observed. Individuals belonging to other professional groups experienced less upward mobility initially but a longer-lasting and continuous ascent over the ensuing 48 months (e.g., consumer-goods production, mechanics). Others had very little upward mobility at all (teachers). The high upward mobility rate of individuals in administration and of people in the social sciences and humanities has been facilitated by the transformation of the tertiary sector of the economy, especially the civil service, which led to a sudden increase in opportunities for some of the graduates. The professional opportunities for other groups depend more on economic development, which takes time.

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

101

0.2 time (months after job entry)

Figure 4-6. Downward mobility of vocational groups: product - limit estimation of the survivor function and its derivotes (Blossfeld & Rohwer, 1995; 66-79).

Figure 4-6 shows the downward mobility of individuals grouped by profession over the same period of time. Once again, there is a highly differentiated structure of professional performance. Over 60% of people from the social sciences and humanities, and approximately. 50% of scientists in agriculture, and about 30% of administrative personnel in agriculture descended within the first 4 years after job entry. People in the medical sector did not experience a severe risk of downward mobility. Skilled workers in consumer-goods production and machine building ("mechanics"), as well as those in other services and teachers, were also relatively well protected from downward mobility. In comparing Figures 4-5 and 4-6, it becomes evident that members of some professional groups profited and members of others suffered from the economic and social transformation. In some groups, much upward and downward mobility can be observed at the same time. In other cases, neither a great deal of upward nor a great deal of downward mobility takes place.

102 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Coping with Biographical Discontinuities

The representative macrosurvey, a life event - history analysis, has shown that rapid institutional and social structural change after 1989 forced mobility on life courses and inflicted stress and distress on most people, which was reflected in their biographies. In this third section, we present some information from the microsample, from biographical studies of 80 interviewees. Which coping strategies were applied to deal with biographical discontinuities on such a scale? The micropanel covers the same period as the macropanel, from 1985 to 1994. Data were collected in two waves in 1992 and 1995. In the first panel wave, we inquired about prospective occupational aspirations, desires, and fears, as well as about individual biographical frames and human-capital resources available to manage existing or potential vocational problems. In the second wave, we asked the interviewees to reflect retrospectively about the period of time between the two interviews as well as about future plans. By contrasting statements from the first and second interview, we obtained information about the reassessment of given structural conditions and of future perspectives. Firm closures, loss of jobs, massive devaluation of previously acquired qualifications, and increasing sexual discrimination indicate some of the main risks that affect individuals' occupational chances during the process of transformation from a socialist to a Western social system. The interviewees tried to maintain control over these risks by redefining the framing of a desired, normal biography and by activating human-capital resources. Figure 4-7 illustrates dimensions and congruities of biographical coping strategies by the interviewees. A strong vocational orientation was the dominant biographical frame that governed the coping behavior. All interviewees focused their coping strategy primarily on achieving job security and stability. This frame remained stable over the period of time between the two interviews, regardless of whether people were professionally successful. A dominant redundant vocational orientation was seen as guaranteeing a secure future. This explains, for example, why women replaced the habitual GDR model of simultaneously having children and working full time with the West German model of separately and sequentially ordering work cycles and family in the life course. They gave work priority when they had to make a choice. The prime human-capital resource of biographical coping is the vocational or professional qualification.

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

103

Risk Situations

\

Frames: - Aspiration level - Professional identity - Alternative roles to paid employment

Control Competences: - Locus of Control - Self-efficiency - Temporal awareness

—

Resources: - Job security - Professional qualification - Networks - Family

i

t — •

Decision

Timing Action

Figure 4-7. Model of coping strategies within the occupational biography.

The vocational/professional organization of education and the labor market is a traditional characteristic for both East and West Germany; it was unchanged by the country's division. Nearly all of the interviewees who gained access to stable employment after reunification did so via a formally certified existing qualification or formally certified retraining. Only a certified qualification can lead to promising and stable employment. Because a good education is seen as the foundation for self-sufficiency, most interviewees believed that their fate was in their own hands. The locus of control was definitely internal. Only during the turbulence immediately following the collapse of the GDR did some emphasize fate or the external forces of social structure and change as the main factors determining their biography. A dynamic interrelationship of biographical frames and human-capital resources can be observed from 1989 to 1995. Directly after the collapse of the GDR in the autumn of 1989, the level of career aspirations in biographical framing increased strongly. Shortly thereafter, as social and economic union occurred along with the subsequent political reunifica-

104 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Security

Euphoria

Hope

Hope dashed and Disappointment

Stabilization and Differentiation

Demand on control competence

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Figure 4-8. Frames, resources, and control competences over time.

tion in 1990, human capital resources became devalued. The divergence of frames and resources reduced the remaining control competence over biographical action. Control competence was seen as rapidly vanishing. Frames and resources had to be reorganized in reaction to this challenge. The framing of aspirations had to be restricted realistically and resources had to be activated or renewed to maintain or regain an internal locus of control. Figure 4-8 shows the dynamic of biographical coping during the transformation process from 1989 to 1995. It should be added that biographical control competence also depends to a large extent on the appropriate timing of decision making. It was important not to miss windows of opportunity (Figure 4-9). One of these windows was located early in the transformation process. Timing is a crucial dimension of successful biographical coping, particularly in times of rapid social change. We discovered coping strategies that indicate that vocational training and the institutionalized transition from the educational system into the employment system via a continuing professionalization of the labor market are significant integrative factors. Both dimensions describe special features of the German educational and employment system.

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany Security Euphoria Hope Hope dashed and Disappointment

105

Stabilization and Differentiation

Frames Resources

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Figure 4-9. Window of opportunity.

Conclusion We described the development of unemployment in East Germany from 1990 to 1995, observing a decrease in the risk of being dismissed but also a deterioration of the chances for employment. These two opposing trends widened the gap between the employed and the unemployed. Analysis of subgroups of the sample revealed salient differences between unemployment rates and employment chances over the years of observation according to gender and education. We then examined the transitions either from employment to unemployment or from unemployment (or nonemployment) to employment as a dynamic process. An important observation was that the risks of dismissal and the chances of reemployment did not covary in the same direction - neither over time nor from group to group. For example, the older cohort and women are better protected from dismissal, but they have poorer chances of employment. Next, we analyzed occupational mobility. The data showed a decline of life-course stability and an increase of upward and downward mobility. Within the growing number of mobile people,

106 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

downward mobility is experienced more often than upward mobility. Some occupational groups face high mobility rates and others face lower mobility rates; some show little internal variance of mobility and others show high internal variance. Finally, from the biographical interviews, we found that overall career performance depends first on the general trend in occupational structure and labor-market sectors in the process of economic and social transformation but second on the successful management of biographical frames and human-capital resources. What can we learn from the data in terms of a cross-national perspective on the transition from education to work? During the first 5 years after Germany's reunification, a rapid transformation of the socialist GDR society took place, often characterized as a rectifying modernization. Within this modernization process, the former GDR state-regulated link between education and employment was replaced by the West German system. The West German system of transition from education to employment gave much weaker institutional guidance but still is - compared to other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries - relatively institutionalized. The labor market is shaped to a large extent by occupations and professions. Access to stable employment largely depends on the fulfillment of educational prerequisites, at both the apprenticeship and the academic levels. This tradition of a meritocratic regimen of fitting education and employment survived the division of the country. A prominent example is the vocational training scheme known as the "dual system." This means that on-the-job training with a firm and schooling at vocational high school are pursued parallel to one another, generally for a period of 3 years. Because almost all school graduates who do not enter the university system pass through the dual system, there is little unskilled labor. Another example is the Staatsexamen (state exams), which are mandatory for graduates of medical schools, law schools, or teacher training. As a consequence of this meritocratic tradition of connecting education and employment, access to occupations and professions is often closed for applicants without the necessary educational certificates. The rules of admission or closure are institutionalized by regulations controlled by associations and chambers or via legislation. The linkage of job requirements and educational credentials is the outcome of a tradition of collective bargaining on the part of corporate actors, such as trade unions, and employers' associations, and vocational and professional lobbies, as well as a result of the constitutionally prescribed

Occupations and Careers in the Social Transformation of East Germany

107

bargaining process between the Lander (states, provinces) and the federal government. To a greater or lesser extent, the linkage between educational credentials and employment contracts continues to be a subject of collective bargaining between trade unions and employers' associations, inscribed in the Tarifvertrage (agreements) in which national rates of pay, working hours, job conditions, length of paid vacation, social benefits, and so forth are also agreed on. The German tradition of a relatively high degree of institutionalized linkage between education and employment is reflected in our data. The educational system still sets strong demarcation points for careers and occupational mobility. This is typical for a meritocratic system and a system of collective bargaining. Thus, a system of linking education and employment and of strict labor rules has its advantages and disadvantages. It is beneficial for those well and properly educated but unfavorable to the rest; it protects people relatively well from dismissal, downward mobility, or pay cuts as long as they are employed but puts strict constraints on the opportunities for those looking for a job, particularly when appropriate educational credentials are lacking (Schenk, 1995). It should be mentioned that under the increasing pressure of the globalization of capital and labor competition, and because of the precedence of rules and regulations of the European Union (EU), the German tradition of an institutionalized linkage between education and employment and of ritualized collective bargaining between employers and trade unions is coming increasingly under criticism and may be systematically changed or even discarded. Whether this tradition vanishes will greatly depend on the economic competitiveness of this kind of social policy and labor-market regime compared to other OECD countries within and outside the EU. The further development or nondevelopment of EU social policy might be an important factor as well. As Leibfried and Pierson (1995, p.44) put it: Although the extensive barriers to EU action have prevented any true federalization of European social policy, the dynamics of creating a single market have made it increasingly difficult to exclude social issues from the EU agenda. The emergence of a multitiered structure is less the result of attempts by Eurocrats to build a welfare state than it is a consequence of spillovers from the initiative to build a single market.

The balance of power between market forces and the welfare states' social policies defines the framework for the further development of Germany's - and other countries' - life-course policy at the intersection of education and employment (Giddens, 1991, pp. 209-231; Weymann, 1996).

108 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Notes 1. Research was conducted by Matthias Rasztar, Reinhold Sackmann, Olaf Struck-Mobbeck, Ansgar Weymann, and Matthias Wingens and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the Special Research Centre (Sfb 186) under the title "Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course'' at the University of Bremen. For further information on mobility, see Rasztar (1997); on generational exchange, see Sackmann (1997). 2. Weymann (1998) scrutinized the applicability of theories of social change and modernization to the transformation process. 3. Mobility is measured by occupational prestige (Wegener magnitude - prestige scale).

PART II

Education and Labor Markets: Work Experiences, Skills and Credentials

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition Pathways in the United States1 JEYLAN T. MORTIMER MONICA KIRKPATRICK JOHNSON

In the contemporary United States, part-time employment during the high school years has become an integral part of the "new passage" between education and work. Unlike the situation in Germany, Japan, and other countries, adolescent part-time work occurs in the context of a relatively unstructured school-to-work transition (Hamilton, 1990; Rosenbaum, Kariya, Settersten, & Maier, 1990). That is, in the United States, there is relatively little institutional support for young people as they embark on their job searches on completing their formal educations. This is especially true for those who do not complete a 4-year college degree (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988). In view of the high youth unemployment rates that result from this situation (Petersen & Mortimer, 1994), new initiatives to heighten the linkage between school and work, with support from the federal government, are now being developed (Borman, Cookson, Sadovnik, & Spade, 1996). Most youth, however, lack such support and must find out about the world of work - and forge their entry to the labor market - on their own. Without the benefit of apprenticeship programs or strong connections between schools and employers, almost all high-school students in the United States obtain employment in the "youth labor market," consisting largely of service-sector jobs, even before leaving high school (Manning, 1990). There is strong demand for their labor. Bachman and Schulenberg's study (1993) of 71,863 high-school seniors in the annual "Monitoring the Future" surveys showed that 75% of the employed boys and 38% of the employed girls worked more than 20 hours per week. The vast majority of employed students are in "free-market" jobs, not in internships or other school-supervised employment programs. Most research on this subject has been concerned with the immediate consequences of employment for high-school students - for example, with whether working youth are poorer students or engage in more problem 111

112 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

behaviors, such as delinquency, smoking, and drug use (Bachman, Bare, & Frankie, 1986; Bachman & Schulenberg, 1993; Greenberger, 1984; Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986; Steinberg & Dornbusch, 1991; Steinberg, Greenberger, Garduque, Ruggiero, & Vaux, 1982). On the basis of these assessments, some investigators conclude that employment is detrimental, and should be limited in scope (Greenberger, 1988; Steinberg, Fegley, & Dornbusch, 1993). Social scientists have given rather little attention to the longer-term consequences of teenage employment. Because much of the extant research is based on cross-sectional data, it is impossible to discern longer-term consequences or the direction of effect (Bachman & Schulenberg, 1993; Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986; Steinberg & Dornbusch, 1991); the few longitudinal studies of this topic are plagued by sample-selection problems (e.g., Greenberger & Steinberg's small longitudinal component, 1986) or very low retention rates (Steinberg et al., 1993). In this chapter, we examine whether teenage work experience has consequences beyond high school and whether it appears to enhance the development of human and social capital or detract from early adult wellbeing by curtailing postsecondary schooling, lessening attainment prospects, and hastening the transition to adult roles. On the basis of our own and other studies, we find it plausible to assume that adolescent work experience can have positive as well as negative implications. Acquisition and successful maintenance of the work role are central markers of transition to adulthood, enabling financial independence and determining a major aspect of adult identity (Erikson, 1963). The work role is a key component of the adolescent's future "possible self" (Markus, Cross, & Wurf, 1990). Exposure to the work environment may encourage thinking about future occupational goals, work values, and preferences. Moreover, the adolescent may acquire skills on the job that, although seemingly mundane from the standpoint of the adult worker, are highly salient for a young person: for example, the knowledge that one is able to find a job, meet supervisors' expectations; accept responsibility, relate to co-workers and customers, manage money, and be on time. The ability to function in the work world could signal to the adolescent a capacity to control immediate outcomes as well as to "make it" in the future. Greenberger and Steinberg's 1986 study of students in four California high schools found that teenage employment was associated with self-reported punctuality, dependability, and personal responsibility (Greenberger, 1984; Steinberg, Greenberger, Garduque, Ruggiero, & McAuliffe, 1982) and with girls' self-reliance (Greenberger, 1984). Several

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition longitudinal studies conclude that adolescent planfulness, responsibility, and future orientation have positive consequences for adult adaptation (Clausen, 1991, 1993; Elder, 1969; Jordaan & Super, 1974; Mainquist & Eichorn, 1989). Despite the increasing "destandardization" and "disorder" in the early life course, adolescents' aspirations and plans clearly matter for postsecondary educational attainment and residential independence from parents (Pimentel, 1996). Moreover, a greater sense of efficacy distinguishes adolescents who have been able to successfully actualize their plans. The fact that efficacy is responsive to the quality of adolescent work experiences (Finch, Shanahan, Mortimer, & Ryu, 1991) indicates that early work experience may be quite consequential for the transition to adulthood. Other orientations that are found to be reactive to adolescent work experiences - occupational values (Mortimer Pimentel, Ryu, Nash & Lee, 1996) and depressive affect (Shanahan, Finch, Mortimer, & Ryu, 1991) - probably also influence early attainment processes (Mortimer, 1994). Employed adolescents may learn to better manage their time so as to effectively juggle the many activities associated with being a worker, student, friend, and family member. The benefits of multiple roles in adulthood, because they provide access to social contacts and support, diverse activities, and opportunities to cope with challenging problems, are well known (Thoits, 1983, 1986). Interestingly, though employment is often thought to draw youth away from school, both employment and hours of work are found to be positively related to involvement in school activities (Mihalic & Elliott, 1995). The experience of successfully combining schooling and work is likely to promote a self-image of one who is able to meet the challenges of multiple adult roles (Elder & Caspi, 1990). Moreover, although some research has found negative associations between work hours and grades (Finch & Mortimer, 1985; Marsh, 1991; Mortimer & Finch, 1986; Steinberg & Dornbusch, 1991; Steinberg et al., 1993), working may have positive academic consequences under certain conditions. Mortimer Johnson & Kirkpatrich (1996) found that highschool seniors who work at low intensity (20 hours or less per week) have significantly higher grades than students who work more hours and than students who do not work at all. Similarly, D'Amico's 1984 analysis of the National Longitudinal Study (NLS) youth data showed that employment at low intensity lessened high-school drop-out rates. Finally, adolescent part-time work has repeatedly been shown to have positive consequences for employment and income following high

113

114 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

school (Carr, Wright, & Brody, Mihalic & Elliott, 1995; 1996; Marsh, 1991; Mortimer & Finch, 1986; Steel, 1991; Stern & Nakata, 1989). Prior anticipatory socialization, providing opportunity to learn and to practice future roles, is generally a good predictor of successful role adaptation (Mortimer & Simmons, 1978). We have no knowledge, however, about whether the transition to part-time work in adolescence constitutes a valuable or necessary anticipatory socialization experience with respect to the future adult work role. The answer to this question may depend on work's quality, as suggested by Stern and Nakata's (1989) findings that skill use in adolescent work predicts success in the job market during the first 3 years after high-school graduation. Moreover, Bachman and Schulberg (1993) found that students suffer when they work in poor-quality jobs for long periods of time - in jobs that do not make use of their talents, are unconnected to anticipated future jobs, and are only being done "for the money." They also reported many direct benefits of "high-quality" jobs with respect to reduced substance abuse and other salutary outcomes. In considering the consequences of adolescent work, the broad meaning and social context of working must be taken into account. Marsh (1991) reported positive effects of adolescent employment on grades, but only when the worker is using earnings to save for college. This connection of employment to a valued future "possible self," as college student, apparently transforms its meaning. It is noteworthy in this regard that the majority of seniors who plan to complete college save at least some of their earnings for this purpose (Bachman, 1983). Depression-era adolescents who contributed to their families' income through paid work gained a sense of confidence and efficacy from helping at a time of crisis (Elder & Rockwell, 1979). Similarly, in economically hard-pressed farm settings of rural Iowa, relationships with parents improve with the son's higher earnings (Shanahan, Elder, Burchinal & Conger 1996). Whereas a vast body of social-science literature examines the effects of experiences in childhood and youth for adult outcomes - including the accumulation of human capital through education, work, and job training and the acquisition of social capital through the formation of social ties the implications of adolescents' work experiences for these outcomes have been almost entirely overlooked. Some commentary suggests that adolescent involvement in the paid labor force signals a breakdown of human-capital investment in education, but there is reason to believe that the increasing prevalence of adolescent paid work is accompanied by new forms of acquisition of personal and social resources. Moreover,

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition working in adolescence may set the stage for continued simultaneity of work and educational investment, such that adolescents who work during high school continue to combine the two roles effectively as they go through college and other postsecondary educational institutions. Taking a more negative stance, Bachman and Schulenberg (1993) suggest that youth employment is one component of a syndrome of "precocious development" that precipitates a hastened transition to adulthood. This syndrome includes early involvement in dating (Mihalic & Elliott, 1995); "adultlike" leisure behaviors, such as drinking and smoking, and withdrawal from the more dependent, preadultlike student role. It is reasonable to suppose that adolescent employment would enhance economic and/or emotional independence from parents over the longer term. Alternatively, adolescent work could be associated with "accelerated" transition behavior, given its linkages to social class and gender as well as distinct schooling and training arrangements following high school (Bynner, personal communication, February 11, 1997). Little is known, however, about whether contemporary youth who have had greater investment in early work "grow up faster," leaving school and moving into adultlike family/residential arrangements (leaving the parental home, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood) and work roles (acquiring full-time work) more rapidly than other youth. Carr et al. (1996) found that in an earlier cohort - NLS youth who were 16 to 19 years of age in 1979 - more hours of work during high school did in fact predict a small decrement in educational attainment by 28 to 31 years of age in 1991. With education attainment controlled, however, employment in high school had positive effects on later employment and wages. Effects of Adolescent Work on Development of Human and Social Capital We examine three outcomes of adolescent work investment, each of which is expected to have strong influence on early adult achievements. Education Attainment

Education attainment is the most significant form of human capital development during the transition to adulthood, with critical implications for the trajectory of early occupational attainment (Sewell & Hauser, 1975).

115

116 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Postsecondary Work Experience

Previous analyses have shown that adolescents, in the aggregate, obtain jobs of higher quality as they go through high school (Mortimer, Finch, Denneby, Lee, & Beebe, 1994). Jobs obtained later in high school are more complex and involve more training, greater likelihood of supervisory responsibility, and a wider range of job types than those held in earlier years. We examine the extent to which high school employment predicts the acquisition of human capital during the transition to adulthood, as indicated by labor-force participation and the quality of subsequent work experience. Family Outcomes

We assess whether greater investment in employment during high school leads to earlier movement through critical family-related markers of transition to adulthood. For example, do adolescents who work for a longer period of time during high school - or at greater intensity - grow up "faster," as evidenced by less time spent living at home in subsequent years and by more rapid movement into independent living arrangements, cohabitation, marriage, or parenthood? Early marriage and parenthood may have negative implications for the accumulation of human capital through schooling and work experience. On the basis of earlier studies, we expect the consequences of early marriage and childbearing to be more deleterious for young women than for young men, curtailing their humancapital investment in education as well as work experience and diminishing their earnings (Marini, 1984a, 1987; Marini, Shin, & Raymond, 1989). Data Source To address these questions, we use data from the Youth Development Study (YDS), a prospective longitudinal study of a community sample (St. Paul, Minnesota) of adolescents and their parents (see Appendix A). The YDS was initially designed to assess the consequences of early work experience. A panel of 1,000 adolescents was surveyed annually from the ninth (1988) to the 12th (1991) grades in high school, with excellent panel retention (93%) over the 4-year period. Yearly questionnaires included a large battery of items concerning experiences in work, family, school and peer group, as well as indicators of mental health, achievement, and adjustment (see Appendix B). So that we could understand parental per-

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition spectives on teenage work, mothers and fathers were also surveyed in the first and fourth years of the study. In the 3 years following high school (1992,1993, and 1994), the respondents were mailed a "life-history calendar" (Freedman, Thornton, Camburn, Alwin, Young, DeMarco, 1988), on which they indicated various activities and family-status changes during the previous year (school, work, military service, living arrangements, parenthood, and so on) in monthly units. In spring 1995, approximately 4 years after most adolescents' graduation from high school (when most were 21 to 22 years of age), a more extensive survey was conducted, including the life-history calendar as well as measures of education and occupational attainment. Almost 78% of participants were retained through the 1995 survey. The study design and retention rates are shown in Table 5-1. This chapter reports information drawn from the "life-history calendar" data collected in Waves 5 through 8, enabling assessment of the implications of working during adolescence for activities related to education, work, and family in the 4 years following high school. Adolescent Employment and Transition Markers of Adulthood There are multiple plausible operationalizations of adolescent investment in work. It is useful to distinguish between the duration of adolescent work operationalized here as the length of employment in months, and its intensity, measured as the average number of hours of work per week during the period of employment. Work-history data were collected each year during high school; current employment as well as that occurring in the previous year were registered. For each job, the students indicated the month and year it started, and, if applicable, when it ended. They also told us the number of hours that they typically worked at each job per week. On the basis of these data, we computed each student's total months of paid work (the duration of work) as well as each student's work intensity, or average hours working per week - the cumulative hours of work divided by the total weeks of work. To examine the pattern of work activity, we constructed a typology based on experiences during 24 months of high school, including the full lOth-grade and llth-grade academic years of 9 months each, and the first 6 months of the 12th grade, up to the senior year survey, which was conducted in March 1995. We omitted ninth grade employment, which was

117

Table 5-1. Youth Development Studya Administration Grade Level Age Year

;Mail Survey Life History Calendar, Tracking Full Survey

Administration in School Full Survey 9 14-15 1988

1,000* Number of adolescent respondents — Retention rate (%) 924 Number of mothers responding 649 Number of fathers responding % Respondents with at 95.9% least 1 parent responding

10 15-16 1989

11 16-17 1990

12 17-18 1991

18-19 1992

19-20 1993

20-21 1994

21-22 1995

964

957

933

816

782

799

780

96.2% —

95.4% —

92.8% 690

81.3% —

77.7% —

79.6% —

77.6%

—

—

440

—

—

—

—

—

79.1%

—

—

—

"This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, under the tittle "Work Experience and Mental Helath: A Panel Study of Youth" (MH42843).] fc In fall 1987,1,010 consented to participate.

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition

119

Table 5-2. Patterns of Labor Force Participation, Grades 10-12 Percentage IDistribution Work Pattern Not working Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity Total n

Boys

Girls

Mean Hours of Work

Mean Months of Work Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

9.9

4.6

0.0

0.0

0

0

23.2

24.1

9.8

11.7

578

650

23.2

14.3

10.4

11.8

1,216

1,376

18.2

30.6

22.0

22.0

1,263

1,328

25.6 100.0

26.4 100.0

21.9

22.2

2,678

2,587

406

481

largely informal (Mortimer et al., 1994); such as baby-sitting for girls and yardwork for boys, and summer employment. A five-category typology was formed by cross-classifying the two dimensions of work duration and intensity and by including a fifth nonworking group (those who did not work at all while school was in session).2 Inspection of the data reveals five quite different work patterns (Table 5-2). The first group of students worked at low intensity most months while school was in session for an average of 20 or fewer hours per week; a second group worked at the same level of low intensity for about half the available months when school was in session. It is especially noteworthy that although the cutoff point in forming the duration dichotomy was set at 18 months (the median number of months of employment for the panel as a whole), the actual mean months of work for those who worked at high duration and low intensity, 22 for both boys and girls, approaches the total number of available months of observation - 24. A very small group of students did not work at all during this period of high school. Finally, there were those who worked for a relatively long duration (on the average, most of the time) at high intensity and those who worked for a relatively brief period at high intensity. Whereas youth in the "lowduration-high-intensity" and the "high-duration-low intensity" categories register about the same number of total hours of work per week, the patterning of this employment is exceedingly different. It is pertinent to note that employment status at a single time, or at several occasions measured serially, may provide little indication of the

120 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

overall pattern manifested when continuous employment data are observed. For example, 87 students were employed at high intensity (> 20 hours) at the time of each survey, in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. Of these 69 were, as might be expected, in the high-duration-high-intensity category; however, 18 students, or 21% of the total, were in the low-duration-high-intensity category, suggesting that their total months of employment, notwithstanding the constancy of their (high-intensity) status at each observation, were below the median. Similarly, 19% of those students who manifested low-intensity employment at each of the three waves were in the low-duration-low-intensity category (the rest are in the high-duration-low-intensity group). These early employment patterns are significantly related to student background characteristics measured in wave 1. Students employed at low intensity during high school tend to be of higher socioeconomic status (SES) background than other workers; the high-intensity workers clearly have a lower SES background. For example, among young people whose parents had at least some college, 20% were in the high-duration-high-intensity category; 36% of those whose parents were less educated conformed to this pattern (not shown). The two low-intensity patterns had greater popularity among youths from college-educated families (27.5% and 29% were in the low-duration-low-intensity and the high-duration-low-intensity categories, respectively; only 18% and 20% of youths whose parents achieved less education were in these groups). Young people who did not work at all were more likely to be foreign-born. Because of these differences, it is important to control background characteristics in any assessment of the long-term impacts of the duration and intensity of employment. Furthermore, a series of cross-tabular analyses showed that several indicators of academic orientation and achievement, measured in the ninth grade, were significantly related to the subsequent high school employment pattern. These relationships illustrate the manner in which personal characteristics of the adolescent predict the character of the early school-to-work transition, in the absence of formal supports and institutional structuring. For example, those ninth graders who had higher academic self-esteem (e.g., perceived themselves as better readers and more intelligent), a stronger intrinsic interest in and motivation toward schoolwork, and higher grade point averages were more likely to work at low intensity during the succeeding years. Ninth grades with higher educational plans and aspirations were more likely to work at low intensity for a long duration. By contrast, the high-duration-high-

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition intensity pattern was associated with more drinking and smoking, key indicators of "pseudomaturity," as well as with peer orientation (time spent with friends) and problem behavior at school. The monthly life-history calendars (Waves 5 through 8) cover a 4-year time span after high school and include human-capital investments in education, full-time work, and part-time work, as well as indicators of residential independence and living arrangements (living with parents, living with roommates, living alone, and cohabiting). We computed the time spent in each transition-related status each year: for example, months spent living with parents in Wave 5, the first year after high school. Finally, we examine whether the youths had married and/or become parents by each wave of data collection. Data obtained in Wave 8 enabled assessment of the extent to which the duration and intensity of employment during high school were associated with the quality of work 4 years subsequently. Hypotheses

We hypothesize that students who engage in low-intensity work will have the more positive transitional outcomes. The critics of teenage employment have mainly been concerned with the deleterious effects of high-intensity work, not employment limited to 20 or fewer hours per week, which may have positive consequences for academic achievement (Mortimer & Johnson, 1998) and school retention (D'Amico, 1984). Those who limit their hours of work have likely achieved a better balance between school and employment, because low-intensity employment would make for less interference with homework as well as extracurricular activities in school. It is high-intensity work that is strongly implicated in adolescent alcohol use and smoking; low-intensity employment was found to be protective with respect to these problem behaviors in the YDS high-school data (Mortimer & Johnson, 1998). Furthermore, high-intensity work is more adult like in character; it also yields greater monetary returns, increasing youths' purchasing power and, perhaps, feelings of economic independence. It is therefore expected that youths who work at high intensity during high school will engage in less post secondary schooling and more rapidly acquire full-time employment after leaving high school. If they are "precocious" in their social development, as Bachman and Schulenberg (1993) suggested, high-intensity workers might move away from the parental home earlier, thus gaining residential independence at younger ages; they might also spend more time living alone, living with roommates,

121

122 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

and cohabiting during the years immediately after high school. Finally, the "precocious maturity" argument would lead to the prediction that adolescents who work at higher intensity would be more likely to marry and to have children after leaving high school. It is reasonable to assume that whatever benefits may be derived from employment would be less evident for those with relatively little work experience during high school. Moreover, work of long duration, which in our panel signified working practically all (22 of 24) months while school was in session, implies an ability to maintain employment and effectively coordinate work and other activities, which may bode well for early adult outcomes. By contrast, employment of short cumulative duration could imply difficulties in the successful acquisition of employment or an early failure to maintain the work role over substantial periods of time. Admittedly, given our lack of information about reasons for leaving jobs, much of this discussion is speculative. With the widespread approval of adolescent employment and the prevalence of teenage work, however, the approximate 50% of boys and 38% of girls who engage in relatively little work, as well as those who report no employment at all (10% of boys and 5% of girls), may be "deviant" not only statistically but also in terms of widely held social definitions of what is appropriate for U.S. teenagers. The particular combinations of duration and intensity delineated by our typology may be suggestive of student lifestyles and orientations to the future. The student who works at low intensity for a long duration of time may be deliberately limiting work hours to appropriately balance employment and studying, in an effort to maintain high enough grades to go to college as well as to have sufficient earnings to finance (or help finance) postsecondary studies. By contrast, low-duration, high-intensity employment may be indicative of fluctuating life patterns and goals; students whose employment is characterized by this pattern move into the labor force at high intensity and then out again after relatively brief periods of time. Analytical Strategy

We first examined mean differences in outcomes for each category of the employment typology, using multiple classification analysis (SPSS, 1993). In a second phase of analysis, differences in adjusted means, controlling for parental education, family income, race (coded 1 if white), nativity (coded 1 if born in the United States), family composition (coded 1 if

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition two-parent family), and a selection to the sample hazard rate that takes into account differential attrition (Heckman, 1976, 1979), were assessed. Predictors in the selections equation were nativity, race, family income, family composition, parents' education, and academic self-esteem. Finally, in a third phase, controls were added for relevant lagged behavioral and attitudinal variables. For the achievement-related outcomes of education and work, we control a series of ninth grade indicators of involvement in school: intrinsic motivation toward school, academic self-esteem, educational goals (an index of aspirations and plans), and grade point average. For the indicators of residential independence, marriage, and parenthood, we controlled for early (ninth grade) indicators of "pseudomaturity": frequency of smoking, drinking, and peer orientation (time spent with friends), as well as ninth-grade school-related problem behavior. Unless noted otherwise, all differences described in this chapter are statistically significant at the .05 level. Because the effects of adolescent work experiences on the transition markers and early occupational attainments may be different for boys and girls, we performed all analyses separately by gender. We then examined the effects of the adolescent work-experience patterns on the quality of work obtained 4 years after high school. That is, we estimated the influence of the high-school employment pattern on several work attributes for those who were employed in Wave 8 (net of social background). Finally, we explored the manner in which early work in high school may contribute to or detract from subsequent employment. We examined the likelihood of working, each year after graduation, for the same employer as in high school. Distribution of Transition Markers

Before we examine the relationships between the high-school employment dimensions and activities during the period after high school, it is instructive to observe the aggregate distribution of these activities, shown in Table 5-3. The percentage of students attending school, including 4-year colleges, community colleges, and technical-vocational schools, declined precipitously during the 4-year period. Still, approximately half the male and female respondents in Wave 8 reported some school attendance during the preceding year,3 and those who did attend spent, on average, more than 8 months of the year in this activity. Over time, the percentage of students who had part-time work declined, paralleling the decline in schooling. Again, however, involvement in part-time work

123

Table 5-3. Aggregate Distributions of Students in States - Life-History Calendar Boys% W5

% Any time in school 73.8 Mean months in school total sample 5.60 Mean months in school, if attendeded school 7.58 68.4 % Any time in part-time work Mean months in part-time work total 5.17 sample Mean months in part-time work if worked part time 7.56 % Any time in full-time work 48.5 Mean months in full-time work total sample 3.35 Mean months in full-time work if worked part time 6.90 % Any time unemployed 27.2 Mean months unemployed total sample 1.41 Mean months unemployed, if unemployed 5.16 % Cohabiting 5.7 Mean months cohabiting, total sample 0.39 Mean months cohabiting, if cohabiting 6.86 % Married by a given wave 1.6 % With children by a given wave 4.1 W = wave.

Girls%

W6

W7

W8

W5

W6

W7

W8

53.7 4.39 8.18 55.5

52.6 4.39 8.35 52.9

48.2 4.27 8.86 52.1

78.2 5.87 7.51 74.6

63.9 5.26 8.23 66.7

58.3 4.85 8.33 62.2

53.8 4.53 8.41 55.9

4.43 7.97 62.1 4.83 7.77 17.5 0.96 5.47 12.4 0.79 6.34

4.23 8.00 66.4 5.78 8.71 12.7 0.53 4.15 16.5 1.19 7.20

4.35 8.35 65.7 5.68 8.65 15.4 0.60 3.88 17.5 1.40 8.00

6.20 8.31 39.4 2.44 6.20 25.8 1.37 5.30 14.0 0.90 6.41

5.61 8.40 50.8 3.59 7.07 19.9 0.92 4.61 18.7 1.41 7.54

5.35 8.61 55.0 4.39 7.98 13.1 0.57 4.33 28.7 2.37 8.28

13.5

12.5

17.8

23.4

5.08 9.09 60.1 4.94 8.22 10.1 0.51 5.04 28.8 2.39 8.31 15.2 31.8

3.4 6.8

8.3 8.3

9.9

2.0

3.3

8.0

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition

125

Table 5-4. Co-occurence of Education and Work Statuses

Boys (%) School only Part-time job only Full-time job only School and part-time job only School and Full time job only Part-time and Full-time only All three Girls (%) School only Part-time job only Full-time job only School and Part-time job only School and Full-time job only Part-time and full-time job only All three

W5

W6

W7

6.9 4.3 9.5

2.1 8.0

2.9 5.9

2.3 6.8

36.3 11.2

22.0 22.3 11.0

24.7 19.5

21.9

21.4

24.4 20.3 11.8 10.0 20.3

6.2 4.8 55

4.8 8.5

4.2 6.3

5.1 6.0

13.8 29.5

17.6 27.2

22.3 21.1

20.2

10.2 20.2

8.1

44.0 7.8 6.2

20.9

7.6

8.5 7.0

22.8

8.5 9.6

W8

9.4

11.0 20.8

9.0

W = wave.

was substantial for those who engage in this activity - also approximately 8 or 9 months. As the number of years out of high school increased, full-time work became more prevalent, as did the time spent doing it. In Wave 8, almost two thirds of the boys and 60% of the girls reported having had full-time jobs. It is noteworthy that girls were more likely to be doing part-time work, which is more compatible with postsecondary schooling, and less likely to have full-time jobs each year after high school. About one fourth of the panel spent some time unemployed in Wave 5, the first year after high school; this decreased to 15% of the boys and 10% of the girls 3 years later. For those who reported any unemployment, by Wave 8 the amount of time spent in this state was about 4 months for boys and 5 months for girls. Although these figures may be somewhat exaggerated, given that students were instructed to check the life-history calendar each month that they experienced any unemployment (not necessarily lasting the whole month), the data suggest that Minnesota youth, despite persistently low unemployment rates in the state compared to national averages, experience considerable difficulties in finding and maintaining work. It is of special interest to observe the co-occurrence of the education, part-time work, and full-time employment statuses, shown in Table 5-4. The most common pattern in the first year after high school, for both genders, was to combine schooling and part-time work.

126 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

A substantial minority of students, however - fully one fifth of the boys and girls - combined all three statuses during the course of the calendar year, experiencing some schooling, part-time work, and full-time work. The general form of the distribution persists throughout the 4-year period after high school, with decreases in schooling and work combinations and increases in the proportion of students having only a full-time job during the year. Even in Wave 8, however, 4 years beyond high school, less than one fourth of the panel is giving exclusive attention to a full-time job. It is remarkable how similar, overall, are the girls' and boys' distributions. Girls were somewhat less likely than boys to be employed full-time and more likely to be attending school (only) or combining school and parttime work, however. Clearly, the contemporary transition from school to work, as indicated by these co-occurring roles, is highly variable and individualized as young people acquire human capital through education and work, moving between and combining these experiences. Returning to Table 5-3, we now consider early family formation processes. With respect to the establishment of intimate and familial relationships, the rate of cohabation increases from 6% to 18% of the male respondents from Waves 5 to 8; for female respondents, the rates are greater each year, increasing from 14% in the first year after high school to 29% 4 years later. As judged by the mean months of cohabitation registered, the cohabiting state lasted approximately 8 months in Wave 8. (Cohabiting partners are not necessarily the same during these periods.) Similar proportions of men (10%) and women (15%) were married 4 years after high school. Many more women reported that they were parents than reported having been married, however. In fact, by Wave 8, 32% of the women had had one or more children; this was true of only 13.5% of the men. These particular activity states during the transition to adulthood are of course interrelated (Table 5-5). For both male and female respondents, months of schooling in Wave 8 was positively related to months of parttime work and negatively related to full-time employment. Part-time work may provide financial support for the continuation of schooling, as well as continued human-capital development through what is learned on the job. The demands of full-time work, by contrast, may be incompatible with extended postsecondary schooling (Thornton, Axinn, & Teachman, 1995). Those in Wave 8 who spent more time cohabiting spent less time in school, and this inverse relationship is especially pronounced among girls (r = -.32 for girls; r = -.16 for boys; for both, p < .01). Those who

Table 5-5. Correlation Matrix of Life Activities for Wave 8

Boys School Full-time work Part-time work Cohabiting Living alone Living with parents Living with roommates Girls School Full-time work Part-time work Cohabiting Living alone Living with parents Living with roommates *p <.O5.

School

Full-Time work

Part-Time Work

1.00 -.42** .40** -.16** .02 -.05

1.00 -.55** .20** -.04 .14*

1.00 -.09 .06 .01

1.00 -.09 -.29**

1.00 -.26**

1.00

.18**

-.30**

.09

-.16*

-.15**

-.56**

1.00 -.41** .45** -.32** .19** .08

1.00 -.48** .21** -.03 .03

1.00 -.21** .12* .10*

1.00 -.16** -.29**

1.00 -.20**

1.00

.21**

-.18**

-.09

-.32**

.34**

-.12*

Cohabiting

Living Alone

Living with Parents

Living with Roommates

1.00

1.00

128 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Table 5-6. Education and Work Activities by Marriage and Parenthood for Wave 8 Married Not Married Parent Not Parent Boys Mean months of school Mean months of part-time work Mean months of full-time work Girls Mean months of school Mean months of part-time work Mean months of full-time work

4.22 3.52 6.70

4.86 4.90 5.40

2.08*** 2.38** 8.49***

5.02 5.05 5.18

1.88*** 3.14*** 5.61

5.29 5.87 4.73

1.75*** 2.77*** 3.77**

5.80 6.45 5.29

ap<.10. *p<.05. **p<.01. ***/7<.001.

cohabited were more likely to do adult like full-time work and less likely to work part time (the latter relationship is statistically significant only among girls). Table 5-6 presents mean months in school and in part and full-time employment by marriage and parenthood status in Wave 8. We see the costs of these early family involvements for human-capital investment. For young women, both marriage and parenthood were associated with the curtailment of schooling and part-time work. For young men, these negative effects were associated only with parenthood. That is, young men who were married and those who were not married reported levels of investment in school and in both part- and full-time work that were not significantly different. Parenthood thus appears to have quite different implications for the full-time labor-force participation of men and women. At this relatively early stage in adult life, mothers - but not fathers - often curtail their full-time labor-force participation, limiting their human-capital investment through work. Whereas men who have become parents spend significantly more time in full-time jobs (8.5 vs. 5.2 months for parents and nonparents, respectively), women who have become parents are much less likely to spend time in full-time work (3.8 months for parents, on average; 5.3 months for nonparents). Effects of High School Work on Transition to Adulthood

We now examine the issue of central interest: whether the pattern of working during high school matters for key markers of transition to

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition adulthood. How does the pattern of early employment influence postsecondary schooling? Without controls, there was a consistent rank ordering of boys' postsecondary attendance across waves: The lowintensity workers obtained the most months of schooling, the nonworkers achieved somewhat less, and the high-intensity workers had the lowest levels of post secondary attendance. Note that the low-intensity workers achieved substantially more education each year than did boys who did not work at all during high school. These differences are reduced but not eliminated when the first set of demographic controls are included in the analysis; the rank ordering based on prior employment experience persists. In 2 of the 4 years, however - waves 5 and 8 these differences disappear when the achievement-related lagged variables, measured in the ninth grade, are incorporated in the analysis. What this indicates is that boys who were more achievement-oriented on entering high school came to have different patterns of subsequent work behavior as well as higher postsecondary education achievement. Still, it is especially interesting to observe the advantage of boys who worked at high duration but at low intensity through high school. These boys had high and relatively stable postsecondary attendance over the 4-year period. Consistent with this trend, these boys were the most likely to use at least part of their earnings to save for future education (62% did so, compared with only 39% of those in the high-duration high-intensity pattern; corresponding figures for the girls are 59% and 49%, respectively). Differences in spending patterns became statistically insignificant, however, when demographic controls were entered. Girls' postsecondary education achievement bears a similar zero-order relation to the employment categories as does the boys', with the same highly consistent rank ordering across years. Like the boys, girls in the low-intensity employment categories were favored each year with respect to education attainment. Unlike their male counterparts, however, nonworking girls achieved comparable or sometimes higher levels of postsecondary schooling. Also, the girls who worked for a short duration at high intensity have particularly low levels of education attainment. Although differences between groups persisted when the girls' SES indicators were controlled, all significant differences in postsecondary schooling vanished when the lagged achievement-related variables, measured in the ninth grade, were controlled. Thus, for the girls, these lagged achievement orientations were even more powerful than for the boys in rendering the "effects" of high school employment spurious. Prior orientations to achievement (human-capital investment)

129

130 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

appear to determine the high school employment pattern and postsecondary educational attendance. With regard to the second form of human-capital investment, paid work experience, the boys' postsecondary part-time work, at least during the first year after high school, appeared to mirror their adolescent work experience. Not surprisingly, boys who worked for a longer duration during high school, given that high-school employment is generally part time, logged in more months of part-time work during the first year immediately after high school. (In Waves 5 through 8, part-time employment was defined as < 35 hours per week). Boys who did not work during high school were the least likely to work part time after leaving school. In fact, differences between groups in the duration of part-time work were quite substantial. Given that these differences persisted even when the lagged achievement indicators were controlled, it was apparently a continuation of the high school pattern of employment, rather than early psychological/behavioral differences, that accounted for the propensity of boys who worked most of the time during high school to be employed part time the following year. Such differences between male high school employment groups, however, were short-lived; they lost statistical significance when the controls were added, after Wave 5. Girls' part-time work after high school was also related to the adolescent employment pattern. Among girls, however, significant differences among employment groups persisted through the first 2 years after leaving high school. Again, a pattern of early continuity was manifested: The two categories of high-duration workers during high school were spending more months doing part-time work in Wave 5. Following the pattern established in high school, the nonworkers are the least likely to subsequently hold part-time jobs. As among the boys, the differences between groups are substantial and the pattern cannot be explained by earlier demographic or achievement-related differences. The rank order shifted somewhat in Wave 6 but remained statistically significant; the earlier highduration workers spent less time in part-time work as they increased their involvement in full-time employment. Differences between groups disappeared in Waves 7 and 8 when the controls were added. The picture is quite different with respect to full-time work: intensity, rather than duration, is the critical factor. Adolescent high-intensity workers, whether they were employed for a shorter or longer period of time, moved into earlier full-time work roles. Early on, the pattern was very much the same for boys and girls. Low-intensity high school workers limited their involvement in full-time work during the years after

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition high school. Nonworking girls in high school were the least likely to work full time in each of the 4 following years. Whereas significant differences among boys survived for only 1 year after high school, differences among girls persisted through Wave 7. Again, it is the high school work pattern itself, rather than preexisting differences, that appears to be accounting for girls' transitional work behavior. We find variation by gender in the effects of the high school employment pattern on subsequent unemployment. Whereas there were no significant differences for boys, girls who worked the least (nonworking and low-duration, lowintensity workers) spent more months unemployed in Waves 5, 6, and 7. The differences were significant, even with all controls included, in Waves 6 and 7. Girls with such limited early work experience may have not acquired adequate knowledge of the job market, or sufficient social capital, to enable them to obtain jobs after high school as easily as girls with more teenage work experience. The fact that high school employment is important in predicting the subsequent employment pattern, particularly for girls, gives rise to questions about the mechanisms accounting for this pattern. Apparently, continuity is important, with high-duration workers during high school being subsequently more apt to work part time (like their earlier employment) and high-intensity workers (those who worked > 20 hours per week during high school) more apt to subsequently work full time. Is it that adolescent boys and girls, early on, develop a pattern of working that is simply perpetuated during the transition period? To what extent do they work for the same employers that they had during high school? If this were the case, it would be reasonable to suppose that low-intensity high school workers could maintain this pattern of employment (combining it with postsecondary education enrollment rather than high school attendance); those who worked at greater intensity during high school - which, for boys, averaged about 28 hours per week (derived by dividing their mean hours of work, 2,678, by their mean weeks of work, of 94.8) and for girls, to 27 - might be encouraged by their employers, after leaving high school, to increase their hours to the full-time range (> 35 hours per week). Boys in the two high-duration categories were especially likely to say that they obtained work in Waves 5, 6, and 7 with the same employers that they had in high school (Figure 5-1). Those in the low-duration high-intensity category followed close behind in Waves 6 and 7. Clearly, boys were capitalizing on their prior employment contacts in obtaining work in the years immediate after high school. Girls who did little or no

131

Wave 8

-Not

Working -LD-LI -LD-HI -HD-LI -HD-HI

Wave 5

Wave of Data Collection

Wave 7

Figure 5-1. Percentage of those who, after high-school, worked for same employer as in high school; boys, top; girls, bottom.

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition work during high school, in the low-duration - low-intensity category or the nonworking category, were less likely than other girls to be employed each year after high school, by the same employers that they had in high school.4 With respect to income attainment, male high-intensity workers reported the highest annual earnings 4 years after high school. The differences among the employment groups persisted even when all controls were entered. This was not the case, however, among the girls; for them, the higher incomes of the high-duration - high-intensity workers appeared to be accounted for by prior socioeconomic differences. We repeated the same sequence of analyses for work-quality outcomes in Wave 8. These addressed the question, for those young people who were employed at the time of the Wave 8 survey, of whether the pattern of employment during high school predicted higher or lower quality work experiences or work experiences with different implications for the development of human capital. There were only two quality-of-work indicators for boys and none among girls that were significantly predicted by the prior employment patterns and net of background and achievement-related lagged variables. Young men who worked at higher intensity during high school reported that they had more opportunities for advancement in their current (Wave 8) jobs. The former high-intensity workers were also more likely to experience detrimental work conditions (i.e., to be exposed to excessive heat, cold, or noise on the job), however. Turning to the indicators of male respondents' family and living arrangements, we see that the pattern of employment during high school was not significantly predictive once background variables were taken into account. High-intensity male workers spent somewhat more time in cohabiting relationships just in Wave 7, but the differences between groups only approached statistical significance. With respect to the girls' living arrangements, we again find hardly any support for the "precocious maturity" argument. Although women who worked at greater intensity as teenagers (either for high or low durations) spent more time in cohabiting relationships after high school, the relationship between the employment pattern and cohabitation vanished entirely when subjected to the full set of controls; also, the work-investment pattern did not predict marriage among female respondents. High-intensity employment of a short duration was weakly associated, for girls, with early childbearing. The bivariate association was statistically significant in Waves 6 and 8. When the prior "precocious" behaviors were controlled

133

134 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

for, however, the associations disappeared in both waves. As for boys, the effects of the work-investment pattern on the various residential arrangements were not statistically significant for girls. Discussion We have found that in the United States, the relatively unstructured process of transition between education and work involves multiple postsecondary education and employment statuses, occupied in combination for most young people. Our findings are quite consistent with Krahn and Lowe's (chapter 11 of this volume) and Thiessen and Looker's (chapter 2 of this volume) descriptions of the new student labor market in Canada, as well as with their characterization of the transition from school to work as increasingly complex and difficult. Thus, in contrast to the situation in Germany (Heinz, chapter 9 in this volume; Hamilton & Hamilton, chapter 8 in this volume), the "new passage" to adulthood in North America is likely to be rather complicated for the young person, with potential for considerable variability, individualization, and uncertainty. Extensive analysis of high school employment shows that young people manifest quite different patterns of initiation to work. The fact that low-duration-high-intensity workers and high-duration- low-intensity workers accumulated similar numbers of total hours of work during high school is especially interesting in view of their very different transitional patterns. These findings underscore our conclusion that it is the pattern of working, not the mere quantity of investment in employment in adolescence, that matters for the transition to adulthood. Moreover, our analyses show that students who choose different patterns of work during high school (or are selected by employers in ways that produce these patterns) are different initially. At the time of entry into high school, those who were to acquire the varying work patterns were already differentiated with respect to achievement orientations and attainment as well as indicators of "pseudomaturity," peer orientation, and problem behavior. The overall pattern of findings suggests that the character of entry into the labor market in the United States, as well as the transition from school to work, should be conceived as a long-term process, the determinants of which are already evident in early adolescence. Given the strong bases of selection to employment, any claims about the causal influence of teenage work must control for these prior differences. For example, though analyses without controls indicate significant "effects"

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition of the high school work pattern on girls' postsecondary schooling, these effects were subsequently shown to be spurious, accounted for by prior achievement orientation and behavior. Still, our analyses of life-history calendar data obtained from young people during the 4 years after high school lead us to conclude that the pattern of employment in adolescence clearly matters for key markers of transition to adulthood. For example, the high-duration-low-intensity pattern - in which boys work for a relatively long time during high school but limit the intensity of their work - seems to be particularly favorable with respect to postsecondary education enrollment. While in high school, these boys limited their investment in employment, consistent with the maintenance of sufficient grade point averages, at the same time using their earnings to save for college. Even with SES background and prior achievement orientations and behaviors controlled for, boys who limited their hours of work during high school while remaining nearly continuously employed, achieved significantly more months of postsecondary schooling during 2 of the 4 years after high school. Our prior speculations about learning to manage school and work successfully during high school, to promote a similar mutually favorable connection thereafter, thus seem to be borne out by the boys' data. Boys' high level of investment in work during high school, however, as indicated by cumulative employment of more than 20 hours per week, may signify a process by which work overrides other activities and the identity of worker comes to supersede the less adult-like student identity. A taste of some of the prerogatives of adulthood - higher earnings, more independence from parental monitoring and control, and more adultlike leisure-time activities - may contribute to this process of identity transformation. Moreover, as work consumes an increasing number of hours, the combination of school and work may become ever more challenging, even stressful. It is no wonder, then, that high-intensity work during high school predicts boys' more hasty withdrawal from the student role. The higher earnings of boys who worked at greater intensity during high school are compatible with their greater investment in paid work. A long duration of employment during high school increases the likelihood of part-time work during the postsecondary period, whereas more intensive high school work experience hastens entry into full-time, more adultlike work. In considering high school employment in relation to both part- and full-time work, the overall stability of pattern is most apparent. The duration of work in high school, generally of a part-time

135

136 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

nature, predicts subsequent work of this kind thereafter; similarly, highintensity employment in high school - hours that average out to more than 20 hours per week - is predictive of early involvement in full-time employment. The effects of the high school employment pattern on subsequent work behavior seem to be of a more long-term character for girls than boys. For instance, the effects of high school employment on subsequent part-time work held for boys through Wave 5 only; for girls, through Waves 5 and 6. In the most stringent models (with all controls), the employment pattern significantly influenced boys' full-time work only for 1 year, in Wave 5; it continued to influence girls' months of full-time work for 3 years, through Wave 7. Moreover, only among girls was the lack of high school work experience (as indicated by placement in the nonworking or low-duration - low-intensity categories) associated with more months of subsequent unemployment. This disadvantage extended 3 years beyond high school, through Wave 7. Significant effects of the high school work pattern on subsequent employment for the same employer were also of longer duration for girls (extending across four waves, as compared to three among boys). It is difficult to explain why the high school employment pattern should have a more prolonged influence on girls' transitional work behavior. It may be that despite the fact that employment is becoming increasingly normative for adult women, adolescent girls still expect to be more involved in adult family roles than do boys (Dennehy & Mortimer, 1993) and that various social influences (parents, peers) reinforce this expectation. The generally universal expectation that boys will work throughout adulthood may make boys' early employment behavior after high school more strongly affected by other and perhaps earlier influences, beyond the scope of this study. Furthermore, if girls have less information about the labor market or have fewer or weaker contacts to assist them in finding a job, high school work experience may be a more critical transitional experience in setting the stage for successful early adult labor-force participation. Turning to our indicators of early family formation, we see that almost one third of the girls who remained in the YDS panel through Wave 8 had become mothers, but only 15% were married. This pattern parallels national U.S. trends. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics, reported in The New York Times (February 11,1996), show that nationally, the percentage of births to single mothers has risen from 18% in 1980 to 31% in 1993. Births to unmarried women are rising most precipitously

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition among women 20 to 24 years of age, the age range of the women in our sample. In fact, women in their twenties now account for 54% of all unmarried women with children. What has in the past been considered deviant - parenting prior to marriage - is becoming increasingly normal for young women. Childbirth during the years immediately after high school is cause for concern, given the negative association between childbearing and postsecondary education demonstrated in our study. Marini (1984a) reported a positive association between the age at first childbirth and educational attainment. In addition, for women who begin an education program, she found that entry into parenthood prior to the age at which an education program is usually finished interferes with its completion. Early childbearing also has adverse indirect consequences for later economic well-being, through its effects on education, family size, and labor-force participation (Hofferth & Moore, 1979). The pattern of adolescent employment is apparently associated with early motherhood. Specifically, low-duration - high-intensity employment during high school is weakly associated with early childbearing for women (and cohabiting among men, likely to precede childbearing). The fact that these differences in behaviors related to early family formation disappear when prior socioeconomic and/or behavioral differences are controlled for lends no support to the hypothesis that early adolescent employment has causal influence, however. Bachman and Schulenberg (1993) suggested that both employment and early parenting are part of a syndrome of "precocious development." Our study shows, however, that problem behavior-related indicators of such "precocity" exist prior to the onset, for most students, of extensive formal work experience. Once these early indicators are controlled for, high school employment loses its explanatory power. How, then, do the findings of this study address the debate about whether working is "good" or "bad" for youths, (Finch Mortimer, and Ryu, 1997), especially with respect to the transition to adulthood? We found that boys who were employed for relatively long periods of time at low intensity during high school achieved more postsecondary schooling (in 2 of 4 years after high school).5 A long duration of employment during high school predicts more part-time work (for both genders), whereas high-intensity early employment precedes a more rapid transition into full-time work. For women, less postsecondary unemployment is an additional benefit of employment during high school. For girls, this script of more rapid movement into adulthood sometimes includes both early employment (especially low-duration-high-intensity

137

138 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

employment during high school) and early parenthood, which appears to be quite deleterious with respect to future educational attainment. The linkages between high-intensity work and early parenting appear to be accounted for by other previously measured variables, however. Though the markers of transition to adulthood related to family formation seem to be explained by attitudinal and behavioral propensities that predate even high school employment, there is little doubt, given the stringency of our controls, that high school employment influences postsecondary human-capital investment in education (in 2 of 4 years after high school for boys) and in both part- and full-time employment (for both genders). We have been unable to account for subsequent quality of work indicators for boys or for girls, but these may bear a stronger relation to the character than to the temporal patterning of high school work. It is to these possible relationships that we will turn in subsequent publications.

Notes 1. This longitudinal study of youth in St. Paul, Minnesota, was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, Maryland (MH42843) under the title "Work Experience and Mental Health: A Panel Study of Youth/' We thank John Bynner and Walter R. Heinz for their comments on previous versions of this chapter. 2. Duration of employment was registered by a dichotomy consisting of those who were employed more and those who were employed less than the median number of months (18 for the total panel). Intensity was likewise dichotomized: respondents whose own cumulative hours of work divided by their own cumulative weeks of work were greater than 20 were considered high-intensity workers; those whose cumulative hours of work divided by their weeks of work were 20 or less were considered low-intensity workers. This second dimension reflects the feature of adolescent work that has been the focus of so much attention and concern - employment involving more than 20 hours per week. 3. Because the Wave 8 survey was conducted in the spring, with data collection beginning in March 1995, we were not able to discern whether a baccalaureate degree was conferred within 4 years. 4. It is possible that girls in the nonemployed category (based on school-year employment) were "working with the same employer as in high school" because the prior employment could have occurred in the summer months. 5. The relation between education and adolescent work, and the implications for classroom activities of large numbers of adolescents working are further described in Mortimer, Johnson (1998)

Appendix A Employment and Schooling Findings in the Youth Development Study Table A-l. Boys School W5

School W6

School W7

School W8

Controlling SE + SE + SE + Controlling Controlling Controlling SE + SE Lagged SE Lagged Lagged SE Lagged SE Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables" Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables* Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

6.00 7.07

6.06 6.66

6.13 6.65

4.48 5.26

4.49 4.57

4.54 4.57

4.63 5.63

4.88 5.06

4.65 5.27

3.82 5.84

4.16 4.98

4.42 4.98

4.57

4.89

5.08

3.20

4.50

4.50

3.34

3.75

4.24

3.70

4.12

4.85

7.03

6.72

6.67

6.92

6.50

6.50

6.95

6.58

6.88

6.35

5.97

5.87

4.80

5.15

5.46

3.43

4.17

4.17

2.86

3.29

3.70

2.88

3.55

4.24

5.86 5.82***

2.97*

1.70

4.62 7.74*** 2.94*

2.94*

4.62 9.43***

5.85***

4.25**

4.55 6.18***

2.55*

0.81

Part-Time Work W5

Part-Time Work W6

Part-Time Work W7

Part-Time Work W8

Controlling SE + SE + Controlling Controlling SE + Controlling SE + SE SE Lagged Lagged SE Lagged SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables" Mean Variables" Variables" Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables* Nonworking Low duration, low

2.92 4.97

3.04 4.85

3.14 5.17

4.13 4.43

3.86 4.09

3.20 3.91

3.52 4.59

3.57 4.15

3.71 4.28

4.59 6.09

4.87 5.43

4.00 5.77

Low duration, high

4.52

4.75

4.70

3.77

3.95

4.25

3.62

3.90

4.05

3.67

3.97

4.51

intensity High duration, low intensity

6.75

6.59

6.66

6.34

6.23

5.87

6.06

5.84

5.90

5.52

5.24

5.35

Table A-l, continued Part-Time Work W5 Controlling SE + SE Lagged 0 Mean Variables Variables6

High duration, high

6.52

Overall mean F

5.48 5.31*** 4.50**

6.53

Part-Time Work W6

Part-Time Work W7

Part-Time Work W8

SE + Controlling Controlling SE + Controlling SE + Lagged SE SE Lagged SE Lagged Mean Variables* Variables* Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables"

6.26

4.72

5.02

5.29

4.07

4.43

4.64

3.32

3.81

4.18

3.10*

4.74 2.43*

2.39a

1.90

4.47 2.66*

1.84

1.43

4.61 4.05**

1.50

1.06

Full-Time Work W5 Controlling SE + SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables'7

Full-Time Work W6

Full-Time Work W7

Full-Time Work W8

Controlling SE + Controlling Controlling SE + SE + SE Lagged SE Lagged SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables* Variables*

Nonworking Low duration, low

2.04 2.24

2.07 2.53

2.36 2.40

3.09 4.04

3.32 4.47

3.76 4.52

5.63 5.30

5.54 5.92

6.06 5.54

6.05 3.81

5.91 4.46

6.93 4.23

Low duration, high intensity

4.26

4.00

4.30

5.61

5.34

5.35

6.72

6.29

6.34

6.61

6.36

6.32

High duration, low

2.28

2.37

2.34

3.13

3.23

3.55

3.98

4.33

4.45

4.45

4.65

4.56

High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

4.29

4.17

4.50

6.24

5.92

5.98

6.41

5.93

5.75

7.18

6.64

6.39

3.19 5.09***

3.37*

3.54**

4.70 5.76***

3.77**

2.17a

5.64 3.02s

1.57

1.02

5.59 5.63*** 2.58*

2.42*

Worked for Same Employer Worked for Same Employer Worked for Same Employer Worked for Same Employer as in High school W5 as in High School W6 as in High School W7

Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

Controlling SE + SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variable*

Controlling SE + Controlling SE Lagged SE Mean Variables" Variables'1 Mean Variables"

SE + Lagged Variable*

0.19

0.09

0.11

0.43

0.30

0.31

0.04 0.29

0.08 0.28

0.08 0.26

0.08 0.25

0.42

0.36

0.37

0.39

0.55

0.49

0.47

0.47

0.48

0.36

0.37

0.42

5.14**

0.34 4.17**

3.68**

3.97**

0.20 0.40

0.21 0.39

0.41

0.42

0.70

0.69

0.65

0.65

0.51 8.73***

Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

0.44

0.38

0.71

0.36

0.58

0.71

0.58

0.41

0.42

0.39 7.24*** 5.47*** Annual Income W8

7.90

4.93**

Mean

Controlling SE Variables0

SE + Lagged Variables*

10,912.63 9,583.43 13,403.78 9,174.90 14,667.64

10,999.80 10,467.40 13,042.05 9,396.38 13,851.88

12,734.92 10,309.68 12,454.43 8,906.43 13,992.22 11,679.41 2.85*

6.04***

3.36**

Controlling SE + Lagged SE Variables" Variables'

0.81 0.54 1.72 0.63 1.64

0.65 0.54 1.67 0.77 1.63

2.35a

2.03a

Controlling SE + SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables 0.05

0.08

0.05

0.19

0.20

0.15

0.18

0.17

0.21

0.27

0.27

0.24

0.19

0.17

0.26

0.19 1.29 1.00 1.10 Exposed to Heat, Cold, Noise W8

Cohabiting W7 Mean

as in High School W8

0.62 0.64 1.88 0.67 1.43 1.11 1.63

SE Variables"

SE + Variables*

3.47 2.72 3.25 2.20 3.35

3.49 2.85 3.19 2.19 3.28

5.65***

4.49**

3.90 2.73 2.83 2.37 3.17 2.95 3.39

Mean

SE = socioeconomic; W = wave. "Race, nativity, family income, family composition, parents' education, and selection term. *SES variables (listed in a) and ninth grade grade point average, education goals, and intrinsic motivation toward school. C SES variables (listed in a) and ninth grade drinking, smoking, problem behavior at school, and time with friends. *p <.O5 **p <.01 ***p <.001

Table A-2. Girls School W5

Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

School W6

School W8

Controlling SE + SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables*7

Controlling SE + Controlling SE + Controlling SE + SE Lagged SE Lagged SE Lagged 6 0 7 Mean Variables" Variables Mean Variables Variables' Mean Variables Variables'7

6.89

6.38

6.74

6.61

6.54

6.39

6.65 5.94

6.22 5.84

6.20 5.58

6.17 5.78

5.26 5.55

5.93 5.90

3.40

3.78

5.89

2.38

2.98

4.97

6.50

6.17

6.10

5.77

5.39

5.49

4.40

4.83

5.20

4.24

4.83

5.01

0.57

4.99 6.16*** 3.07*

4.34 6.97 4.75

4.76 6.58 5.20

5.54 6.69 5.65

5.98 6.65*** 3.36* 1.10 Part-time work W5 Controlling SE + SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables'7

Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity

School W7

5.45 6.34***

3.43**

Part-time work W6

0.48

Part-time work W7

5.33

4.30

4.94

5.80

5.64

5.58

2.54

2.98

4.97

5.64

5.35

5.49

3.25

3.76

4.26

4.66 7.45*** 4.43** 1.14 Part-time work W8

Controlling SE + Controlling SE + Controlling SE + SE Lagged SE Lagged SE Lagged 7 Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables' Mean Variables Variables'7

3.00

3.30

2.37

3.47

3.32

2.81

4.22

3.57

3.59

2.72

2.12

2.58

5.77

5.85

5.88

5.85

4.83

6.32

6.49

6.32

6.50

6.08

6.02

5.33

4.56

4.91

4.95

3.74

4.11

4.65

4.11

4.83

6.18

4.36

4.67

6.50

7.85

7.60

7.66

7.09

6.85

6.87

6.47

6.16

6.16

5.98

5.74

5.65

6.78

6.78

6.99

5.90

6.09

6.20

5.32

5.66

5.64

5.15

5.47

5.73

Overall mean Overall mean F

6.43 6.43 8.12***

5.95*

3.12***

5.95***

5.63*

5.90 5.90 5.50***

4.14**

5.63***

5.50***

4.14**

Full-Time Work W5

2.91*

5.79 5.79 3.06*

1.86

2.91*

3.06*

1.86

Full-Time Work W6

1.16

5.43 5.43 2.62*

2.62

1.51

1.16

2.62*

2.62*

1.51

Full-Time Work W7

Full-Time Work W8

Controlling SE + SE + Controlling SE + Controlling Controlling SE + SE Lagged Lagged SE Lagged SE SE Lagged 0 Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables Variables" Mean Variables" Variables" Mean Variables Variables" 1.44 1.55

1.54 1.54

2.17 1.62

1.94 2.63

2.54 2.57

2.61 2.04

1.44 3.47

2.24 3.52

2.31 2.92

3.22 3.79

3.73 3.77

4.19 3.95

3.38

3.54

4.48

4.28

4.37

4.63

4.28

4.17

4.52

5.16

5.37

4.12

High duration, low intensity High duration, high

2.15

2.17

2.10

3.16

3.21

3.06

4.20

4.30

4.26

4.51

4.53

4.66

3.40

3.31

3.06

4.98

4.79

4.78

5.46

5.16

5.24

6.52

6.29

6.05

Overall mean F

2.45 4.42**

4.21**

3.48**

3.57 4.76***

3.85**

4.29**

4.22 3.79**

2.23a

2.62*

4.87 4.74**

3.70**

2.03a

Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high

Table A-2, continued Unemployment W5

Unemployment W6

Unemployment W7

Unemployment W8

Controlling Controlling Controlling SE + SE + Controlling SE + SE + SE SE SE Lagged Lagged Lagged Lagged SE Mean Variables" Variables* Mean Variables" Variables'7 Mean Variables0 Variables* Mean Variables Variables* Nonworking Low duration, low

1.56 1.96

1.40 1.89

1.44 1.85

1.29 1.42

1.28 1.46

1.17 1.53

1.33 0.97

1.34 0.98

1.33 0.92

0.39 0.52

0.44 0.51

0.51 0.56

Low duration, high intensity High duration, low

1.50

1.30

0.66

1.24

1.13

0.59

0.47

0.44

-0.09

0.66

0.60

0.45

0.95

1.03

1.05

0.37

0.41

0.49

0.41

0.40

0.41

0.52

0.55

0.38

1.24

1.34

1.37

0.49

0.44

0.50

0.31

0.34

0.38

0.36

0.35

0.25

1.37 1.72

1.20

1.23

0.80 4.42**

4.26**

3.24**

0.57 2.57*

2.46*

2.61*

0.49 0.25

0.23

0.29

High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

Worked for Same Employer as High School W5

Worked for Same Employer as High School W6

Worked for Same Employer as High School W7

Worked for Same Employer as High School W8

Controlling Controlling Controlling SE + SE + Controlling SE + SE + SE SE SE Lagged Lagged SE Lagged Lagged 0 0 6 0 Mean Variables Variables* Mean Variables Variables Mean Variables Variables* Mean Variables Variables* Non working Low duration low intensity Low duration high intensity High duration low intensity

0.17 0.49

0.20 0.51

0.16 0.52

0.29 0.35

0.34 0.36

0.29 0.34

0.22 0.33

0.25 0.32

0.21 0.29

0.06 0.16

0.05 0.15

0.07 0.08

0.42

0.46

0.53

0.40

0.43

0.52

0.33

0.36

0.42

0.17

0.19

0.28

0.75

0.72

0.71

0.59

0.58

0.56

0.47

0.46

0.44

0.19

0.18

0.17

High duration high intensity Overall mean F

0.66 0.60 10.83**"•

0.67

0.73

0.59

0.60

0.58

0.51

0.52

0.54

0.26

0.26

0.30

8.11***

6.54***

0.50 5.41=***

4 42**

3.20*

0.42 3.11*

2.79*

2.97*

0.19 1.53ns

1.55ns

3.25*

Parenting \/V8

SE + SE Lagged Mean Variables0 Variables'7

SE + SE + Controlling Controlling Controlling SE + SE Lagged SE Lagged SE Lagged Mean Variables" Variables'7 Mean Variables" Variables'7 Mean Variables Variables"

5295.00 6140.68 8897.96 8808.66

7553.46 9077.82

2.28 1.88

2.45 1.92

3.00 2.14

0.06 0.20

0.08 0.21

0.09 0.21

0.17 0.23

0.21 0.23

0.24 0.25

9544.57 9413.12

8652.78

3.14

3.05

2.78

0.31

0.28

0.22

0.52

0.44

0.37

9868.25 10279.34

10533.13

1.67

1.74

2.01

0.11

0.13

0.15

0.23

0.26

0.30

11117.10 10632.43

10352.52

3.30

3.16

2.86

0.16

0.15

0.14

0.34

0.32

0.32

2.34 2.52*

2.10a

0.77

0.17 3.56*'

2.11a

1.03

0.29 5.52*** 2.65*

iControlling

Nonworking Low duration, low intensity Low duration, high intensity High duration, low intensity High duration, high intensity Overall mean F

Parenting W6

Cohabiting W8

Annual Income W8

9806.71 2.76*

2.08a

1.07

SE = socioeconomic; W = wave. "Race, nativity, family income, family, composition, parents 7 education, and selection term. fc SE variables (listed in a ) and ninth-grade grade point average, education goals, and intrinsic motivation towards school. C SE variables (listed in a ) and ninth-grade drinking, smoking, school problem behaviour, and time with friends. *f<.05 **f<.01 ***f<.001

0.86

146 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Appendix B Measures of Social Background and Work Experience Parents' Education 1 = Less than high-school diploma 2 = High-school graduate 3 = Some college

4 = Community/junior college 5 = 4-year college degree 6 = Some graduate school 7 = Master's degree 8 = Ph.D. /Professional Family Income 1 = under $5,000 2 = $5,000-$9,999 3 = $10,000-$14,999 4 = $15,000-$19,999 5 = $20,000-$29,999 6 = $30,000-$39,999 7 = $40,000-$49,999 8 = $50,000-$59,999 9 = $60,000-$69,999 10 = $70,000-$79,999 11 = $80,000-$89,999 12 = $90,000-$99,999 13 = $100,000 or more Training Did your employer give you any training when you began work? (yes/no) How long did the training take? (hours, days, months) What kind of training did you receive? (circle all that apply)? An orientation "lecture" or "orientation day" Classes were offered Films, slides, or videos I was given a manual or written instructions. A manager, supervisor or co-worker taught me on the job. Supervisory Responsibility Do you supervise other workers on your job? (no/yes) If yes, how many? Job Useful for Future Do you think the things you are learning in your job will be useful to you in your later life? (1 = not all useful; 4 = extremely useful) Job Security Do you think you can stay on your present job as long as you like? (1 = no; 2 = probably; 3 = yes) Job Satisfaction All things considered, how satisfied are you with your job as a whole? (1 = extremely dissatisfied; 6 = extremely satisfied) Time Allocation (1 = no time at all; 5 = all of the time) How much time do you spend on your job reading and writing or dealing with any written material? How much time do you spend working with your hands on your job, using tools or machines?

Adolescent Part-Time Work and Postsecondary Transition

147

How much time do you spend dealing with people? Include only your work with people that is necessary for the job. Problem Solving Do you have to think of new ways of doing things or solving problems on your job? (1 = never; 5 = almost always) Control over Work How much control do you have over the way you spend your time at work (over the order and amount of time you work on various parts of your job)? (1 = almost no control at all; 5 = complete control) Freedom to Make Decisions Overall, how much freedom do you have to make important decisions about what you do at work and how you do it? (1 = almost none at all; 5 = complete freedom). Closeness of Supervision How closely does your supervisor supervise you? (1 = 1 am my own boss as long as I stay within the general policies of my employer, 4 = He/she decides what I do and how I do it) Long-Term Goals Are there ample opportunities on your job to set goals and work to achieve them, or are you usually responding to immediate, short-term objectives, problems, and needs? (1 = Most of my time is spend responding to immediate needs; 6 = Most of my time is spent planing or working on long-term projects) Predictability of tasks When you arrive at work, how well can you predict what kinds of things are going to happen that day? (1 = 1 can't predict at all; 4 = 1 can predict exactly) Repetitiveness of Tasks Does your work involve doing: (Circle one number) 1 = A number of different kinds of things? 2 = The same kind of thing in a number of different ways? 3 = The same thing in the same way again and again? Predictability of Hours How much does your schedule change from week to week? (1 = always; 5 = never) Number of Employers How many different employers do you work for? Income What was your annual income in 1994 (before taxes)? How much money have you earned during the past 2 weeks (before taxes - do not include benefits)? Additional Work-Quality Measures (1 = almost never; 5 = always) How often do you feel bored at work, or that time is dragging? How often are you held responsible for things that are really outside your control? How often is there time pressure on your job? How often are you interested enough in your job to do more work than your job requires? How often are you exposed to excessive heat, cold, or noise at work? How often are you disturbed by "interruptions" that interfere with your work? How true about your job is each statement below? (1 = not at all true; 4 = very true)

148 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives My job gives me a chance to learn a lot of new things. I am very much involved personally in my job. To satisfy some people on my job, I have to upset others. There is little opportunity for advancement on my job (reverse coded). I have too much work to do everything well. My job requires that I work very hard. My job uses my skills and abilities. Sometimes I am unclear about what I have to do on my job. I feel drained of my energy when I get off work. My job gives me a chance to be helpful to others. Worked for Same Employer as in High School During this past year, have you worked for any of the same employers you had in high school? (yes/no)

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults LESLEY ANDRES

Unlike previous generations, whose modal life courses had a securing and constraining nature, in which rigid institutional structures and clearly demarcated social origins and identities combined to define destinations (Beck, 1992; Levy, 1991; Zerubavel, 1981), today's youths are confronted with a variety of options and challenges as they begin the transition to adulthood. As the discourse shifts from describing individuals, lives as the extent to which they adhere to socially prescribed normative patterns (Hogan, 1978) toward a description of individuals as detraditionalized, individualized actors who live destandardized, disordered, and differentiated forms and conditions of existence (Beck, 1992; Kohli, 1986; Rindfuss, Swicegood, & Rosenfeld, 1987), the notion of a "normal biography" becomes less tenable in aiding our understanding of the courses of complex lives (Heinz, 1991a, 1996b; Marini, 1984b). It is increasingly recognized that "transition" no longer entails a simple or predetermined passage from one social institution to another and that "life courses should be understood in the light of the organization of the total social space in which our lives evolve" (Levy, 1991, p. 90). Despite the call to examine the relationships among the various roles and activities in which individuals participate, however, little empirical research has embraced this complexity. Typically, a given transition space is conceptualized as either single institutional participation defined by a given institutional sector or as discrete sequential transitions between various sectors. In the first instance, research conducted from an institutional perspective locates individuals within one institutional sector and analyses focus on the rate of entry into, extent and duration of participation within, and exit out of that sector. Examples of such studies include rates of transition into and retention in the postsecondary system by educational researchers and policy makers (Human Resources Development Canada, 1993; OECD, 1995) and labor-force participation and unemployment by labor-market economists (Myles, Picot, & Wannell, 1988; Wannell, 1989). Attempts to 149

150 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

link transitions among various sectors, through elaborate schema of status attainment and sophisticated statistical modeling techniques, tend to superimpose a forced temporal and institutional linearity that at best documents the paths between institutional spheres from one point in time to another. Conversely, research falling under the rubric of "lifecourse" research acknowledges conceptually that paths are complex, nonlinear, disordered, and fluid. Despite such acknowledgment, the analytical lens remains relatively fixed on examining either the sequence (Hogan, 1976), order (Marini, 1984b; Rindfuss et al., 1987), or timing (Marini, 1978) of various role changes related to such life events as education attainment, labor-force participation, marriage, and first birth. Although these approaches have broadened our understanding of the transition experiences of various youth cohorts, extant research has been criticized for its lack of attention to the examination of the life course "as it is actually lived" (Rindfuss et al., 1987, p. 799) in that it neglects to examine the interdependence between various status configurations that individuals integrate into their biographies (Heinz, 1996b). Clearly, individuals participate simultaneously in multiple activities, and roles and role changes do not necessarily occur independently of one another (Marini, 1984b). For recent high school graduates, these activities may include any combination of full- and part-time postsecondary study, fulland part-time work, unemployment while looking for work and unemployment while not looking for work. Other activities, such as child-care responsibilities, may add a further dimension of complexity, yet we know very little about the extent and nature of relationships among the various life-sphere activities undertaken by young adults. The purpose of this chapter is to attempt to examine one moment in the life course as it is "actually lived." I begin by asking to what extent young adults participate in multiple life-course activities. Additionally, it is acknowledged that in complex societies, the structural location of individuals is characterized by multiple rather than single social positions. From the perspective of the individual, "what counts may be the particular interaction fields ... in which he or she participates, rather than the institutional sector in which these interaction fields are located" (Levy, 1991, p. 90). Moreover, according to Bourdieu (1991), individuals' relative positions within the multidimensional space of the social world are defined by their location in one field in relation to other relevant fields. Hence, occupants of various positions in each field are oriented, through the network of relations among the positions, to strategies that may be implemented to maintain or ameliorate their positions. This dynamic is

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults

151

further explored by asking what the interrelationships are among participation in various life spheres or fields. Does multiple participation, as Simmel (1950) claimed, mean segmented and hence partial participation? Do patterns indicate a pastiche of individualized and destandardized forms and courses of existence, as suggested by Beck (1992) and Kohli (1986), with little order or regularity? This chapter is an analysis of month-by-month data collected over a 5year period to trace the lived lives of a sample of British Columbia youths. By employing longitudinal data to document life-sphere participation patterns of this sample, I endeavor to examine the sociotemporal patterns regulating the structure and dynamics of social life by determining four critical parameters of activities, as outlined by Zerubavel (1981). These include (1) the sequential structure, or the order in which activities take place, (2) their duration, (3) their temporal location, or when various activities take place; and (4) the rate of recurrence of various activities. These parameters provide a useful framework for examining the extent to which the transition from high school involves participation in multiple activities and to determining the relationships among various activities open to today's youths. Gender differences in sociotemporal patterns are of particular interest in this analysis. Although women in Canada have surpassed men in terms of postsecondary enrollment and degree attainment (Andres Bellamy & Guppy, 1991), little research exists that documents multiple life-sphere dynamics by gender. Historically, the "normative structure of age-related behaviour" has differed vastly for men and women (Hagestad, 1991). As educational and labor-force participation of women increases and as occupational attainment increasingly becomes the principal means of status attainment for both sexes, will, as Marini (1978) predicted, the process of transition to adulthood will become more similar for the two sexes? Will individualized and detraditionalized life courses lead to, as Beck (1992), p. 104 asserted, "liberation from the "feudally" ascribed roles for the sexes"? In this analysis, a longitudinal composite of participation patterns in the various spheres is constructed, first for the entire sample, then in relation to particular education attainment outcomes. In this way, the temporal rigidity or fluidity of various social activities in relation to certain outcomes can be determined (Zerubavel, 1981). All analyses are conducted by gender. Because the economic, political, cultural, and social contexts of the transition space frame sociotemporal patterns (Heinz, 1996b), this chapter begins by documenting the forces affecting this cohort as they exited

152 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

from high school. The temporal period (1988 to 1993) and the economic and social context of one Canadian province set the stage for the numerous pushing and pulling forces influencing the extent and nature of participation by individuals. The Transition Context The transition to life after high school in the late 1980s by British Columbia youth involved confronting a restricted labor-market, high levels of unemployment, increased demand for education credentials, and an overhauled postsecondary system. This nexus of forces related to the education and employment served to structure the availability of various options available to these individuals. The nature of employment and unemployment and the timing of exit from high school constituted a significant force that structured the actions of this cohort of youth. Although unemployment rates had declined considerably from the early 1980s, by the end of the decade 15to 24-year-olds remained overrepresented in the ranks of the unemployed. In 1988, the Canadian annual average unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds was 12% compared with 6.5% for those 25 years of age and older (Statistics Canada, 1989a, 1989b). In British Columbia, the unemployment rate for the 15 to 24 age group in 1988 was 15.5%. The nature of work itself also served as a force that structured the transition from high school. In 1990, the Economic Council of Canada reported that all recent employment growth had occurred in one of two quite distinct "growth poles"; either highly skilled, well-compensated, and secure jobs or nonstandard, unstable, and relatively poorly paid jobs. A combination of three factors were identified as transforming the labor market: growth of the service sector, technological innovation, and changes in the way work was organized (Economic Council of Canada, 1990). Unemployment statistics and dominant discourse in federal policy documents (Economic Council of Canada, 1990, 1992; Employment and Immigration Canada, 1990; Government of Canada, 1991a, 1991b) fueled the argument that if education attainment was considered as a continuum, the most disadvantaged were those with the least education. Federal and provincial initiatives (Employment and Immigration Canada, 1990; Report of the Provincial Access Committee, 1988) reinforced the message that the route to improved life chances was through the education system. This discussion was not limited to Canadian youth. In an analysis of the transition to adulthood by youth in Organization for

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries, Coleman and Husen (1985) referred to those who left school with the "mandatory minimum" but without the requisite abilities and skills necessary to cope with the demands of the modern workplace as being a "new underclass" for whom there was little chance of becoming meaningfully employed. In the United States, low levels of education attainment were associated with welfare recipiency, persistent poverty, and chronic unemployment (Krein & Beller, 1988). Although signals from the labor market in the late 1980s were discouraging, multiple forces served to direct youths toward the postsecondary system. In general, increased numbers of openings in existing universities, the establishment of new universities, and the development of a community-college system in each Canadian province since the 1960s resulted in significant increases in most forms of postsecondary participation, including the transition from high school to postsecondary education. Over a the period between 1979 and 1986, transition rates from the final year of secondary school directly to postsecondary education had increased by almost 10% (Report of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, 1987) and full-time enrollment between 1951-1952 and 1988-1989 increased by almost 900% (Department of the Secretary of State of Canada, 1990). Dramatic increases in enrollments by women in universities and nonuniversity institutions contributed to these increased numbers. In the university sector alone, participation by women increased from a mere 21% in 1945-1946 to over 50% by 1988 (Andres Bellamy & Guppy, 1991). Expansion of the postsecondary system, increasing evidence of the market and nonmarket effects of education (West, 1988), emphasis on credentialism as new rite of passage (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1985; Dore; 1976), and national attention to issues of equality of opportunity including gender (Department of the Secretary of State, 1988; Fortin 1987) - served to promote postsecondary education participation in Canada. Given the dynamic relationship among these various forces in place in the late 1980s, what was the extent, nature, and duration of participation in various life-sphere activities over a 5-year span after exit from high school by the young adults in this study? Sample and Research Design Data for this analysis were generated from a longitudinal study of British Columbia youth. In 1989,10,000 British Columbia 1988 12th grade grad-

153

154 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

uates were surveyed to determine various factors related to postsecondary education participation. This stratified systematic sample was generated from government high school transcript files. The overall response rate was 54%, representing 23% percent of the entire cohort of 1988 high school graduates. When undeliverable questionnaires were eliminated, the adjusted response rate was 58%. In 1993, a second followup survey of the 1989 survey sample was conducted. Survey questionnaires were mailed individuals who completed the 1989 study, of whom 38% (n = 2,030) responded. When undelivered questionnaires were taken into account, the adjusted response rate to the 1993 survey was 48%. The unadjusted response rate, however, does, represent almost 10% of the entire cohort of British Columbia 1988 12th-grade graduates 1 (see Andres, 1992,1993,1995) for a detailed description of the sample). Government records provided demographic and achievement information for the entire sample of 10,000 graduates. Questionnaire data collected in 1989 provided information about parental background, the influence of significant others on plans after high school, views about the relationship between postsecondary education and job preparation, potential earnings, interest in and expectations about postsecondary education, and status 1 year after high school graduation. The 1993 questionnaire consisted of five parts, including the education paths taken over the 5 years after high school; experiences within the postsecondary system; occupational histories; attitudes about education, skills, and lifelong learning; and demographic information. The analysis in this chapter is based on responses to the 1989 and 1993 questionnaires. Respondents who completed both surveys are included in the analysis. Participation in Multiple Life Spheres: a 5-Year Perspective Activity patterns for the entire sample are portrayed in Figure 6-1A. Clearly, in relation to other activities, one dominant role directly after high-school graduation and over the entire 5-year period was participation in postsecondary education. At any given time between September 1988 and August 1989, no fewer than 64% of the female respondents and 61% of the male respondents attended some postsecondary institution full time, with full-time participation being almost exclusively concentrated in the traditional academic months (September to April) and dropping to less than 10% each summer. The proportion of men and women studying full time declined gradually over the 5 years. By 1993, however,

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults

155

PSE f/t (m) PSE f/t (f) PSEp/t(m) PSE p/t (f)

B

employed f/t (m) employed f/t (f) - - x - employed p/t (m) employed p/t (f)

Figure 6-1. Activity patterns for total sample, 1988-1993: (A) postsecondary education (PSE); (B) employment, f = female; f/t = full time; m = male; p / t = part time.

156 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

45% of women and 40% of men remained in the postsecondary education system full time. Part-time postsecondary education participation remained surprisingly low over the entire 5 years, ranging between 5% and 7% for women and 5% and 6% for men. The sequence, timing, and rate of occurrence of labor-force participation was clearly dependent on patterns of participation in postsecondary education (Figure 6-1B). During the summer months immediately after high school graduation, 50% of the women and 58% of the men were employed full time. Over the 8 months between September 1988 and April 1989, full-time labor-force participation by women plummeted to an average of 15%; men maintained full-time work at an average rate of 20%. Between 1988 and 1993, periods of full-time employment were concentrated between April and August. As Figure 6-1B demonstrates, in any given summer, more men than women were employed full time; the gap ranged from 5% to 8%. The most remarkable gender differences were evident in part-time participation patterns. Directly after high school, slightly more women than men worked part time (Figure 6-1B). At any given time over the course of 5 years, more women than men were employed part time. Parttime employment rates dropped in relation to full-time employment during the summers, and the gap between men and women narrowed. During the winters, however, the gap widened, and on average, 7% more women than men occupied the ranks of part-time workers (averaged over 8 months). Between July 1988 and September 1989, the unemployment rate for any given month ranged from 1% to 6% for men and 2% to 8% for women. Although more women than men reported initially being either unemployed and looking for work or unemployed but not looking for work after graduation, the differences were small. Recurrent patterns of unemployment persisted over the 5 years between 1988 and 1993. Each May, unemployment peaked, only to subside in June. These patterns are remarkably similar by gender. As this cursory analysis of the entire sample demonstrates, the multiple pathways available for these young adults as they left high school translated into participation in multiple life spheres. Rather than demonstrating that boundaries between roles were blurred (see chapter 2, this volume), however, the multiple roles and role changes experienced by these youth were demarcated by distinct patterns of temporal regularity in terms of sequencing, duration, temporal location, and recurrence.

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults

157

So that interactions among "fields" of participation, as described by Bourdieu (1991) and Levy (1991), can be further explored, postsecondary completion status in 1993 is used as an organizing category to determine the extent and duration of participation by university graduates, nonuniversity graduates, nongraduates, and postsecondary education attendees in the multiple fields of postsecondary education, employment, and unemployment over a 5-year span. In this chapter, the degree to which postsecondary education participation is a master status or core role (Heinz, 1996b) is determined by its dominance in relation to participation in other life activities. University Graduates

In total, 27% (n = 555) of this sample graduated from university within 5 years of high school graduation. Figure 6-2A demonstrates that both female and male university graduates followed very traditional patterns of postsecondary education participation in relation to other life-sphere activities. For the first 4 years following high school, approximately 90% percent studied full time between September and April. Full-time laborforce participation was largely confined to the summer months; no more than 7% worked full time during the academic year. In terms of full-time study and full-time work, gender differences are negligible (Figure 6-2B). That is, approximately equal proportions of women and men were employed full time during the academic months. Variations are evident, however, in part-time employment, part-time study, and unemployment patterns. For both men and women, part-time employment increased during the academic year and fell in relation to summer full-time employment. The gap in the proportion of men and women employed part time, averaged over 8 months, ranged from 6% to 8%, with the widest difference occurring in year 4. Part-time study peaked during summer months and declined during the academic year, with the largest peak occurring between third and fourth year. Although overall, women were more likely to undertake part-time study to complete their degrees, differences are minute. In the main, reported monthly rates of unemployment while looking for work remained under 5% between 1988 and 1992, except for the month of May of each year. Increases in reported unemployment that coincided with the end of the academic year appeared to signal that students had difficulty, although short lived, finding summer employment.

158 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

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Figure 6-2. Activity patterns for university graduates: (A) postsecondary education (PSE); (B) employment, f = female; f/t = full time; m = male; p / t = part time.

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults

159

In the first year after university-level study, women were particularly vulnerable to a restricted summer labor market. Nonuniversity Graduates

In this analysis, the nonuniversity graduate category includes those individuals who graduated from community colleges, university college nondegree programs, vocational/technical institutes, and private training institutions. Twenty-five percent (n = 517) of the sample belonged to this category. As Figure 6-3A indicates, although postsecondary and employment patterns in general are similar to those for university graduates, there are some significant differences. The majority of those who attended postsecondary institutions did so full time during the traditional academic year. In the first year after high-school graduation, more women (65%) than men (54%) studied full time. In each subsequent year, full-time participation decreased. By year 2, equal proportions of men and women studied full time. In the next 3 years, men participated slightly more than did women. Figure 6-3A indicates that in any given month during the 5 years, parttime study by nonuniversity graduates did not exceed 10%. Gender differences were minimal until 1992-1993, when part-time study by women increased, on average, to 9%, compared with 5% for men. Postsecondary education participation followed a distinctive pattern of inverse fluctuations with full-time work. For nonuniversity graduates, similar to university graduates, full-time employment peaked during summer months and receded between September and April each year (Figure 6-3B). With one exception, there was a considerable gap between the number of men and women employed full time each summer. This gap was largest in 1989-1990 (12%) and, except for 1990-1991, remained at between 10% and 11%. The proportion of men and women working part time fluctuated in relation to full-time postsecondary education and full-time employment patterns. Directly after high school graduation, approximately 28% of men and 26% of women were employed part time. Part-time employment increased during the academic term, and this increase was more pronounced for women. Between 10% and 12% more women than men worked part time. Although parttime employment gradually decreased over the 5-year period, by the summer of 1993 a gender gap of 9% persisted. Unemployment patterns for both women and men increased to around 8% in May each year, which appeared to indicate temporary delay in finding summer

160 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

A

PSE f/t (m) PSE f/t (f) —x—PSEp/t(m) PSEp/t(f)

B

employed fA (m) employed f/t (f) x—employed p/t (m) employed p/t (f)

Figure 6-3. Activity patterns for nonuniversity graduates: (A) postsecondary education (PSE); (B) employment, f = female; f/t = full time; m = male; p / t = part time.

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults

161

which appeared to indicate temporary delay in finding summer employment. Nongraduates

Nongraduates are defined as those who had attended a postsecondary education institution for at least 1 month since high school graduation but had not graduated with a postsecondary credential. The largest proportion of respondents (39%, or n = 795) belong to this group. Figure 6-4A reveals that patterns of temporal regularity are also evident for the nongraudate group. In proportions similar to those for the nonuniversity graduate group, approximately two thirds of nongraduates entered directly into the postsecondary education system in the September after high school, and this percentage of full-time postsecondary attendance was maintained over the 1988-1989 year. As with university and nonuniversity graduates, full-time attendance was concentrated during the months of September to April. The number of fulltime attendees gradually declined over the 4 years after high school graduation, then rose in 1992-1993, when more men (51%) than women (43%) studied full time. Surprisingly, patterns of part-time participation in postsecondary education as portrayed in Figure 6-4A, indicate that part-time study was not the preferred option by this group. Part-time study, which was very similar for men and women, fluctuated between 8% and 10% during winter months and declined in the summer months. Similar to the patterns for university and nonuniversity graduates, full-time employment by nongraduates was concentrated in the summer months. Consistent across all six summer periods, more men (4% to 7%) than women were employed full time (Figure 6-4B). For the first 3 years, full-time employment during the winter months increased from just under 20% in 1988 to around 30% in 1990, with only slight differences by gender. In the next 2 years, the gender gap widened and for the first time in any group, women exceeded men in numbers employed full time. By the winter of 1992, 7% more women than men (averaged over 8 months) were employed full time. This corresponded with an increase in full-time attendance at postsecondary education institutions by men during this period. Differences in the numbers of women and men employed part time were similar to gender differences for university and nonuniversity graduates. That is, at any given time over the entire 5-year period, more

162 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

PSEf/t(m) I PSEf/t(f) L*-PSEp/t(m) 1 PSEp/t(f) I

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Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults

163

women were employed part time and the gap increased during the winter months. Similar to patterns for university and nonuniversity graduates, reported periods of unemployment while nongraduates were looking for work peaked each May. Nonparticipants

Only 163 individuals, or 8% of this sample, had not participated in any type of postsecondary education since high school graduation; they are referred to here as nonparticipants. For both women and men, the dominant status passage directly out of high school and over the entire 5-year period was workforce participation (Figure 6-5A). Although the nature of temporal patterns by gender are similar, clear differences in terms of proportions are evident. Fifty-two percent of men were employed full time immediately after high school graduation. By September 1988, this figure rose to 72%. By contrast, only 39% of women were employed full time in June 1988, rising to 49 percent by September. For 30% of women in this group, compared with 15% of men, immediate entry into the labor market was through part-time employment. Women experienced a decline in part-time employment from almost 30% to 17% between June 1988 and June 1989. This decline coincided with a rise in full-time employment from 39% to 65% during the same period. For men, the pattern of full- and part-time employment during the first year after high school graduation was somewhat different. The number reporting being employed full time rose from 52% to 79% between June 1988 and June 1989. Compared with participation by women, however men's part-time participation remained relatively flat, fluctuating slightly between 11% to 15%. By 1989-1990, the gap between the proportion of men and women employed full time decreased to 6% (averaged over 8 months). From September 1990 onward, full-time employment by men hovered around 80%, with slight increases over the summer months of each year. In comparison, the number of women employed full time declined between September 1990 and June 1991, averaging just over 60%, then rose again slightly to around 67%. By the fifth year after high school graduation (September 1992 to September 1993), the gap between the proportion of men and women employed full time was 22%. Except for a 5-month period in 1989 when men and women were employed part time in equal proportions, more women than men worked part time. After the first year out of high school, however, part-

164 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

employed f/t (m) !

employed f/t (f)

I — * — employed p/t(m) employed p/t (f)

I i B

-unemployed not looking (m) I - unemployed not looking (f) j

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Figure 6-5. Activity patterns for nonparticipants: (A) employment; (B) unemployment, f = female; f/t = full time; m = male; p / t = part time.

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults time employment by women was never above 15%. On average between September 1992 and 1993, the gender gap was around 7%. Reported periods of unemployment while not looking for work deviated from the patterns demonstrated by the other groups in this analysis (Figure 6-5B). Whereas very few men in this group reported this type of unemployment, the proportion of women nonparticipants who reported having experienced unemployment while not looking for work ranged from 6% to 15%. Discussion Despite numerous available options and multiple combinations of activities in which these youths could engage, an examination of the temporal pattern of activities over a 5-year period demonstrates remarkable rigidity and regularity. When the activities of the entire sample (Figure 6-1A) are plotted, a very clear pattern of cyclical activity emerges. The primary pattern is one of full-time postsecondary study as a master status role during the winter months, replaced by full-time work during the summer months. Sociotemporal rigidification can be determined by assessing the degree to which sequential structures are rigid, durations are fixed, temporal locations are standard, and rates of recurrence are uniform (Zerubavel, 1981). Although these cyclical patterns hold, more or less, across each of the postsecondary graduation status groups, there are several notable differences. Multiple life-sphere participation by university graduates was clearly the most regular and most segmented. For both men and women, participation in each life sphere occurred with rigid regularity. The only substantive gender difference is evident in the proportions of men and women employed part time; however, the pattern parameters are almost identical for both groups. For nonuniversity graduates, the pattern of segmented multiple life-sphere participation is also evident. Most interesting with this group is that even as postsecondary participation declined over the years, the pattern and duration of fulltime study remained constant and part-time study did not increase. Within the nongraduate group, such a pattern of persistent segmented participation was not anticipated. Because it is often assumed that the combination of work and part-time study results in extended postsecondary education completion times, a more eclectic pattern of simultaneous partial participation in work and postsecondary education would have been expected. As with the other two groups, the dominant master

165

166 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

core status of nongraduates during the academic year was full-time study, which was interwoven with full-time work during each summer. In the first year after high school graduation, less than 20% of nongraduates worked full time. Part-time employment patterns were very similar to those of university and nonuniversity graduates. For the small number of individuals who had not participated in postsecondary study, life-sphere participation was composed primarily of fulland part-time work. Gender differences in full-time employment cannot be fully explained by part-time labor-force participation by women, however. Could other life-sphere activities account for gender differences in this group? Given the limitations of the data set, it is not possible to determine marital and family responsibilities on a month-by-month basis for this sample. Available information about marital status and number of children in 1993, as indicated in Table 6-1, portrays dramatic differences in family constellation by postsecondary graduation status and gender. University graduates were the least likely to be married, and less than 1% reported having children. By contrast, over half of female nonparticipants were married and almost one third had children. Compared with men in the other groups, male nonparticipants were also much more likely to be married and have children. Unlike findings of earlier studies with older cohorts (e.g., Marini, 1978), marriage is no longer the only route to status attainment for most of the women in this study. Although this analysis does not allow for a precise examination of the timing of marriage or childbearing on postsecondary education participation and attainment, however, these findings concur with those of others (Marini, 1978; Ornstein, 1975; Rindfuss et al., 1987) that there is a clear association among marriage, the presence of children, and participation in and completion of postsecondary education, that early marriage and childbearing is negatively associated with education attainment; and that this association is much stronger for women than for men. In an era of multiple available options and ostensibly increasing individualization of choices, why do the youths in this study live such rigid and segmented lives? Is it, as Zerubavel (1981, p. 3) suggested, that "the nature of many events and situations [dictates] that they cannot all take place simultaneously and must, therefore, be temporally segregated from one another"? Do such social structures as education institutions and seasonal employment opportunities impose sequential rigidity and regularity of behavior? Is the temporal rigidity demonstrated by members of this cohort a normative prescription, regulated by bureaucratic organization and institutional schedules? The broad range of options

Table 6-1. Family Constellation in 1993 by Postsecondary Graduation Status and Gender University Graduates

Married or living in a marriagelike relationship Widowed, separated, or divorced Number of children 1 2 3 Total

Nonuniversity Graduates

Nongraduates

Nonparticipants

%F (n = 343)

%M (n = 212)

%F (n = 178)

%M (n = 339)

%F (n = 435)

%M (n = 360)

%F (n = 88)

22.4

14.2

34.2

18.0

34.1

17.8

56.8

—

—

0.9 — — 0.9

— —

0.9 0.5

5.9 1.5

0.5

6.5

—

1.4 1.1 — 0.6 1.7

0.6 7.6 1.8

— 9.4

3.9 0.8 — 4.7

1.1 15.9 8.0 3.4 27.3

%M (n = 75) 33.3 2.7 9.3 1.3 — 10.6

168 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

available within and between institutional sectors for combining activities should be translatable into considerable control over status passages by individual actors (Heinz, 1996b). There is little evidence in this analysis, however, that pathways are customized to suit individualized life plans. Perhaps sequential rigidity of activities, as constructed by social institutions and acted on by individuals, serves, as Bourdieu (1991) suggested, as afield offorces that, together with the distribution of powers or capital (economic, cultural, social, and symbolic) active in each field, ensures success or failure at accessing certain specific returns. For example, completion of a university degree program may require total institutional commitment with minimal ambiguity. Perhaps one clear dominant core role serves to reinforce its place as a master status. If so, what are the implications for education and employment policies in relation to scheduling of postsecondary programs and youth employment schemes to support the completion of postsecondary studies? Across all postsecondary education completion status groups, more women than men worked part time. Although women attending university worked full time during the summer months in equal proportions with men, approximately 7% more worked part time while attending university. The most plausible explanation for this difference is that decreased earning power of women during the summer months resulted in the need to secure part-time work during the academic year. Although such a small gender difference may not be of immediate concern, it is important to consider the potential impact of changes to the postsecondary system on women's participation. For example, as the cost of attending university continues to increase, will more women be compelled to engage simultaneously in full-time study and part-time work? To what extent can or should policies such as those related to student financial assistance be informed by gender differences in sociotemporal patterns demonstrated in this analysis? Several life-course researchers have commented that when individuals possess certain expectations regarding the temporal regularity of their environment, it provides a sense of orderliness and predictability, which in turn enhances cognitive well-being. Gurin and Brim (1984) suggested that such "consensus information" helps to guide individual behavior patterns. Conversely, temporal irregularity or untimeliness leads to feelings of uncertainty (Brim & Riff, 1980; George, 1980; Zerubavel; 1981). If certain sequential orders, durations, temporal locations, and rates of recurrence of activities influence education attainments, to what extent should we be teaching "temporal mapping" to secondary-school stu-

Multiple Life-Sphere Participation by Young Adults Yearl

Year 2

Year 3

169 Year 4

Figure 6-6. Rather than through simplifying analyses, as Rindfuss, Swicegood, and Rosenfeld (1987) suggested, it is only through further complexity that researchers will understand the differential impact of various life-sphere activities on outcomes - and hence life chances - of individuals. dents? If survival in an increasingly individualized and detraditionalized society requires that individuals make "themselves the center of their own life planning and conduct of life" (Beck, 1992, p. 88) and means that the role of the individual in negotiating, coordinating, managing, and accounting for the complexity of status configurations of everyday life will continue to gain importance (Heinz, 1996b), awareness of sociotemporal patterns would seem imperative. This chapter provides a beginning in terms of unraveling multiplesphere participation by young British Columbia adults. It does not

170 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

address several other dimensions, however, including the impact of various constellations of status configurations on such outcomes as education attainment, occupational status, income levels, or family composition over time. This analysis also did not incorporate a discussion of the forces of social and cultural reproduction on life-sphere participation in determining the sociotemporal patterns of events. A thorough understanding of how the interrelationships and interactions among activities in one sphere affect subsequent outcomes requires analyses based on a conceptual framework like the one portrayed in Figure 6-6. Notes 1. Analyses of attrition bias indicated that young women, those in academic streams in high school, and higher achievers in high school were most likely to remain in the study over time.

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States: Challenges for the School-to-Work Transition1 W. NORTON GRUBB

I define the subbaccalaureate labor market (SBLM) as the market for individuals with less than a baccalaureate degree but at least a secondary-school diploma. It is useful to define this segment of the labor market because its members compete with one another for moderately skilled jobs: high school dropouts are not considered for most of these positions, whereas those with less than a baccalaureate degree are generally prevented from entering certain managerial and professional occupations. Defining a labor market in terms of education credentials also provides useful information for individuals making choices about schooling and employment, and for education institutions (and the policy makers influencing them) trying to improve the preparation of the workforce. Finally, the demand side of the SBLM proves to differ in several ways from that for professional and managerial occupations. The SBLM is a large and rapidly growing part of the labor force in the United States. The group with "some college" represented 13.1% of the labor force in 1967 but 21% in 1988 and 28.3% in 1992. In addition, those with a high school diploma accounted for 34.1% by 1992, so the SBLM includes about three fifths of all workers. By contrast, the portion of the labor force with baccalaureate and graduate degrees increased from 11.6% to 22.5% in 1988, to 23.7% in 1992, leaving this group only one third the size of the subbaccalaureate group. At the other end, the portion represented by those with less than a high school diploma decreased from 39% to 16.8% in 1988, to 12.8% in 1992, as part of the process of education upgrading.2 During the same period, relative wages - which signal changing patterns of demand - shifted substantially. Among men, those with "some college" earned 1% less than did men with a high school diploma in 1970, indicating that employers were unwilling to pay any premium for whatever knowledge or skills these individuals had. By 1975, those with some college earned only 1.7% more, increasing to 4.4% in 1980, to 10.9% by 171

172 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

1988, and to 11.1% in 1992. Among women, those with "some college" earned almost precisely the same as did high school graduates in 1970, but by 1975, they earned 5% more, a rate that increased during the 1980s from 10.4% in 1980 to 17.3% in 1988, then decreased to 13.2% in 1992. Although these patterns might be explained by ability differences (Blackburn & Neumark, 1993), other evidence corroborates the idea that relative demand is responsible: between 1983 and 1991, the numbers of individuals reporting the need for a 2-year college education to qualify for their jobs increased 79% compared to an increase of 35% for baccalaureate education and a decrease of 4% for high school vocational education (Eck, 1993). Finally, many occupations with high proportions of "some college" education are projected to grow at a greater than average rate, including management support occupations, health occupations, technicians and related support occupations, and certain service occupations (Silvestri & Lukasiewicz, 1991). The supply of individuals to the SBLM comes from several distinct sources. Entry into postsecondary education increasingly comes through 2-year colleges (community colleges and technical institutes): In 1960, 19.7% of first-time freshman enrollments were in these institutions, climbing to 41.4% by 1970 and by 50.8% by 1980, then falling slightly to 47.0% by 1991 (National Center for Education Statistics, 1994). Although many such students aspire to bachelor's degrees, a small and declining number manage to obtain them (Grubb, 1991); in addition, a majority of students of students in 2-year colleges (about 61% in 1990) are occupational students (Tuma, 1993, Table 2.1) who intend to enter the labor market directly. A second source of supply includes students who enroll in 4-year colleges but fail to complete baccalaureate degrees; noncompletion rates from 4-year colleges have increased (Grubb, 1989a), adding a quite different group to the SBLM. Thus, on the supply side, the SBLM is quite heterogeneous, including individuals with a high school diploma, many with only a course or two, students with certificates and associate's degrees, and a few students who have almost completed a baccalaureate degree. In this chapter, I concentrate on 2-year colleges as suppliers to this labor market; 4-year colleges are intent on granting baccalaureate degrees and avoid preparation for subbaccalaureate occupations (even if many of their students wind up in them), and the collapse of high school vocational enrollments (Coley, 1994) means that these institutions do not consciously prepare many students for this labor market. Despite its importance, the SBLM is not well understood. In the statistical analysis of earnings, individuals with "some college" have typically

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States been lumped together; only recently has it been possible to disentangle the effects of different types and amounts of subbaccalaureate education on employment and earnings (Grubb, 1992,1993,1995a, 1997; Kane & Rouse, 1993; Lewis, Hearn, & Zilbert, 1993). Notwithstanding variation among data sets, the results indicate that subbaccalaureate credentials - associate's degrees and certificates - lead to higher earnings than does a high school diploma alone (especially for women), though there is substantial variation among fields of study. Completion of credentials generally leads to higher returns than does the equivalent amount of coursework, and small amounts of coursework - a typical pattern for students entering community colleges - have little benefit, especially for women. Not surprisingly, finding a job related to an individual's education leads to higher earnings (Grubb, 1995a). Thus, the substantial benefits to formal schooling in the SBLM coexist with substantial variation as well. Such results do not provide much evidence, however, about how such labor markets operate - that is, about the interaction of demand and supply - or whether they are distinctive from other markets. Also, regression results cannot provide any information about how education institutions or policy makers might improve preparation for this labor market. To remedy the lack of information, this chapter analyzes the SBLM using interview-based case studies, a method that was common in older, institutional analysis of labor markets (e.g., Berg, 1970; Diamond & Bedrosian, 1970; Gordon & Thal-Larsen, 1969) but that has all but disappeared from economics,3 despite substantial advantages in illuminating the interactions in labor markets. For practical reasons, the communities I studied are middle-sized and relatively "bounded" - without the geographical sprawl that would complicate the task of matching employers and education providers. I chose four communities for their diversity of employment: 1. Fresno, California, is a city of about 350,000 people in a rich farming region; although agriculture services and processing form the core of its employment, it has been diversifying into services and light manufacturing. 2. San Jose, California, a city of about 750,000 within an area of 1,500,000, has concentrated on computer and other high-tech development and manufacturing. 3. Sacramento, California, a rapidly growing city within an area of almost 1,500,000, has diversified from government and services into high-tech and light manufacturing.

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174 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

4. Cincinnati, Ohio, a city of about 350,000, in an area of 1,450,00 people, has a substantial amount of manufacturing, though its diversification into sectors like consumer goods helped it weather the recession of 1990-1992. Although the four communities cannot be considered representative of all local labor markets, of course, their variety suggests that findings based on them may hold in other communities as well. So that more precise responses about employment practices could be obtained, the case studies concentrated on six specific occupations: electronics technicians, machinists, drafters, accountants, business occupations, and computer-related occupations. These include several occupations that have been part of vocational education virtually from its inception and several that are relatively new; several that predominate in manufacturing and several that are more generally used; and several that are highly gender segregated and several that are more integrated. All these occupations have been changed by technological advances associated with computers, each requires certain specialized knowledge, and each is well represented in most 2-year colleges. Interviews took place during 1991 and 1992, during a recession. Although hiring practices during a recession may not reflect those during boom times, they do reflect the preferences of employers during a period when they can be selective in choosing their employees. In all, we interviewed 75 educators representing 19 education institutions, 153 employers representing 113 firms, and 11 general respondents with broad knowledge of local labor markets. In this chapter, I investigate three questions: (1) What are the distinctive characteristics of the SBLM? (2) Does this segment of the labor market operate well, for either students or employers? If not, what kind of policy interventions might improve its operation? (3) What are the special problems for public education and job training programs caused by the characteristics of the SBLM? The SBLM in the United States proves to be a good example of a relatively free-market approach to the transition between schooling and work. As others have stressed in comparing Germany with Great Britain (Oulton & Steedman, 1994; Soskice, 1994) this transition can be governed by relatively institutional mechanisms, in which government regulation, strong unions and employer associations, a carefully established wage structure, and a culture rewarding vocational education combine to create a well-define path from schooling into employ-

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States ment. Conversely, in countries like Great Britain and the United States, the absence of these institutional factors creates a relatively free market process for this transition, in which "careers" in SBLMs are poorly defined, without the clear progressions along clearly delineated career paths that we associate with the quintessential professions, such as law medicine, and business management. There are a few exceptions, to be sure - such as health occupations governed by licensing, or occupations in which schooling and employment are tightly linked through cooperative education - but these institutionalized or codified practices are comparatively rare. The result is to make the transition between schooling and work much more opaque to students, more difficult to control for education and training programs, and less subject to improvement through public policy. Distinctive Characteristics of the Subbaccalaureate Labor Market

Virtually unanimously, employers report that they will not consider high school dropouts for the occupations we examined. They tend to articulate preferences for several skills that they are looking for, skills that are typical of baccalaureate-level jobs too and that are likely to be missing among high school dropouts. At least three characteristics in particular differentiate the SBLM from the market for professional and managerial occupations requiring baccalaureate degrees, however: its local nature, the informality of hiring and promotion practices, and strong preferences for hiring based on experience rather than schooling. Skills Employers Want

Even though the employers in the four local labor markets discussed here varied in size, sophistication, and sector, they repeatedly stressed the importance of skills in four distinct areas. Job-Specific Skills

The dominant skill required by the majority of employers was facility with specific machines or particular manufacturing processes, familiarity with procedures specific to a given job (e.g., accounts receivable or cost accounting), or familiarity with a specific computer program (i.e., highly job-specific skills). Consistently, preparation provided by educa-

175

176 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives tion institutions was criticized as too general. For example, a manager of electronics technicians for a semiconductor firm emphasized: What we'd really like to have [in addition to basic mathematical skills] that we can never really find is things that are more focused on semiconductor processing. There is no hope of finding somebody out of school who has done anything in plasma processing or knows what lithography is or any of the basic diffusion [processes]. Some employers acknowledged that school-based programs could not possibly meet their needs because the demands of the job are too idiosyncratic. As a manager for a cable manufacturing firm said: Unless you've worked in plant maintenance in the past, it's really hard to come in here and start working. Industry is not standardized. Electronics technicians come in [from educational institutions] and see our technicians all greasy and funky from the equipment, and they don't know what to make of it - there are just so many different variables. This plant needs a specific type of worker. To train for this specific type of worker - I don't know if you can actually do that. This particular individual recommended more work-study programs as a way to combine more general education and job-specific training, a solution similar to the cooperative programs in Cincinnati; but in the absence of such a program, he stressed the value of experience in hiring decisions. A related criticism is that school-based programs are too theory oriented, without sufficient practical or hands-on experience, not specific enough, and not oriented to producing a product. In talking about the superiority of the firm's apprenticeship program, the manager of a Cincinnati machining company said: The difference [between our apprenticeship program and education programs] is that we base our instruction on real-life situations and not on the theory behind it. We bring in actual parts. We bring in actual prints. We talk about real-life situations. I don't think you get that necessarily in a school situation. The director of a large milling company described the problem this way: I don't think the technical colleges necessarily can give the depth of training which can be learned in the industry itself ... They take [students] into a CAD [computer-aided design] class and will teach them some software, but I don't think they, along with that, give them the depth of understanding of what they're really doing. They can make the shapes, and they can make the models, but unless you are driven by a product, I don't know that it's gained you a whole lot ... If you're not working on a product-oriented [process], something that you're going to sell, something that's really got meat to it, that you've got to make money on, it's almost like it doesn't mean anything.

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States

177

Motivation and Interpersonal Skills

Employers also commonly mentioned motivation, initiative, judgment, an appropriate attitude (especially in services and occupations dealing with the public), and communications skills. Indeed, even though technical and job-specific skills are important, many employers rated these capacities - sometimes labeled "foundation" skills (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991) - as even more important. As the manager of a custom machining company said: Skill is nice but not ... we have guys out there who are superskilled, but you can't get anything out of them because they don't feel like working that day ... You have other people who are adequate [in their technical skills] who work hard all day ... you're going to get just as much out of them. In some cases, interpersonal skills are paramount in hiring. For example, when a brewery began hiring for the facility, one of the human-resources managers reported: We focused not on technical skills but on interpersonal skills. We knew we could give them technical skills ... that wasn't the issue. The importance of these kinds of personal and "foundation" skills is linked to trends in employment: the flattening of hierarchies, the elimination of supervisory layers, and the tendency for employees to have more responsibilities and to interact with a wider circle of other employees. Aptitude and "Common Sense"

A large number of employers mentioned dimensions of "aptitude," a facility they could identify but that could not be readily taught. Examples included mechanical aptitude for machinists, visual aptitude for drafters, aptitude with numbers for accountants, and aptitude with people for those individuals working directly with customers. Another elusive capacity mentioned by several employers is "common sense." As an engineering manager described it: We're looking for common sense, which is something that schools aren't real good at. You get the guys that excel within the academic environment that... if it's in a textbook, textbooks tend to be black and white. In the real world, you don't have the certainty. You don't necessarily even have the optimum point on the curve-type scenarios. You have to go in and you have to find something, understand what's wrong with it. It's dirty, it's messy; you have multiple conflicts for your time.

178 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

In this description, "common sense" is the ability to apply knowledge, including the kind learned in school, in production settings whose complexity precludes there being any simple correct procedure or "textbook" solution. Basic Skills

The employers we interviewed complained constantly about the lack of basic skills among their subbaccalaureate employees. "The education system is falling apart/' said one personnel manager. "Local school systems are highly political and very disorganized, [and] the kids suffer." In many cases, employers complained that applicants have sufficient technical skills but lack basic cognitive skills for the job and that basic skills are being given short shrift in overly short training programs. As the director of personnel for a large machining firm complained: Kids coming out of these programs after one year want to be machinists. And it's just a longer process than that. And these programs, they try to feed so much into them in this 1,000 to 2,000 hours that they're doing they try to run the gamut between some math, some blueprint reading, but they skip on those to get them onto the machines, and when they don't have those [basic] skills, they become nothing more than just operators. Because basic skills are crucial, a high school diploma is a ubiquitous requirement; without a diploma, no applicant will even be considered for the occupations we examined. A high school diploma is clearly insufficient, however, and employers appeared stumped about what to do to improve basic skills, though typically do not test for them in the hiring process - and they complain bitterly when they find their employees lack such "basic" skills. A Local Nature

In each community, the SBLM is almost entirely local. In their search for employees, firms generally advertise locally; if they establish relations with any education providers, they do so with community colleges or area vocational schools within the same community. Two-year colleges target local employers as well, and deans and instructors report that students search for employment almost exclusively within the local community. By contrast, employers routinely search statewide and nationally for upper-level professional and managerial positions, and

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States such individuals are much more mobile (and mobile for job-related reasons) than are less well educated individuals.4 There are only a few exceptions to the localized nature of SBLMs: a very few firms requiring highly specialized skills, such as a firm producing lasers; and a few employers (usually relatively large) with good working relations and virtually firm-specific training from a distant community college. In addition, local education decisions sometimes force employers to search further. For example, when electronics programs in the San Jose area closed because of the lack of demand during the recession, one employer searched in Sacramento, California, for technicians. In addition, employers advertise more widely during periods of expansion and shortages, so that the local nature of SBLMs varies cyclically. For most employers and most education providers, however, the SBLM is a local phenomenon. Because SBLMs are local, finding a job related to one's field of training locally is important to realizing the economic benefits from subbaccalaureate education: An individual who does not find such a position locally is unlikely to look in other regions; conversely, employers are less likely to recognize credentials from distant community colleges. Close connections between education providers and employers would help in the process of finding such employment. Unfortunately, the mechanisms intended to establish strong relations between education providers and employers are often quite weak. Advisory committees usually meet only infrequently or are institutionwide rather than occupation-specific and thereby provide little information. Placement offices are understaffed in most institutions and usually concentrate on parttime, "stay-in-school" jobs rather than linking occupational programs with employment opportunities. Student follow-up and tracking mechanisms are poorly developed in most postsecondary institutions, so instructors and administrators have no idea where their occupational students go. Work-experience and cooperative programs have been highly successful in Cincinnati, where cooperative programs have fostered close working relations between firms and education providers; elsewhere, however, such programs are rare. Although student demand is potentially a mechanism of equilibrating demand and supply, students are not always well informed, education institutions respond to changes slowly, and the institutional incentives against funding highcost programs (e.g., in electronics, health, and other technical areas) mean that student interest in high-demand occupations may not lead to expanded enrollments. Finally, although licensing requirements establish congruence between employers and providers, they are uncommon

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180 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

except in health occupations. I conclude, then, that many of the mechanisms linking employers and educational providers work poorly. Informality of Hiring

As described by both education providers and most employers, initial employment in the SBLM is dominated by smaller firms. Individuals leaving community colleges and high school generally find employment in smaller firms. Then the path of upward mobility requires them to move to larger firms with greater opportunities for on-the-job training, supervisory positions, higher earnings and benefits, and more stable employment. In part, this pattern emerges because larger firms, with better earnings and working conditions, are able to attract the most applicants and then, as the description of hiring procedures below clarifies, are able to demand substantial experience. Small firms cannot be so selective, so they must hire individuals with less experience. As the director of placement for a well-regarded community college near San Jose admitted: I hate to say this, but a lot of the smaller employers like to find students with us and can find students through us because their salaries are not as competitive as, say, IBM. And they know that we would have students who would be willing to get a job to get the experience at a lower salary.

In addition, hiring in SBLMs is strongly cyclical, vanishing during recessions and increasing during boom times. Professionals and managers with advanced degrees have greater job security because of their control over production, their greater firm-specific skills,5 and their power over hiring and firing. A common pattern among the employers I interviewed was to lay off less well educated workers during a recession and substitute better-educated managers and technicians, because less well educated workers with less specific training can more easily be hired when economic conditions improve. Because of cyclical employment and the dominance of small employers, hiring procedures in the SBLM are quite informal. Small and medium-size firms lack personnel departments and formalized hiring criteria; they rarely formalize any requirements for hiring - other than a high school diploma - and instead use casual assessments of skill to make their choices. In addition, they hire too few individuals in any one occupation to develop ties with local community colleges or to accumulate information about different education providers.6 Intermittent employment reinforces the informality of employment policies: Procedures developed

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States during periods of hiring are abandoned during recessions, so that they are constantly being developed anew. The lack of clear hiring policies contributes to the lack of information among students and among education providers about job opportunities, complicating the process of matching demand and supply. This description is consistent with the view of American labor markets, being poorly structured and complicating the transition from school to work, compared with countries like Germany with institutionalized systems (Biichtemann, Schupp, & Soloff, 1993). The exceptions to the informality of the SBLM are occupations subject to licensing requirements, particularly health occupations. Licensing standards specify education requirements that are binding on both employers and education providers, creating a congruence between the expectations of employers and programs in community colleges. Furthermore, the process of establishing, implementing, and policing licensing requirements puts employers and providers in constant contact (Hudis et al. 1992), potentially explaining why the economic returns in health occupations are larger than in other occupational areas (Grubb, 1992,1995a). The contrast between these organized occupations, in which required skills have been carefully codified by both employers and providers, and unorganized occupations, in which hiring procedures are informal, is striking. In unorganized occupations, there is much more variation in the skills required among jobs that are identically labeled and greater variation in what education institutions provide. The amount of sustained contact between providers and employers is much less - except perhaps in well-constructed cooperative programs because there is no need to confer about skill requirements. Students have much less guidance about education requirements and the best ways of qualifying for jobs, in contrast to licensed occupations, for which requirements are clear. Hiring Standards: The Dominance of Experience over Education

In large and small firms alike, most employers required highly job-specific skills - facility with specific machines, specific computer programs, or particular manufacturing processes. Consistently, education programs were criticized as too general. As a manager of electronics technicians complained: ... All that stuff we have to teach on our own because I'm not aware of any college anywhere that we could get qualified students.

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182 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Some employers acknowledged that school-based programs could not possibly meet their needs because the demands of the job are too idiosyncratic. To some extent, however, employers are inconsistent in the skills they demand. Although they stress job-specific skills, a large number complained consistently about the weakness in basic academic skills - reading, writing, and arithmetic - as well as in "higher-order skills", such as problem solving, interpersonal communication, and judgment (like those mentioned by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills in 1991). My interpretation is that job-specific skills are necessary for entry-level positions, but higher-order competencies become crucial for advancement. This means, however, that the competencies necessary for the long run are nearly invisible to students and to educators: despite the anguish among employers about academic and higher-order skills, not a single community college instructor or administrator mentioned these as important. Given the unavoidable uncertainty about hiring, employers use whatever information they have to reduce this uncertainty. Virtually every employer in the sample looked for experience when hiring, particularly for job-specific experience, in preference to formal schooling. 7 Evidently, experience rather than schooling is the best indicator of the skills that employers value most: mastery of particular machines, production processes, or office procedures; motivation and persistence; and the ability to work with others. In some cases, experience is required because of technological sophistication; the human-resources manager of a semiconductor firm said: The demands of the factory are so sophisticated it takes someone with quite a bit of experience to understand and appreciate the environment they're going to be working in. What we don't want to do is turn a beginner loose on a four-million-dollar machine. So therefore what we're looking for is experienced people.

In other cases, experience is an indicator of personal skills necessary for the job. For example, a payroll processing company in Cincinnati that stresses personal service looks for experience in any service capacity: We feel that we can give technical and payroll training, but we can't change anyone's personality. We can't force them to be nice on the phone, so we basically go by service experience. Have they worked in a service industry and given quality service?

There are only a few exceptions to the pattern of requiring experience among new hires. A few companies work with such advanced technologies that there is not yet a pool of experienced workers. For example, a

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States firm manufacturing lasers in the San Jose area has devised a program tailored to its needs that is taught in two postsecondary institutions. A few companies, particularly high-tech production firms in Sacramento that hire electronics technicians, have established close relationships with local community colleges. In these cases, the purpose of working closely with education providers is to assure that job-specific skills are included. These were clear exceptions, however; overall, only 4 of the 113 firms preferred education to experience. In some cases, employers acknowledged that a combination of formal schooling and experience would be ideal or make progress on the job easier. As a personnel manager for San Jose credit union said: I have personally noticed that those individuals who were hired because they had a two-year or a four-year degree, in comparison to others who have worked their way up, tend to know their job and take less time in training to learn their job than those who have worked their way up and are cross-trained. The level of what they can do on the job is far more advanced because they have the technical background to do it ... You can only do so much cross-training and then you really need [formal schooling].

Therefore, some employers expressed a preference for subbaccalaureate credentials: An individual with postsecondary education would be hired over a similar applicant without such education. Such individuals can then work their way up from relatively unskilled positions - the "foot in the door" method. As an accounting instructor described it: [A firm] will hire someone at a two-year [college] level as the go-fer. It's a good opportunity. They see how the business operates and sometimes get to do some drawing ... They get some good experience. If they show some aptitude toward drafting, they might get put on the boards ... That's what we typically call working up the hard way. In these cases, individuals with subbaccalaureate education move into middle-skilled positions only over time, consistent with evidence from age-earnings profiles that the benefits of subbaccalaureate credentials do not materialize until after those who have them have gained several years of experience (Grubb, 1992). Among those employers who expressed some preference for postsecondary education, virtually none of them (only 1 of 113 employers) provided a wage differential for additional schooling.8 Wage differentials are associated with various jobs and, most important, with experience, but new hires are not given any premium for having additional education or training. As a manager in a high-tech firm remarked about postsecondary education in general:

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184 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives It comes to the reward that you will get from attending these classes or education. And the answer is zero. You do not get a financial reward for attending any class. You do not get any financial reward for showing proficiency through attendance at educational universities. You do get financially rewarded for performance, which perhaps is enhanced by having a better education.

These findings about hiring policies are consistent with data from the Current Population Survey on the education and training requirements of employees. For individuals with some college in 1991, 63.1% reported that their job required some kind of education or training, but of these employees, only half (56.6%) required formal schooling, a nearly equivalent proportion (50.9%) required informal on-the-job training, and 25.2% needed formal company training. By contrast, 83.8% of those who were college graduates reported the need for education and training, but formal schooling was required by 85.6% of these individuals (Eck, 1993, Table 6). It is not very surprising that formal schooling is less often a prerequisite in the SBLM; what is noteworthy is that the skills required can be obtained in many more ways in the SBLM - including on-the-job training elsewhere, formal company programs, the military, and even hobbies - whereas professional and managerial positions require formal schooling for which no substitute is possible. The dominance of experience over formal schooling implies that there should be no economic return to subbaccalaureate education once experience is controlled for, contrary to the statistical results cited above. Subbaccalaureate education provides an advantage over a high school diploma in at least five ways, however, 1. Some employers give preference to individuals with postsecondary vocational education over high school graduates with similar experience. 2. Some employers are impressed with local community-college programs and try to hire from them even when community-college education is not a requirement. 3. Some employers establish working relationships with community colleges, granting their students access to employment in return for having some say over the content of the education program; this was particularly common in electronics and related technical fields in Sacramento and San Jose. 4. In areas such as health, where licensing standards establish what I have called organized on codified labor markets, community-college programs provide the only access to certain well-paid careers.

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States 5. The cooperative programs in Cincinnati (and a few elsewhere) establish clear mechanisms of entry into middle-skilled occupations. Note that only the last two of these mechanisms reflect public regulation or institutionalized employer practices; in general, the relationship between schooling and employment is governed by relatively unconstrained free-market mechanisms. Promotion and the Nature of "Careers"

Virtually all employers report that positions above entry-level jobs are filled through internal promotion. Typically, firms will post notices of opportunities for advancement, and employees will bid for these opportunities. Supervisors will then rank those bidders on the basis of their job record, assessing past performance informally, without promotion policies' being codified. In the labor markets examined here, which tend not to be unionized, seniority rarely counts formally in promotion decisions.9 Because promotion policies are informal and because promotion depends on what opportunities become available, job ladders in most firms are not clearly defined.10 There are a few exceptions - for example, an accounting department with a particularly rigid pattern of progression and several firms governed by union contracts - but the norm among employers in the SBLM is flexible and loosely defined job ladders. The strong preference for individuals with experience and the practice of promotion from within creates a problem for new entrants into the SBLM. Many jobs are closed to new entrants, and if every employer requires experience for entry-level jobs, it becomes difficult to enter the labor market and accumulate this experience. As one employer acknowledged, "My feeling is that entry level is tough. They really don't have any place to go unless there's a tremendous shortage." In practice, individuals seeking access to the SBLM gain their initial experience in many ways: Some work initially for smaller firms that cannot require experience; some work their way up from unskilled positions; some start working for temporary-help agencies; some gain experience as part of school-based programs, such as work-experience and cooperative placements; and some gain experience in the military.

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The Operation of the Subbaccalaureate Labor Market for Students and Employers How well do SBLMs work for the students and employers in them? Certain problems exist because of the characteristics identified in the previous section. Students face difficulties related to information. The informality of hiring standards and promotion practices and the dominance of "bid and post" promotion policies with unclear job ladders mean that the requirements for individual jobs and for career mobility are unclear. In most communities, there are no organizations whose business it is to provide information about this labor market: Community-college placement offices are weak, and local labor-market information is quite imprecise. The only exceptions come in what I have called organized labor markets, such as health occupations which suggests that skill standards (e.g., Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, 1991) might benefit students in the SBLM by clarifying the requirements for different occupations. Other information problems are related to ambiguities about occupations, arising from the lack of standardization and organization in the SBLM. For example, education programs labeled "electronics" vary from short-term programs teaching soldering techniques for assembly-line workers to 2-year associate programs preparing autonomous technicians. Machinist programs also vary widely: Some machinists operate only one or two machines and are really repetitive assembly-line workers, whereas skilled machinists and tool and die makers have traditional craft skills, the ability to program CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, and knowledge of electronics as well. Independent accountants and certified public accountants are almost invariably individuals with baccalaureate degrees; at the subbaccalaureate level, people hired in accounting are usually accounting clerks engaged in data entry using spreadsheet programs. Similarly, although all community colleges offer computer programs, the majority of enrollments are in lower-level courses teaching such applications as word processing and spreadsheet programs; computer programming positions now require baccalaureate or even graduate degrees, but community-college students generally find only "subprogramming" positions (Greenbaum, 1979). Finally, although every community college has an extensive business program, employers do not usually hire individuals from such a vague area. As one personnel director responded, "'Business management' is too general. Those types of people go everywhere. It is difficult to know where

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States they are employed." Managerial positions require a baccalaureate degree or are filled by individuals with extensive experience; students from community-college business programs are likely to go into secretarial or clerical positions, not into management. Although there are no studies about the labor-market information community-college students have, they may be misled by the mismatch between the titles of education programs and the realities of the SBLM. Changes in the organization of work has contributed to uncertainty about occupations. The shift to flatter hierarchies and an increased span of responsibility was pronounced among the firms we interviewed, consistent with Osterman's conclusion (1994) that a higher proportion of firms are moving to flexible work organization than has previously been supposed. As the manager of a medium-size manufacturer of vending machines explained: We can't afford to have one person who just does electronics and one who does all of the others [i.e., the mechanical rather than the electronics machinery]. We're a small company, and the whole drive is to be more flexible. The more flexible you are, the more skills you have. If you want to find a machinist who can also troubleshoot all the equipment, it's very difficult.

As employees take on a greater variety of responsibilities, the older occupational divisions are no longer clear: The distinction between machinist and electronics technician has begun to blur; and individuals in business positions need to master a variety of specific computer applications as well as accounting and standard business practices. For jobs with expanding boundaries, postsecondary programs are often too narrow because they provide only some of the necessary skills: Most community colleges seem to train electronics techs for bench tech positions, but jobs [in this firm] are very mechanical. A mechanical aptitude is necessary to do electronic work. A lack of mechanical training is a problem with community-college training ... We also need communications and teamwork. The line techs are middlemen [between productionline workers and managers], and they have to work with production and engineering. They have to present ideas and reports to managers. [At the same time], this is a dirty job; it's not a suit-and-tie job.

This version of the age-old problem of keeping up with change means that prospective students and employers alike may find it difficult to find programs consistent with employment. For employers, there are information problems as well. The providers of education and training in the SBLM are often poorly known to employers. Their enrollments appear large, but many community-college students are enrolled for remedial purposes, are studying English as a second Ian-

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guage, or transfer to 4-year colleges. Because many occupational students take very few courses or drop out before completing a program (Grubb, 1989a), the number of completers in any one occupational area is likely to be quite small, perhaps in the range of 10 to 20, even for an institution with an enrollment of 25,000. Furthermore, there are typically many potential providers within any community, including several community colleges, area vocational schools, perhaps some remaining high school programs, a few proprietary schools, and shorter-term job training programs. As a result, employers generally perceive the job-related education and training system to be chaotic and fragmented. A typical comment came from the director of an economic development program: It sometimes feels like there are a million different training programs in the area ... I've been in this business for seven years, and I still can't tell you who they all are. Between the junior colleges, private nonprofits, CBOs (Community-Based Organizations), K through 12 school systems which also operate separate adult schools, and there seems to be two or three different tracks of vocational training ... it's hard to keep track of it. I think it would be difficult to plan what to train for when it's hard to develop a comprehensive view of what's out there. I can't keep track of them, and I have a vested interest in it.

With the exception of some firms that have established good working relations with specific education programs, particularly those in Cincinnati participating in cooperative programs, many employers were unable to distinguish among providers; these institutions do not have very clear reputations in the employer community. Certain problems arise from the fact that SBLMs are generally local. Shortages in specific occupations can persist because it is difficult for wage mechanisms to lure trained workers from other areas. For example, because of its agricultural base, Fresno lacks a substantial pool of production workers, including skilled machinists and repair technicians; because it is difficult to induce such individuals to move from other areas and intermittent employment provides little incentive for the development of local programs, the shortage persists. More generally, the transitions of an economy involve spatial adjustments as well as occupational and sectoral changes. Within the SBLM, the local shortages and surpluses created as a result of national patterns persist longer than they would if there were more interregional mobility. These characteristics also help explain why the economic returns to subbaccalaureate education are so uneven. Associate degrees and certificates are much less likely than are baccalaureate degrees to be absolute prerequisites for employment; with the exception of health occupations

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States and a few community-college programs (like those in electronics) that have established close working relations with employers, there are few occupations for which community-college credentials are absolutely necessary. In addition, the overwhelming preference for experience over formal schooling, because of its greater value in signaling the specific skills and the personal competencies that employers stress, means that formal schooling by itself is rarely sufficient. To be sure, employers often express preferences for some postsecondary education, particularly in combination with experience, and the "foot in the door" method of getting into entry-level jobs gives some advantages to individuals with community-college education. Once again, however, formal schooling is only one of several factors that influence hiring, and individuals without experience, or without the personal characteristics that employers are searching for, find it difficult to compensate with formal schooling alone. A final consequence of the ways SBLMs operate is that incentives for skill investment are weak. In part, this is due to the widespread practice of failing to pay any wage differential for additional schooling. In addition, unstable employment reduces the incentives for both formal schooling and for extended on-the-job training at low wages, because the period of time over which such investments pay off may be cut short by layoffs. This is clearest in the case of machinists. Many employers mentioned the long period of both formal and on-the-job training necessary to become a skilled machinist or repairman technician and bemoaned the apparent unwillingness of young people to invest the time necessary. The same employers had laid off many of their machinists in the recent recession, however, effectively destroying the economic incentives to develop a broad range of machining skills. As the staff director for an employers' association commented: One of the reasons [for shortages] is that we can't get employers focused that this is a long-range thing - that if you think you need three or four years to go through more sophisticated programs, you've got to have meaningful jobs downstream.

If sub-baccalaureate labor markets follow the apparent trend toward more temporary and contingent employment, then short-term employment and cyclical variation is likely to grow more common, further reducing the incentives for schooling and skill development. Some problems in the SBLM are amenable to policy intervention. The most obvious are the connections between education institutions and local employers, which may influence access to related employment for individuals whose job searches are likely to be local. Each of these con-

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nections - advisory committees, placement offices, student follow-up and tracking mechanisms, contract education, and work experience or cooperative programs - could be improved. In addition, better information to prospective students - either in placement offices or as part of more general information services, such as "one-stop shopping centers'7 for education and training opportunities - would improve the ability of prospective students to make informed decisions among the postsecondary alternatives. In turn, this change would help student enrollment be a more effective way of equilibrating demand and supply because better-informed students would more readily enroll in programs with high demand and earnings and avoid those with low economic returns. The introduction of performance measures in postsecondary institutions, such as those now required by the Carl Perkins Act funding vocational education, could also enhance this kind of equilibrium, by making funding contingent on placement rather than enrollment. Still other interventions involve employers as much as education institutions. The development of skill standards now being funded by the Department of Education (Rahn, 1994) could, if adopted by employers, have the same influence as licensing requirements now have, creating "organized" labor markets with clear skill requirements, binding on both employers and education providers. The creation of work-experience and cooperative programs, potentially with new funding from the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, could provide the work experience that is particularly valuable in the SBLM and generate yet other ways in which employers and education providers can be in regular contact (Grubb, 1995b). Yet another proposal has been to organize small- and medium-size firms into employer alliances, to provide better information to employers about training alternatives and to allow economies of scale in the purchase of training (see also Choosing Wisely for California, 1993, Principle 4). Certain other conditions in SBLMs, however, - especially the apparent trend toward more contingent work and the cyclical variability of employment - would require much more thorough and politically difficult intervention along the lines of industrial policy, something that has proved impossible in the United States. Some Implications for Education and Training Programs The characteristics of the SBLM present certain challenges to public education and job training programs, both longer-term community college programs and shorter-term job training programs, including those

The Subbaccalaureate Labor Market in the United States designed to move welfare recipients into employment. One challenge is that such programs need to provide much more information about the labor market to their students: The opacity of the SBLM, the variety of ways through it, and the difficult of understanding the differences in the requirements of entry-level jobs and of subsequent jobs that will require very different skills mean that students often fail to understand how they can best prepare for this segment of the labor market. In general, information about labor-market conditions is relatively poor in all these institutions: Guidance and counseling is almost nonexistent in job training programs, and even community colleges tend to focus on the requirements of programs in their guidance and counseling efforts, not on providing flexible information about labor-market conditions. Second, the local nature of SBLMs means that close contact between education providers and employers is critical. Statistical analysis has shown how important it is to find employment related to one's field of study; the strong employer preferences for highly specific skills - particularly for entry-level jobs, rather than more advanced positions - means that training in another area is not generally valued. Furthermore, the general competencies that an individual might learn in another subject area - academic skills, problem-solving abilities, and other basic skills, such personal competencies as discipline and initiative - are not likely to be considered, at least not until an individual is ready for advancement above entry-level work. The result is that placement efforts - finding individuals employment in the field of their education - are crucial to the economic benefits of enrollment in community colleges and job training programs, though these are often quite weak (Grubb, 1996b, chapter 3). Third, the variety of skills required by many employers in the SBLM generates yet other problems for providers of education and training. Although employers do stress job-specific skills for entry-level employment, these are likely to be best learned on the job. Instead, a variety of other skills - interpersonal skills, problem-solving abilities, and "basic" skills that often seem to be conventional academic competencies - are necessary, particularly as individuals advance. In turn, this means programs that emphasize only specific job skills are not preparing their students well, particularly not for advancement. What is necessary - and what has only barely begun to appear with changes in federal aid to vocational education - are programs that integrate various higher-order and academic competencies into occupational programs (Grubb, 1996b). Such efforts are taking place in a few community colleges, though they are a long way from being completely implemented, but they are almost nonexistent in

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short-term job training programs, a fact that helps explain why the benefits of such programs tend to vanish after 3 or 4 years (Grubb, 1996a). Finally, the great emphasis on experience by employers hiring within the SBLM implies that programs combining both classroom instruction and on-the-job experience are the most effective. Such programs as cooperative education or those combining school- and work-based learning envisioned by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 provide students with enough experience to gain entry into subbaccalaureate jobs, as well as with the more advanced competencies necessary for advancement. Again, a number of community colleges have instituted such programs, though they are not yet widespread; however, efforts to combine schooland work-based learning are almost nonexistent in job training programs. In general, then, the informal and unorganized nature of SBLMs helps explain the difficulties students have in navigating through educational institutions and into employment. 11 There are, however, some clear exceptions to this general pattern. One involves health occupations, in which licensing enforces uniform practices for education providers and employers alike and generates "organized" or codified markets from the informal practices that dominate elsewhere. Skill standards might play a role in organizing certain other labor markets. Another exception comes in cases, such as the electronics programs in Sacramento, in which community colleges have established programs in close conjunction with local employers, who then provide a ready source of employment as well as advice on the content of education. A third exception, closely related in spirit, involves cooperative programs. These efforts, combining school-based learning in 2-year colleges and work-based learning in firms, establish clear routes from education institutions into employment consistent with the smooth transition from school to work envisioned in the School-to-Work Opportunities Act; by providing on-the-job experience as well as formal schooling, they give students experiences that are so necessary for hiring in the SBLM. There are, then, ways in which the informal practices and the inattention to formal schooling typical of the SBLM can be changed, but postsecondary institutions can do a better job of recognizing the characteristics of the labor market they serve and accordingly modifying both their teaching practices and the ways they are linked to employers. In both cases, it is crucial to improving the prospects for all students seeking advancement through postsecondary education and training that both policy makers and educators understand that the practices of employers constrain whatever education and training programs can do.

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Notes 1. Much of the research underlying this paper has been supported by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education, the University of California, Berkeley. 2. These results are based on Current Population Survey (CPS) data, reported in Grubb and Wilson (1992) and updated to 1992. 3. See Tilly (1992) and Wial (1991), however. The use of open-ended interviews and case studies is more common in sociology, though sociologists tend to concentrate on different issues. 4. On the local nature of these labor markets, see also Grubb and McDonnell (1991). Individuals with less than a bachelor's degree are less likely to move than are those with bachelor's and graduate degrees, and they are much less likely to give job changes as reasons for moving (Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce, 1992). 5. Although there has been an increase in the number of firms providing training to subbaccalaureate employees, firm-sponsored training still goes predominantly to upperlevel managers and professionals (Eck, 1993). Firms are less likely to let go of these employees, because they lose the benefits of training. 6. Indeed, the sample of firms interviewed is biased toward midsize and large firms precisely because interviewing very small employers about their hiring policies proved pointless. 7. This finding is consistent with a recent survey of employers, which found that prior work experience and prior employer recommendations ranked third and fifth among hiring criteria and school-related characteristics ranked near the bottom; see Educational Quality of the Workplace (1995). 8. The single exception, the accounting department in a large insurance company, was rigidly structured because, as the director of personnel put it, "That's the way the bean counters are." 9. Seniority may affect promotion informally because performance is imprecisely measured, however, this would be consistent with the findings of Medoff and Abraham (1981). 10. This is a departure from older views of internal labor markets in which job ladders are quite clearly defined (e.g., the introduction to Abraham & McKersie, 1990; Doeringer & Piore, 1971). The shift to less precise career ladders is consistent more with the "salaried model" of internal labor markets than with the older "industrial model" (Osterman & Kochan, 1990). 11. This description is consistent with the view of American labor markets as being poorly structured and complicating the transition from school to work, in compared with markets like those in Germany with institutionalized systems (Buchtemann et al., 1993).

Creating New Pathways to Adulthood by Adapting German Apprenticeship in the United States STEPHEN F. HAMILTON MARY AGNES HAMILTON

The United States was the first country to create a universal system of free public education. Promoted by its advocates as a bastion of democracy, it was also a source of national prosperity. In addition to being able to read newspapers and the Bible, literate farmers and workers were more productive because of their capacity to communicate in writing and to do simple math. The shift in the locus of economic activity from agriculture to manufacturing was accompanied by progressively higher educational levels in the general population. Until World War II, however, graduation from high school remained a signal distinction, one attained primarily by young men bound for colleges and universities, where they would study for the professions, and for young women and men who would teach school and work in the offices that were employing a steadily increasing proportion of the population (Coleman, 1974; Cremin, 1977). By 1995, 86.9% of 25- to 29-year-olds had graduated from high school or obtained a high school general equivalency diploma, or GED (US Department of Education, 1996, p. 92). The GI Bill after World War II opened higher education to a proportion of the population unmatched in previous history and unapproached by any other country for 2 decades. By 1995, 62.2% of 25 to 29-year-olds had attended some college and 28.4% had earned at least a bachelor's degree (US Department of Education, 1996, p. 92). U.S. completion rates for secondary education have recently been surpassed, however, by both Japan and Germany and approached by Canada and Great Britain. Higher education completion rates are nearly the same in the United States and Japan (U.S. Department of Education, 1996, p. 96). Germany's enrollment rate for young adults would exceed that for the United States if all postsecondary education is included rather than just higher education (Furth, 1985). Including institutions of vocational education in the comparison is appropriate because in the United States, many community 194

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colleges teach subjects that are not defined as part of higher education in Germany. The United States' celebrated success in making higher education a mass institution has had a cost, largely unrecognized until recently. Reliance on schooling and especially higher education to prepare young people for employment has had the unintended consequence of devaluing occupations in the "sub baccalaureate labor market" (SBLM) (chapter 7 in this volume; Grubb, Dickinson, Giordano, & Kaplan, 1992) - that is, occupations that do not require a 4-year college degree. It has simultaneously devalued the people who hold such jobs. Recognition of this issue as one deserving the attention of policy makers awaited the publication of the aptly titled report, The Forgotten Half (William T. Evant Foundation, 1988a, 1988b), which for the first time described to a large and influential audience the challenges facing young people attempting to make their way in the world without a college degree. Recognition of difficulties inherent in the school-to-work transition followed changes in economic conditions that severely altered the career prospects of people with no more than a high school education. Although we have become accustomed, at least since A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983), to the charge that American schools have deteriorated, the core problem is not that schools got worse but that employment opportunities changed and schools did not. Specifically, declining manufacturing employment has all but eliminated the well-paid assembly-line jobs that allowed highschool graduates or even dropouts in the 1950s and 1960s to earn enough to buy a house, a car, and a boat; support a wife who was not employed outside the home; and send three children to college. The real earnings of young men with no more than a high school diploma dropped by 20% between 1973 and 1993 (Economic Report of the President, 1995). Simultaneously, the economic advantage conferred by earning a college degree increased dramatically. In 1972, men 25 to 34 years of age who had a bachelor's degree or higher earned 19% more than those with a high school diploma; by 1993, they earned 57% more. The advantage for college-educated women rose from 63% to 99% over the same period (U.S. Department of Education, 1996, p. 114). Although we have worried, with good reason, about adult factory workers' losing their jobs, we have until recently neglected the young men and women who graduated from high school to find that the part-time jobs they held after school and on weekends were the best jobs available to them (Hamilton & Levine-Powers, 1990). Increasing education requirements

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for rewarding employment have changed the definition of what constitutes an adequate education. A Nation at Risk recognized this challenge and recommended that all young people be enrolled in college preparatory courses, with no allowances for different learning styles and motivations. A contrasting approach, which recommends a variety of different learning opportunities, has been inspired in part by the German apprenticeship system, which began to attract large numbers of visitors from the United States in the mid-1980s (Hamilton, 1987, 1990). Many of those visitors saw apprenticeship as an alternative route to improved academic performance and career-entry employment for "non-college-bound youth" and as a means to address the "floundering period," a phenomenon that became more prominent as career opportunities for youth became constricted. The floundering period, which Osterman (1980) identified most clearly, is the time between the conclusion of schooling and the initiation of a career in the sense of a job that pays more than minimum wage and offers security, benefits, and a career ladder. Osterman subsequently pointed out that by the age of 30, less than half of U.S. workers with no more than a high school education had held their current job for 2 years or more (Osterman & Iannozzi, 19931). A prolonged and undirected transition from school to career has several negative consequences. The reduced earnings noted above are one, and reduced earnings in turn increase the financial and emotional pressure on parents who have to support their sons and daughters after they have completed schooling. Furthermore, reduced earnings also signal that the economy as a whole is not benefiting from the level of productive work that young people might be able to perform, with consequences for the productivity of the nation as a whole and for tax collections. The troubled transition from school to career also constitutes a vicious circle. When young people in their midteens see that their older brothers and sisters have no real prospects of career-entry employment and that their school performance and personal choices have no direct impact on the kinds of jobs they can get, they conclude that doing well in school is not important to career success and that the risks associated with crime, drugs, and sex are acceptable. This perception is encouraged by their early labor-force participation, relative to their age-mates in the rest of the developed world. Working alongside high school graduates in grocery stores and fast-food restaurants, they find confirmation of their belief that school has nothing to do with real life. Not until they reach their mid-to late twenties, when employers view them as eligible for

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good jobs, do they discover the value of academic knowledge and school credentials (Hamilton, 1994). European Apprenticeships Apprenticeship has never had the prominence in English-speaking countries that it enjoys in the German-speaking countries and Denmark. Although Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Andrew Johnson (Abraham Lincoln's vice president who became president after the assassination), and other prominent Americans have been apprentices, the institution did not thrive in a new world with cheap land, a severe shortage of skilled workers, and few social controls. Franklin ran away from his apprenticeship (Rorabaugh, 1986), a much more common occurence in the New World than in the old for the simple reason that Europe's relatively closed society provided fewer welcoming destinations for a runaway. Vocational education was promoted around the turn of the 20th century in part as an alternative to apprenticeship, which became even less significant as factories overshadowed craft shops. After World War II, preferences given to returning veterans resulted in adult applicants for apprenticeships displacing teenagers; the average age of a beginning apprentice is now 28. Nearly all of them are in the construction and machine trades. Although many Germans consider apprenticeship to be in a state of perpetual decline (Lempert, 1995), domestic critics of German apprenticeship are typically reformers; they argue for upgrading the academic content, extending time in school, and eliminating the exploitation of young people in low-quality apprenticeships that teach little and offer minimal prospects for future employment. Few call for the system's abolition. Indeed, for many the system is so selbstverstandlich (self-understood, taken for granted) that they are surprised to learn that the United States has nothing of the sort. In comparison with the absence of any system at all for fostering the transition from school to work in the United States, German apprenticeship seems quite attractive. One of its attractive features is the real-world context it provides for learning. School learning is frequently abstract and decontextualized. To many pupils, it appears unrelated to anything outside of school. Those who do not believe their futures will be determined by their school performance lose the motivation to work hard in the absence of a clear vision of how school learning will help them in life (Bishop, 1989). Apprenticeship can provide that vision, first by enabling young people to see adults using

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math, scientific principles, and communication skills in their jobs and to participate in work requiring academic learning, and second by providing an alternative to the classroom learning environment and pedagogy. Experience in an apprenticeship can also motivate young people to take education more seriously. Teachers and parents typically urge young people to work hard in school so they will reap rewards in adult life (Stinchcombe, 1964), and some young people accept the challenge on those terms. Emphasis on higher education in the United States, combined with the shrinking number of well-paid blue-collar jobs, reduces the probability of achieving those rewards for all but the most accomplished pupils, whose parents are often well educated and have good jobs. If it appears that only the very best students will make it into college and thence into professional employment, working hard just to achieve at the middle level and perhaps earn an associate's degree after 2 years of college is not a compelling prospect. Lack of motivation for school achievement is an especially serious problem for poor and minority youth. Some of the same dynamics operate in Germany; for example, university enrollment is also the ideal for most German youth and their families, but for those who do not follow that path, apprenticeship leads quickly to respectable employment paying a living wage. Although some occupations have low status, being a skilled worker in any field is preferable, economically and socially, to being unskilled. Apprenticeship is not for losers. Current fascination with the system in the United States is more understandable in light of most visitors' exposure to the very best in the system. Tours visit large corporations that invest heavily in their apprenticeships and recruit young people who in the United States would enroll in selective colleges and universities. Many of these apprenticeships emphasize the acquisition of broad skills across a range of job titles and lifelong learning. A third attractive feature of apprenticeship is that it brings young people together with adults. The extension of formal schooling, the separation of work from the home, long work hours and commuting, and the declining importance of community organizations all conspire to separate young people from adults at precisely the time when they most need to know about being adult. Older teens have learned much of what their parents have to teach. They need to see what adults who are not their parents do all day and to get advice from caring adults who are free of the constraints of unconditional parental love and unavoidable parental pressure. Purely from the perspective of social relations, one of the most impressive aspects of German apprenticeship is the amount of time it

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gives adolescents in the company of adults and the number of different adults who teach and nurture adolescents. Although that picture of German apprenticeship and of apprenticeship in Denmark, Austria, and Switzerland is selective, we strongly believe it is a useful and stimulating picture for the United States. The aspects of European apprenticeship that are worth borrowing are precisely the most progressive and educational in the broadest sense. We should strive to adapt the best features and to avoid such problems as extremely narrow occupations and the exploitation of apprentices as cheap labor. Neither educators nor employers in the United States are likely to become enthusiastic about preparing young people for formal certification as sales clerks in shoe stores. Many are enthusiastic about preparing them to be industrial-robot maintenance technicians and physical therapy assistants. When large numbers of youth learn at work, connections between the institutions of education and employment must be strong. Apprenticeship systems are driven by employers and employees (usually represented by their unions) in collaboration with educators. Such connections are much weaker in the United States, when they exist at all. Secondary schools in the United States are oriented primarily to preparing pupils for higher education. Even vocational schools and vocational programs in comprehensive high schools that are concerned with preparation for employment may be only loosely related to the local labor market. Enrollment in vocational programs is determined by pupil interest, not by labor market needs. As a result, some programs graduate far more people than can be absorbed. Hairdressing is an example. Employers meanwhile frequently complain that vocational graduates are unprepared for the positions they seek to fill. The mismatch results in part from lack of communication and lack of employer influence. People in schools may not know or care what qualifications local employers seek, and educators do not feel responsible to match vocational offerings with labor-market demand. European apprenticeships are built around explicit, sometimes excruciatingly detailed standards and formal certification. Such occupations as gardener, sales clerk, and floor tile layer, which in the United States require no formal training and are often learned exclusively by means of informal on-the-job training, require formal credentials in the Germanspeaking countries and Denmark. One result is a relatively impermeable labor market; moving from one occupation to another frequently requires formal retraining and new certification. A more positive result, however, is that schools and firms know what apprentices have to learn and young

200 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

people are very much aware of why they have to perform well in school and in their apprenticeship. The European labor market for middle-level employees is far more transparent than the U.S. labor market; people can see through it and know what they have to do to get from one point to another. With the exception of occupations that deal with health and safety, the U.S. SBLM requires little or no formal certification. Previous experience and informal on-the-job learning count for much more than formal training and credentials. This makes the labor market highly permeable; people can move freely from one occupation to another. The relative scarcity of formal credentials for midlevel occupations in the United States renders the permeable labor market opaque, contributing to the randomness of many people's experience in it, especially young people's transition to work (Hamilton, 1994). A Demonstration Project in the United States When we began a demonstration project in 1990, we hoped to adapt the best elements of European apprenticeship to the American education system and labor market. We recognized that we were limited by the absence of a tradition of apprenticeship for youth and of the infrastructure that supports it in Europe, such as close connections between education and employment and well-established standards and certification. We were encouraged by the fact that Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Switzerland all maintain apprenticeship systems with some common features but organize and operate them in very different ways. Denmark's system is more fluid and less centrally controlled than Germany's, demonstrating that good apprenticeship need not be entirely uniform. Marked differences in apprenticeships among Switzerland's cantons assured us that the relative autonomy of states was not a bar to creating a nationwide apprenticeship system. The permeability of the U.S. labor market is consistent with its dynamism, compared with European labor markets. Dynamism can also be called instability, however. Demand for labor in the United States grows more rapidly than in Europe, and it shrinks with equivalent speed. We knew, therefore, that in the United States apprenticeship must be broader than it has traditionally been in Europe. It must incorporate a range of job titles within an occupational area, and it must provide a firm foundation for future changes in occupations. Denmark's recent consolidation of training occupations was one inspiration for attempting to reach this goal. From more than 300 training

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occupations, Denmark has reduced the total to 85 by consolidating related occupations and hopes to reduce it even further to less than 20 broad areas. Another part of the Danish strategy is to delay specialization so that apprentices start out in a broadly defined occupation and obtain narrowly specialized training only in their last 1 or 2 years, after they have acquired a broad foundation and have had a chance to learn more about the choices they are making. Some experimental apprenticeships were another source of inspiration for breadth. For example, in Zurich (Switzerland), Asea Brown Boveri has consolidated the training of machinists, electronics technicians, and drafters. As in the Danish system, apprentices are trained identically during their first 2 years; then they specialize in one of the three occupations while continuing training in a second. As a result, they are better able to function in a computerized environment where machines are electronically controlled and everyone has to be able to read and produce technical drawings. Furthermore, they are better able to communicate with specialists in other occupations. A third source of inspiration for designing broad apprenticeships was the German occupational category Kaufmann/-frau, which incorporates a wide range of administrative and office jobs, ultimately from mail clerk to chief executive officer. German administrative employees specialize by economic sector (e.g., manufacturing, banking, wholesale trade, advertising) rather than by function (e.g., personnel, account executive, inventory control). After selecting as a location for the demonstration project a mediumsize metropolitan region not far from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, we sought advice on projected job growth and then identified three occupational areas: administration and office technology, manufacturing and engineering technology, and health care. The first two areas were suggested in part by the German and Swiss exemplars. Health care was a departure because nurses and other intermediate-level health care providers in Europe are not trained in the apprenticeship system even though much of their training looks to outsiders like apprenticeship. We were eager to include health care because it was projected to be a steadily growing area and because of the increasing number of technical occupations in the area as the costs of direct physician care continue to escalate. Our goal was to attempt to institute systemic changes, but we realized that we lacked both time and power. For example, we hoped to create apprenticeships that were registered with the New York State Department of Labor, but not before we had tested them. We planned to have apprentices' courses match their occupational area and prepare

202 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

them for postsecondary enrollment, but we postponed specific curriculum planning until we had involved a significant number of young people. We concentrated on trying to demonstrate the viability and the value of creating learning opportunities for young people at work, reasoning that if employers and educators accepted this central tenet of apprenticeship, they would be more open to the structural arrangements it entails. We identified "middle students" as the target group, first because they are left out of both prestigious accelerated programs and resource-intensive remedial programs. We believed college-bound students were already well served and that we should not expect employers to cope with students who were failing in school and engaging in serious problem behavior. We encouraged schools and employers to include some top students, however, to avoid stigmatizing apprenticeship as a program for low achievers. The 11th grade of high school seemed a good place to start because at 16 years of age, young people may drop out of school and they are eligible for employment in most workplaces. (Some occupations are proscribed until age 18.) We hoped work experience and heightened career goals would motivate apprentices to take harder courses and achieve more academically. Finding sufficient time for rigorous work-based learning was a challenge. We again compromised, in this instance in the hope of eventually extending the available time. Apprentices worked part-time on weekdays, between 10 and 20 hours per week. Some arrived early in the morning and then went to school. Others left school early in the afternoon to work. They gave up nonrequired classes and received some academic credit for their work experience. Some employers also hired their apprentices during summer vacations, which provided more hours, but when they did so, they treated the youth more as workers than as learners. The program was conceived of as spanning 2 years of high school and 2 years of community college. This plan reflected our belief that the kinds of positions we hoped apprentices would be qualified to fill usually require an associate's degree and it addressed a serious concern about the program raised especially by parents. They wanted to know whether participants would still be able to go to college. The ubiquity and earnestness of this question vividly demonstrated how tightly higher education is linked with career aspirations in the United States. Meeting with tenth graders and their parents, we could scarcely find anyone who did not plan on college. Rather than argue that only about 60% of the students would actually enroll in college and that half of those who enrolled would never receive a degree, we could honestly say

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that apprenticeship would open doors to higher education, a claim that was subsequently borne out. Research Design and Methods

Having responsibility for designing and directing the demonstration project, we collected and analyzed data not only to evaluate the program's effectiveness but even more urgently to improve it as it unfolded. We did not begin with formal hypotheses; rather, we hoped to be able to document any impact participation might have on young people's career-related knowledge and skills, their visions and plans for the future, and their school performance. We also wanted to know something about the nature of the program as the young people experienced it, - that is, to be able to say with confidence what happened in the program rather than treating it as a "black box." To these ends, we collected a wide range of data from multiple sources. Data used in this chapter came primarily from school records, interviews with youth and adults, observations at work, questionnaires given to apprentices and their classmates, and telephone interviews with former apprentices. One of the complexities of presenting data is that we have four cohorts, the first of which we have followed over 5 years, the second over 4 years, and so on (Table 8-1). For the second, third, and fourth cohorts, we obtained comparison groups of apprentices' classmates who completed the same surveys we gave to apprentices and whose school records we examined. The comparison groups were convenience samples, taken from Regents (college preparatory) English classes. The comparison is a somewhat conservative one. Although grade point averages of apprentices in 9th and 10th grade were equivalent to those of comparison group members, the apprentices parents had lower levels of education on average than the parents of comparison students. Selected Results

Despite their lack of experience in working with youth, adults' enthusiasm for and commitment to their apprentices were extremely strong. As we had expected, many adults have a knack for teaching and an openness to young people that make them highly effective as coaches and mentors with little or no training and support. Furthermore, an even larger number proved quite capable of performing those roles effectively when given a modest amount of orientation and assistance. One of the secrets

Table 8-1. Program Enrollment, 1990-1996 11th Grade

12th Grade

13th College*

14th College

Apprentices

Started

Finished

Started

Finished

Started

Finished

Started

Finished

Class of 1993 Class of 1994 Class of 1995 Class of 1996 Totals

22 21 28 29 100

20 19 26 28 93

20 17 25 27 89

20 16 23 26 85

2 3 4

2 2 3

2 2

2 2

fl

—

9

—

7

— — 4

— — 4

The number enrolled in college is the number of youths who continued the apprenticeship program while enrolled in college.

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of implementing apprenticeship, we believe, is finding ways for the adults who are natural coaches and mentors to serve as role models and otherwise to help those who have the capacity but need more support but the potential is undoubtedly present. Ordinary adults' ability to teach enabled apprentices in our program to gain work-related technical competence. All the evidence we examined indicated strongly that apprentices learned how to do important work. We observed them performing complex tasks. Their coaches praised their competence and recorded their acquisition of specific skills over time. Apprentices themselves revealed their appreciation for the centrality of technical competence in response to an open-ended interview question at the end of each year of participation: "Looking back over the past year, what stands out for you in your experience as an apprentice at [firm name]?" Without any further prompting, apprentices answered predominantly in terms of what they had learned. Fifty of 59 senior apprentices2 responded to this question by describing the acquisition of technical competence, 44 in terms of what we called procedures, meaning how to accomplish specific tasks on the job. Almost half (23) talked about learning to use computers. Technical competence was especially prominent among apprentices in manufacturing and engineering technology (17 of 18), but also among administration and office technology apprentices (18 of 20) and health care apprentices (15 of 21). Twelve youth talked about learning principles, and 7 referred to analytical thinking skills. When compared with their classmates who were employed during the school year, apprentices were much more likely to report that their work was meaningful. First-year apprentices were more likely to say their work was meaningful when their firm scored higher on a rating of quality work experience.3 In addition, they gained personal and social competence, the attitudes and behaviors required to be a successful worker in any setting. In response to the same initial interview question, 55 seniors also talked spontaneously about gaining personal and/or social competence. Personal competence included career planning, selfconfidence, initiative, responsibility, motivation, and continuous improvement. Social competence included understanding the workplace as a system, following rules and norms (e.g., professional ethics, maintaining schedules), communication, and teamwork. Learning to act like an adult was a common theme, associated for many with growing self-confidence and often contrasted with behavior in school. Apprentices' self-reports are corroborated by supervisors' written evaluations, testimony in interviews with supervisors and parents, observations in workplaces, and

Table 8-2. Relationship of Participants' Career Paths After High School to their Apprenticeship, Classes of 1993 and 1994 Related Occupational Area

First year after high school Second year after high school

Unrelated Ocupational Area

n

Number in Education* (%)

Number Working (%)

Number in Education* (%)

Number Working (%)

36 36

20(55.6) 16(44.4)

3(8.3) 2(5.6)

8(22.2) 9(25.0)

2(5.6) 9(25.0)

^Includes only youths who enrolled and made progress toward a college degree.

Number Not Employed (%) 3(8.3)

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demonstrations of work-related competence given as part of apprentices' "senior projects." From a longer-range perspective, apprenticeship should encourage and enable young people to identify and follow career paths involving satisfying and productive employment and appropriate education. Our project was designed to span the last 2 years of high school and 2 years of community or technical college, but as participation rates in Table 8-1 indicate, most apprentices ended their participation after high school graduation. At that time, they had at least five choices to make. Enroll in related postsecondary education and continue the apprenticeship Enroll in related postsecondary education without apprenticeship Enroll in postsecondary education unrelated to the apprenticeship Enter full-time employment related to the apprenticeship Seek employment unrelated to the apprenticeship One year after high school graduation, 58% of apprentices continued in postsecondary education related to their occupational area (Table 8-2). According to our original plan, they would continue their apprenticeship as well. Table 8-1 indicates that only a small number did. The variety of postsecondary institutions and programs available, however, led many of those who continued their education in the occupational area to end the apprenticeship. Some left the region to attend college elsewhere. Some entered programs (nursing is an example) leading to certification and including a practicum. They no longer needed apprenticeship to follow their career path. The career path results reported in Table 8-2 are difficult to interpret without comparison, and we were not able to interview comparison students the year after graduation. The percentage continuing in postsecondary education is respectable (78% in the first year after high school, 69% in the second year), especially because apprentices were chosen to represent "middle students" and had grade 10 grade point averages in the C+ to B- range. Continuity in the occupational area (combining education and employment, 64% in the first year after high school, 50% in the second year) is in the same range reported by Heinz (chapter 9 in this volume) for German apprentices. The comparison is far from exact, though, because German apprenticeships are much narrower than the broad occupational areas we defined, making the definition of continuity in the occupational area more stringent for German youth.

208 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Implications for Apprenticeship in the United States

Another ambiguity in the interpretation of career paths is that shifting from the occupational area of the apprenticeship into another occupational area can be a constructive move for individual apprentices. Note that Heinz (chapter 9 in this volume) uses changes in apprentices' occupational areas to demonstrate the flexibility of the German system. If too many choose different occupations, however, employers will not get a return on their training investment by retaining former apprentices as well-educated, highly skilled, and committed employees. Employers told us that they did not expect all their apprentices to continue in the same occupational area or to become their employees; they did not identify an acceptable continuation rate. Three limitations of the demonstration project constrained the continuation rate and suggest ways of strengthening apprenticeship in the future. First, we recruited young people in grade 10 who had no special career education or exploratory work experience. In a well-developed system, young people would choose an occupational area for apprenticeship after learning about many occupations in many ways, including hearing adults talk about their careers, visiting workplaces, and "shadowing" adults at work. Second, our efforts to establish an advising system were only partly successful. Apprentices - and for that matter, all young people - should have ready access to a range of people who are capable of informing and assisting them in making career plans. In addition to school counselors, who have some formal obligation to do such advising but frequently have neither the time nor the expertise to do it well, advisors should include parents, teachers, and workplace mentors. Third, the link between secondary and postsecondary education was much harder to forge than we had expected. Some apprentices were actually advised not to take advanced courses in high school that they needed for entry into related programs at the community college. In addition, many apprentices experienced interruptions and delays in their postsecondary progress because of personal and family situations, such as parenthood, illness or death in the family, and lack of money. We view apprenticeship as the epitome of work-based learning. Other types of work-based learning are also valuable and are perfectly appropriate for certain purposes, but apprenticeship is the most ambitious and comprehensive type of work-based learning opportunity. We believe that efforts to create apprenticeships for youth are valuable both for themselves and for what they teach about creating other types of work-based

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learning. Following are some of the key lessons we take from the demonstration project. Employer Commitment The most serious limitation to expanding youth apprenticeship that we encountered was commitment from employers. We had to restrict the number of schools we included, and in those seven schools, we easily identified hundreds of students who were eager to apply for a handful of positions. Although the number of positions grew every year, as new employers joined and other employers expanded the numbers of apprentices they accepted, the number of opportunities lagged far behind demand. Several factors explained employers' reluctance to take on more apprentices. Economic Decline and Uncertainty. The region where we located the demonstration project has many large manufacturing firms, and many of them are defense related. IBM, one of the largest employers, experienced drastic cuts in its workforce. A shrinking defense industry, the general decline in manufacturing, and the practice of downsizing even prosperous firms all conspired to reduce employers' interest in preparing future workers. By 1994, employment prospects began to decline even in health care, which had seemed a recession-proof occupational area, as a result of efforts to control health care costs and of layoffs in large firms that shrank the number of people with full medical benefits. Lack of Investment in Front-Line Worker Training. The challenge of creating a youth apprenticeship system in the United States is not just to convince employers that they should invest heavily in preparing youth for the future but to overcome their habitual neglect of training their current employees below the managerial and engineering levels (Eurich, 1985). Until very recently, most U.S. employers followed the precepts of scientific management or Taylorism, trying to organize work to minimize the knowledge and skill requirements of workers. They invested in machines and management rather than in workers' skills. Costs of Apprenticeship. We have not analyzed the costs of apprenticeship in detail. We know from Germany that trying to do so is extremely difficult and fraught with conflict. Three important points about costs emerged from our project. First, paying apprentices is not a significant

210 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

cost. They quickly become productive enough to earn at least what they are paid. Second, the more serious costs result from the amount of time and energy adult employees devote to apprentices, planning and communicating as well as teaching directly. To the extent that adult employees need training and continuing support for their teaching roles, these costs increase. Third, at least in some cases, there is an indirect return on the investment represented by adult employees' time because they gain general competence as managers. Other payoffs for employers, in addition to building a skilled future workforce, include reduced recruiting costs and turnover and a smaller investment in skill training than is required for adults, whose earnings during training are much higher than youths'. Absence of Infrastructure

Apprenticeship is more costly when it is being constructed than after it has been institutionalized. Streeck, Hilbert, van Kevelaer, Maier, and Weber (1987) made this point by noting that one incentive for participation in apprenticeship by German employers is the existence of a substantial infrastructure supporting that system, which limits the investment they are required to make. That infrastructure includes: Laws at the federal and state levels Training regulations, competency standards, curricula, and examinations Joint committees that produce and oversee the above, including representatives of employers, employees, and educators Career information centers that provide career information and advising and list openings for apprentices and for adults A system of part-time vocational schools for apprentices providing academic courses, courses on the "theoretical" background of specific occupations, and school shop and laboratory courses Organizations devoted to the improvement of apprenticeship, notably the employers' chambers to which every business in Germany belongs and pays dues and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education (BIBB), which provides research and development Institutions that train vocational-school teachers and those responsible for work-based learning Another source of support for apprenticeship that is absent in the United States is simply that in countries with well-developed systems, everyone knows about and understands apprenticeship. Parents, other

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relatives, and family friends can give young people advice and assistance in making choices about apprenticeship. The role of apprentice is well understood by all and provides a clear sense of identity both at work and in society more broadly. Adults who teach apprentices at work were themselves previously apprentices. Multiple Types of Work-based Learning

The School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 provides modest federal funding for new systems with three essential components: school-based learning, work-based learning, and connections between the two. The legislation's inclusion of multiple types of work-based learning is wise because apprenticeship, one type of work-based learning, is too costly to be available to more than a small proportion of youth in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, young people will be far better prepared to choose an apprenticeship and to learn from it if they have had prior work-based learning. Following is our typology of work-based learning. Visits to workplaces: Field trips - onetime visits to observe; job shadowing - longer-term, sometimes multiple visits to observe by following a worker. Worklike experience: Service learning and unpaid internships - voluntary service, not necessarily with a career focus; youth-run enterprises - workplaces created to give youths employment and management experience Employment: Youth jobs-jobs ordinarily open to teenagers but often not learning opportunities; subsidized employment training - paid work as part of a training program; cooperative education and paid internships - school-related work experience; apprenticeship - long-term (over several years) work/learning program leading to certification Much variation remains within each of these types, but in general, they become more intensive and more comprehensive and their emphasis on teaching work-related knowledge and skills increases from top to bottom. Although we believe apprenticeship is potentially valuable for everyone, each type has value in relation to certain young people and for certain purposes. Types of work-based learning other than apprenticeship may serve as alternatives for young people who cannot find or do not need apprenticeships (e.g., unpaid internships for college-bound students) and as preapprenticeship experiences (e.g., job shadowing). A

212 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

comprehensive school-to-work opportunities system offers a wide array of work-based learning experiences (Hamilton & Hamilton, 1994). Implications for Cross-National Policy Research

During the "American century/' most people in the United States have not been much interested in how things were done elsewhere. The hegemony of the U.S. economy, military power, and culture contributes to that inwardness, but so does the diversity among states and regions within the country, providing a seemingly endless array of domestic possibilities from which to learn and choose. The impact of European - especially German - apprenticeship on the United States in the 1990s is quite remarkable in that context. We see its impact in at least four domains. Identifying a Problem. Before opinion leaders and policy makers in the United States became convinced that apprenticeship might be worth trying, they needed to believe there was a problem that it might help to solve. That problem was identified as the school-to-work transition of "non-college-bound" youths, was first brought to wide public attention by The Forgotten Half (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988a, 1988b). Although some economists have questioned whether moving from one job to another with frequent spells of unemployment is harmful, characterizing it instead as a form of job search (e.g., Klerman & Karoly, 1995), passage of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act signaled the emergence of a consensus that this transition should be improved. One source of that consensus was comparison with the early career establishment that is made possible by apprenticeship. Suggested Solutions. The more prominent function of comparison with Germany and other countries having apprenticeship systems has been that it suggested a new approach that could be tried in the United States. Despite the inclusion of multiple types of work-based learning in the legislation, early documents and a careful reading of the law indicate that it was heavily influenced by a vision of an American-style youth apprenticeship system (see Nothdurft & Jobs for the Future, 1990). It should be noted that as powerful an inspiration as German apprenticeship was, no one has publicly advocated a direct transfer or importation of the system. The question has always been how the United States could adapt ideas and practices to achieve the same purposes within a very different economic structure, educational system, and culture.

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Prospective Analysis. In this regard, the perspective of Rose (1991) is highly relevant. He called for comparisons among the institutions, policies, and practices of different nations to substantiate predictions about the likely direction and magnitude of changes after the introduction of new policies. He referred specifically to using research on German apprenticeship as a means of understanding how British "schemes" for education and employment might fare. Hamilton and Lempert followed his advice by reviewing the German literature on how apprenticeship affects adolescents to help identify likely impacts in the United States (Hamilton & Lempert, 1996; see also Hamilton, 1987). Convergent Development. A related perspective provided by crossnational research is a point-by-point comparison of strengths and weaknesses of different countries' practices for the purpose of identifying how they might learn from each other. For example, Hamilton and Hurrelmann (1994) have argued that education systems in Germany and the United States are beginning to converge in some ways and should continue to do so, making the United States more systematic about supporting the transition from school to career for those who do not graduate from 4-year colleges while Germany allows more flexibility both to recognize individual variation and choice and to adapt to changing economic conditions. We believe some "happy medium" (surely not a single point) between traditional European apprenticeship and traditional reliance on school-based learning in the United States would be optimal. Notes 1. The portion of 29 to 31-year-olds who in 1988 had been employed in their current job for more than 2 years was 54.8% for male high-school graduates, 31.7% for female highschool graduates, 27.7% for male high-school dropouts, and 19.4% for female highschool dropouts (Osterman & Iannozzi, Table 2, p. 5). For a competing analysis, see Klerman and Karoly (1995). 2. First three cohorts at the end of their senior year of high school. Members of the fourth cohort had not completed their senior year. Apprentices who dropped out or completed only 1 year were excluded. 3. Third and fourth cohorts and their comparison groups; one-tailed tests; p = .001 in grade 11, p = .0006 in grade 12. The criteria are described in Hamilton & Hamilton (1997).

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective1 WALTER R. HEINZ

In all industrial service societies, there is a growing concern about the social and economic future of the young generation. With increasing unemployment and protracted and uncertain transitions from school to work, the linkages between education and employment have become decoupled. This is occurring even in Germany, which has been known for its well-structured school-to-work transition system. Our longitudinal research sheds light on the employment chances and risks connected with job entry in occupations that require vocational training (but not academic education) in Germany in the 1990s. We also analyze the modes of biographical orientation and action young skilled workers develop in the course of this transition. As a conceptual framework, we suggest combining the notions of structure and agency (Giddens, 1984) with a life-course perspective (Elder & O'Rand, 1995; Heinz, 1991). Such a framework focuses not only on the effects of opportunities and constraints that structure job entry and careers but also on the interrelationships among occupations, work experiences, and individual decisions between alternative transition pathways. Although research on careers and social mobility looks primarily at structural (labor markets) and organizational (company politics) forces, our study asked how young people transform their social origin, gender, and education into occupational choices and careers. This chapter consists of three parts: first, a sketch of the German dual system of vocational education and training; second, a description of our research approach in a life-course framework; third, an analysis of transition results and biographical action orientations. Vocational Education and Training in Germany In the context of company restructuring, rapid workplace change, and lack of jobs, young people are facing uncertain passages and detours in their transition from school to work. Many of them are puzzled about their occupational choice and are at a loss finding the best way to cope with the uncertain outcomes of education and training. They are con214

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fronted with extended transitions to adulthood with uncertain destinations in the employment system. In contrast to the situation in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, the dominant school-to-work transition pattern in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany is organized by pathways that are traditionally linked to a combination of vocational schooling and on-the-job training, the dual system of Vocational Education and Training (VET), or apprenticeship. Despite a substantial increase of poly technical college and university enrollment in the last decade from 18.1% (1985) to 28.2% (1995), two thirds of all German school leavers still enter the labor market in a two-step process: After school, they do a 3-year firm-based apprenticeship, equipping them with a skilled white- or blue-collar worker's certificate, then enter the job market. This transition system differs from the arrangements in other countries, which either include vocational topics in secondary school (France) or rely mainly on on-the-job training (Great Britain, United States, Canada). These countries tend to have a much higher rate of youth unemployment than in the Central European countries in which the dual system prevails (Heinz, 1996a, 1997). This youth labor-market crisis has led to many school-to-work initiatives, such as the cooperative programs in the United States and Canada or Youth Training Schemes (YTS) and business and technical institutes in Great Britain. A revitalization of apprenticeship for school leavers as a socially recognized alternative to a college education, however, has not occurred in these countries. In Canada, for example, apprenticeship has been declining from generation to generation: Whereas 14% of its entire labor force has completed VET, today only about 4% of youths between 15 and 18 years of age are in an apprenticeship or cooperative vocational training (Krahn, 1996). The apprenticeship as the dominant qualification arrangement in Germany has survived the historical economic shifts from craft shops to industry and from industry to services. It still attracts the majority of school leavers. Structurally, it has adapted to the changing skill requirements by a major overhaul of occupational skill profiles and training curricula. Until the 1960s, there were about 1,000 specific trades; in the late 1990s, there are 360 modernized skill profiles, ranging from craft to industrial-technical, office, administrative, and service occupations. This is still quite a large number of skill profiles in comparison with Switzerland, which concentrates VET on core occupations. The dual system is an important element of Germany's social partnership system. It is regulated by federal law (Berufsbildungsgesetz, or the Vocational

216 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Education and Training Act of 1969); coordinated and developed by the Federal VET Institute in cooperation with government, employers' associations, and unions; and operated by firms, by chambers of crafts, industry, and commerce, and by vocational schools at the local level (Munch, 1994). The Transition from School to Work and Life Course Psychologists and educators tend to focus on youth as a crucial and relatively independent phase of personality development and learning, but life-course researchers conceptualize it as a transition stage to adulthood. This transition consists of multiple and partly overlapping status passages related to changing expectations and performances concerning social and economic roles: "The transition to adulthood influences the adult life course because it represents a critical juncture in personal life histories and connects social origins with subsequent adult attainments and life satisfaction" (Hogan & Astone, 1986, p. 125). Important passages for connecting social origin and education with adult life are postsecondary education, VET, and labor-market entry. As we have seen, there are two main routes in Germany: the pathways of apprenticeship and higher education. These routes establish much stronger linkages between education and employment than in most other European and North American societies. Longitudinal research in a framework of lifecourse dynamics is essential if one is to estimate the extent to which the apprenticeship succeeds in preparing young people for adulthood by providing primarily non-college-bound school-leavers with durable and transferable skills and work experiences in an increasingly volatile labor market. There are two partially overlapping theories for explaining the effects of social class on education and occupation. According to the theory of the social reproduction of inequality (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), social origin together with cultural capital determine the access to education and occupational careers. Though not underestimating social inequality, Giddens (1984) argued for an alternative to this structuralist explanation by proposing that social origin does not determine life course. It can be (partly) transformed by individual agency in the context of labor-market constraints and stratified occupational opportunities - that is, by individual decisions that relate to working conditions, socialization experiences, and career obstacles and options. Our life-course approach (Heinz, 1991a; Weymann & Heinz, 1996) assumes that individuals' social

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective

217

locations are not structurally fixed but instead are reproduced and changed in work-related transitions by status passages (Glaser & Strauss, 1971; Heinz, 1996b) that link opportunity structures with individual decisions and thus shape biographies. The structure of VET still reflects Germany's three-tier school system and therefore cannot fundamentally change the reproduction of social inequality. By preparing and certifying young men and (fewer) young women for skilled white- and blue-collar work, however, VET offers working-class and minority youths options to enter occupations and careers; it even motivates some young people to return to school to improve their education and career prospects. Hence, we assume that apprenticeship directs job entry and careers and provides some room to maneuver for individualized transition decisions that lead to career shifts and professional upgrading (see Evans & Heinz, 1994; Witzel, Helling, Monnich, 1996). It does not lock all young people into segmented, stratified career pathways; depending on the specific occupation, there are different chances for and risks of employment, unemployment, further training, job change, and new education passages. From a life-course perspective, there are multiple transition risks and options that unfold over time. For example, though training in traditional crafts or in traditionally gender-specific occupations (e.g., auto mechanic or hairdresser) limits access to careers, it provides work experience and a training certificate that give a journeyman or - woman a chance to enter skilled or semiskilled jobs. An apprenticeship in office, technical, and service occupations offers more transition options because of the combination of a higher education entry level and more challenging work and socialization contexts. Research Framework

To obtain an in-depth view of the entire transition sequence from leaving school and starting an apprenticeship to getting a job and moving along in the labor market, our research team started a longitudinal study in two German cities in 1989. We selected six main occupations and began interviewing all graduates (n - 2,230) of apprenticeships in these fields in Munich (low unemployment; high-tech and service context) and Bremen (high unemployment; old-industries context). From the 10 most popular training occupations, we selected 2 crafts (hairdresser and auto mechanic), 2

218 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

office occupations (bank clerk and office clerk),2 1 sales occupation (retail salespeople), and 1 technical-industrial occupation (machine fitter). Two occupations are mixed by gender (banking and sales), 2 are male dominated (auto mechanic and machine fitting), and 2 are female dominated (office work and hairdresser). This sampling helped us learn about the relation between occupation and gender. Since 1989, we have conducted two more waves of standardized questionnaires to monitor our respondents' life courses in 1991 and 1994, and three biographical interviews with a subsample of 144 respondents (12 in each of the 6 occupations in Bremen and Munich). Our samples have decreased to 1,200 ("large sample") and to 98 ("subsample") in this 5-year period, yet this did not cause a systematic bias. It is remarkable that because of our method of "problem-centered interviewing" (Witzel, 1995), the face-to-face respondents have remained quite loyal or attached to our study. This method combines elements of the narrative (Schutze, 1983) and the focused (Merton, Fiske & Kendall, 1990) interview; it builds a solid base for continued rapport. It is grounded in assumptions about the social construction of biographies and individual expertise that are derived from symbolic interaction theory (Blumer, 1969; Strauss, 1959) and from theories of social meaning and narrative representation (Billig, 1996; Bruner, 1990; Harre & Gillett, 1994). Results From School to Apprenticeship

As shown in Table 9-1, there is a rather clear relationship between social prestige and career opportunities of specific occupations and entry-level education. This corresponds roughly to the division between white- and blue-collar work. For example: Banking has only 2% of apprentices with a lower school-leaving certificate (Hauptschule), but more than 50% entered this occupation from the higher-level school (Gymnasium), which prepares students for postsecondary education. Hairdressing shows a strong contrast, with 63% from the lower-level school and only 1% from the higher-level school. These figures can be compared with the overall distribution of schoolleaving certificates in Germany: 30% lower level (Hauptschule), 40% intermediate (Realschule) and 30% higher level (Gymnasium). We have an obvious overrepresentation of highly educated apprentices in banking, of intermediate-level school graduates in office work and machine fit-

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective

219

Table 9-1. Transition from School to Apprenticeship % (n) in School Level

Training Occupation

Lower

Intermediate

Higher

Bank clerk Office clerk Retail sales Machine fitter Auto mechanic Hairdresser Total

2(5) 18(64) 35(56) 48(94) 60(74) 63(68) 30(361)

44(113) 64(227) 49(78) 49(96) 37(46) 36(38) 50(598)

54(139) 18(64) 16(25) 3(6) 3(3) 1(1) 20(238)

Total 100(257) 100(355) 100(159) 100(196) 100(123) 100(107) 100(1,197)

ting, and of trainees from lower-school level in auto mechanics, machine fitting, and hairdressing. Thus, there is evidence that the three-tiered school structure leads to an uneven distribution of chances for apprenticeship entry. This school structure contributes to the reproduction of social inequality in Germany by feeding either into different slots of the dual system of VET or into academic-professional education. It is obvious that the VET does not compensate for education inequality at the entry port of employment and careers. From a life-course perspective, however, which looks at the interaction of social contexts and individual actions over time, it seems likely that young adults will use their occupational skills, credentials, and work experiences as career resources in different ways. We expect that there will be variations in the pathways taken not only between but also within occupations after graduation from apprenticeship (Heinz, 1998). From Apprenticeship to Employment

To compare our respondents' transitions after VET, we distinguish between six main situations: remaining in the training occupation, moving to another occupation, returning to school, enrolling in a polytechnical college or university, not entering the labor market (women: homemaker; men: military or alternative national service), and being unemployed. Our results document a high degree of continuity for the first year after the apprenticeship. The majority of the graduates were offered a job by the training firm, and most of them took this offer in order to cash in their investment in deferred gratification concerning adult wages and

Table 9-2. Percent Transition from Training to Labor Market (n) Other Occupation

School

University

Not in Labor Force

55 (140)

10 (26)

1(3)

33 (85)

1(3)

0(0)

100

61 (215)

23 (82)

1(4)

7(25)

6(22)

2(7)

100

44 (70)

36 (57)

0(0)

5(8)

10 (16)

5(8)

100

41 (80)

23 (45)

10 (20)

14 (27)

8(16)

4(8)

100

58 (47)

38 (47)

1(1)

6(7)

9(11)

8(10)

100

43 (46)

34 (36)

3(3)

1(1)

14 (15)

5(5)

100

Same Occupation Bank clerk (257) Office clerk (355) Retail sales (159) Machine fitter (196) Auto mechanic (123) Hairdresser (106)

Unemployed

Total

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective

221

social recognition. Between year 1 and year 5 in the labor market, however, we observed increased career flexibility and transition discontinuity. This discontinuity was more widespread in our cohort than in the school-leaving cohorts of 1978 and 1985, whose transitions were analyzed with German panel data by Biichtemann, Schupp, and Soloff (1994). In our cohort, which left school in 1986-1987 and completed VET in 1989, we observed in 1994 that there was still a strong relationship between the education composition of an occupation and the pathways traveled by our respondents 5 years after apprenticeship. What stands out at first glance are two outcomes (Table 9-2). First, there was relatively little overall unemployment; it ranged from zero percent (bank clerks) to 8% (car mechanics). Second, less than half of the cohort (46.8%) were still employed in their original occupation. A close look at figures 9-1 to 9-6 shows that just two occupations have more continuity than disorder, measured by the rate of "staying in the same occupation"; these are banking and office work, both with a relatively large proportion of higher school level apprentices. The reverse holds for the occupations with a relatively low education composition, namely auto mechanics, hairdressers, and machine fitters. These occupations have a lower "holding capacity." The majority of the young people trained in a craft, sales, or technical occupation have left their job within 4 years. There is substantial migration out of the trained occupation among auto mechanics, retail salespeople, and hairdressers, with more than a third each. There is less out-migration among office clerks and machine fitters, with a quarter each, and among bank clerks, with only 10%. Working in another occupation should not, however, be equated with a passage into dequalification; it is quite often connected with horizontal or even upward mobility. If we compare career development in the six occupations, it is remarkable that mainly bank employees and machine fitters have embarked on education paths. Every third bank clerk and every fourth machine fitter decided to take the route to higher education or to return to secondary school to acquire the education prerequisite (Abitur) for enrolling at a polytechnical college (Fach-Hochschule) or a university. How can we explain these changes that have occurred within 5 years? The education composition of these two occupations differs. The bank clerks have an intermediate or high-level education; the machine fitters are characterized by low and intermediate levels of schooling. Although the higher education level of the bank employees explains their decision to enter the university, this does not apply for the machine fitters.

222 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

1986/1987 Level of Education

1989 Training Occupation In Percent %

In Percent %

Higher

54

Intermediate

44

Lower

1994 Labor Market

BANK CLERK (n = 257)

••

55

Bank Clerk

10

Other Occupation

1 33

2

School University

1

Not in Labor Force

0

Unemployed

Figure 9-1. Transition from school to work for bank clerks.

1986/1987 Level of Education

1989 Training Occupation

In Percent %

Higher

18

Intermediate

64

Lower

18

1994 Labor Market

In Percent %

OFFICE CLERK (n = 355)

••

61

Office Clerk

23

Other Occupation

1

School

7

University

6

Not in Labor Force

2

Unemployed

Figure 9-2. Transition from school to work for office clerks.

Industrial jobs, such as machine fitting, can be regarded as occupations that are quite distant from a postsecondary education culture. In periods of shortage of apprenticeships, they also attract young men who have an intermediate education. They might have responded to the recession: our machine fitters entered the labor market during an economic slow-

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective 1986/1987 Level of Education

1989 Training Occupation

16

Intermediate

49

Lower

35

1994 Labor Market

In Percent %

In Percent %

Higher

223

RETAIL SALES (n = 159)

44

Retail Sales

36

Other Occupation

0

School

5

University

10 5

Not in Labor Force Unemployed

Figure 9-3. Transition from school to work for retail salespeople.

1986/1987 Level of Education

1989 Training Occupation In Percent %

In Percent %

Higher

3

Intermediate

49

Lower

48

1994 Labor Market

MACHINE FITTER (n = 196)

44

Machine Fitter

23

Other Occupation

• • 10 14

School University

8

Not in Labor Force

4

Unemployed

Figure 9-4. Transition from school to work for machine fitters.

down that hit German manufacturing and mechanical engineering very hard. Therefore, returning to the education pathway might have been motivated by anticipated joblessness. This explanation, however, is not convincing: our machine fitters' unemployment rate was only 4%.

224 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives 1986/1987 Level of Education

1994 Labor Market

1989 Training Occupation

In Percent %

In Percent %

38

Car Mechanice

3

38

Other Occupation

Intermediate

37

1

School

Lower

60

6

University

9

Not in Labor Force

8

Unemployed

Higher

Figure 9-5. Transition from school to work for auto mechanics. 1986/1987 Level of Education

1989 Training Occupation

In Percent %

Higher

In Percent %

1

Intermediate

36

Lower

63

1994 Labor Market

HAIRDRESSER (n = 107)

43

Hairdresser

34

Other Occupation

3

School

1

University

14 5

Not in Labor Force Unemployed

Figure 9-6. Transition from school to work for hairdressers. Their decision to improve their education was not a stopgap measure. According to our problem-centered interviews, it resulted from particular training and work experiences. More important than labor-market problems, it turns out, are socialization experiences specific to the occupation and its organizational settings. The experiences are translated

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective

225

into certain biographical action orientations, as we will argue in the next section. The relatively small proportion of machine fitters (40%) who were still working in their occupation is astonishing in view of the fact that most of them were adequately employed right after their apprenticeship. A closer look at their training and work experiences reveals that most of them entered this occupation not out of a specific vocational motivation but with the expectation of getting good training and moving on to a skilled worker's career in a large factory. For them, job security, promotion, and working atmosphere were important elements in occupation choice. Those who were disappointed in their expectations either left the company, changed their occupation, or returned to education pathways. The latter group exemplifies that training and job-entry experiences can change career aspirations - in the case of machine fitters, from bluecollar industrial work to engineering. They have redirected their transition to employment by upgrading their intermediate school level and moving on to a polytechnical college or a university. The biography of these young adults is driven by the search for a more meaningful occupational life path, after having found out that early career decisions did not measure up to their goals. There are more machine fitters with intermediate schooling who upgraded their education than in all the other occupations taken together. This suggests that the discrepancy between expectations developed during the apprenticeship and the machine fitters' work experiences has a strong socialization effect in directing some of them toward postsecondary education. Whereas bank clerks possessed the education qualifications to study at a university, machine fitters had to acquire these by returning to school after their apprenticeship. Their motives and reasons thus differed from those of bank clerks who went on to study at a university. Before bank clerks started their apprenticeships, they knew that this would only be an interlude or stopover in their transition. Their education allowed a more planned approach in following a career program. In many cases, this was supported by the banks' personnel management - for instance, by the offer to employ them after they graduated from a university. A closer look at the predominantly female occupation of office clerk shows that occupational experiences can be used in different ways. Most people trained as office clerks still work at office jobs. The ones who do critical stock-taking of their work experiences decide to change employers and to take up jobs in a wider range of office work and middle management. For them, the main vehicle for improving income and

226 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

advancement options is continuing education in accounting, computing, or personnel management. These alternatives are not meaningful for dissatisfied machine fitters, because their occupation has a much smaller range of employment options. Hence, they attempt to redirect their life courses either by changing to another occupation or by improving their level of schooling. The observed differences among pathways and social positions 5 years after VET are clearly related to occupational structure and to the respective balance of opportunities and constraints. The variations of pathways within occupations, however, directs our attention to the contribution of individual agency to understanding career continuities and shifts. Biographical Action Orientations as Moderators Between Social Origin and Job Entry

As we have shown, there is not a direct causal relationship between social origin, education, occupational training, job entry, and career passages. To account for this complex relationship, we suggest the concept of "biographical action orientation." This concept refers to the individual's aspirations, reasoning, and actions that feed into the occupational biography, such as decisions about career patterns, changing jobs or occupations, further education, returning to school, enrolling in college or university. In contrast to Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction (Bourdien & Passecon 1977), we explain the outcomes of occupational training and labor-market passages as transition results that depend not only on social origin and the education system but also on the individual's biography and decision making. Having attained a certain occupational credential means to be confronted with specific contexts for the transition to employment - that is, with particular opportunities for continuity as well as risks of discontinuity in one's career path. Thus, we do not underestimate the importance of education resources and structural constraints as frames for transition decisions. In order to shed light on the moderating effects of biographies, we have generated a "grounded theory" (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of biographical action orientation (BAO). This concept is based on the assumption that action is an intentional, goal-oriented, and self-reflexive process that builds on a person's life-course experiences. The theoretical roots of this term are recent developments in social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997), developmental psychology (Bruner, 1990), social psychology (Harre & Gillett, 1994), and biographical sociology

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective

227

(Weymann & Heinz, 1996). The dimensions for classifying our respondents according to the typology of biographical action orientation were first derived from the interviews themselves ("in-vivo codes/' Strauss & Corbin, 1990) and then were systematically categorized according to the following aspects: personal meaning of work situations, work organization, qualification, career, and rewards. The concept was developed by analyzing the transcripts of three waves of "problem-centered interviews/7 We have modified the method developed by Strauss and Corbin (1990) by combining case-by-case analysis and case comparison with the strategy of building a typology that consists of different modes of biographical action orientation. There is also some similarity to the concept of "personal constructs" (Kelly, 1991), which we relate to a self-socialization theory that refers to learning experiences in varied social contexts (Heinz & Witzel, 1995; Heinz, 1998). Training and job-entry passages occur under specific social-structure conditions that are defined by economic trends, labormarket dynamics, career, and advancement patterns. These conditions do not determine careers, because individuals act on their experiences and evaluations of short-term opportunities and long-term consequences. This process can be analyzed most fruitfully by framing it as occupational self-socialization (Heinz, 1995). This self-organized learning builds on educational and social resources and is connected with forming and changing orientations, preferences, and coping strategies that turn school-to-work transition sequences into biographical experiences. Self-socialization means that people attempt to fulfill their aspirations and to recover from disappointment by following and changing pathways that allow compromises between biographical goals and limited opportunities. Career "choices" thus reflect experiences with education and occupational selection, job search, and work as they are being integrated in a person's biography. On the basis of our comprehensive interview material, we systematically compared how young employees take stock of and make sense of their training, job-entry, and employment experiences. We found that the situative coping strategies are linked to specific types or modes of BAO. We distinguished six types of BAO concerning occupation and career: optimizing chances, company identification, wage-worker habitus, career fixation, personal autonomy, self-employed habitus. Following are short definitions of the BAOs. Optimizing chances means to focus on coming to terms with the changing challenges at work, connected with the acquisition of new skills that

228 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

facilitate occupational career advancement. Company identification focuses on the willingness to accept organizational and working conditions in order to achieve job security and good human relations in the work setting. Wage-worker habitus emphasizes that work requires a fair material compensation and shop-floor solidarity. Career fixation centers on occupational or organizational career ladders and time tables, connected with a calculating readiness for continuing education. Personal autonomy emphasizes that an occupation should further individual selfrealization and that work must be subjectively meaningful and morally acceptable. Self-employed habitus sees work as a means for economic success and a medium for individual risk-taking in order to gain and maintain entrepreneurial independence. Looking at the distribution of BAOs in a qualitative subsample, we found a strong correlation between individuals, type of BAO, and the occupation for which they were trained (Table 9-3). Nevertheless, these results have to be interpreted with caution, not only because of the sample's limited size but also because the sample was selected according to the principles of qualitative sampling and not at random. Nonetheless, one may consider the results from the qualitative analyses as "empirically grounded hypotheses'' (Strauss & Corbin, 1990); as such, they will be submitted to further empirical tests in the next wave of our quantitative panel. The fourth wave was being conducted in 1997, 10 years after school leaving, and also included the transition to family roles. I report this distribution and the other results with some hesitation because we have not yet completed our case analysis and cannot base our conclusions on statistically significant relationships. The following discussion explores, therefore, the explanatory potential of linking social contexts with BAOs for understanding the different transition patterns of youths. When looking for social contexts that might explain the distribution of the BAOs, we find that there is some difference by region. Our respondents in Munich and Bremen differ in the relative importance of career fixation (two in Bremen, seven in Munich) and firm identification (eight in Bremen, three in Munich). This difference might be related to different labor-market structures: Employment risks are much higher in Bremen, where the unemployment rate is twice as high as in Munich. Thus, it appears to be more rational to attempt to remain at one's job and not to develop high career expectations. The latter strategy is more pronounced in Munich, where there is a much more open and flexible labor market. BAOs also vary by gender. Skilled young women tend to prefer the BAO of company identification more often and the BAO of wage-worker

Job-Entry Patterns in a Life-Course Perspective

229

Table 9-3. Distribution of Biographical Action Orientations by Occupation in the Qualitative Subsample Bank Office Machine Retail Auto Clerk Clerk Fitter Mechanic Hairdresser Salesperson Optimizing opportunities Personal autonomy Wage-worker habitus Career fixation Self-employed habitus Company identification

3

5

4

2

0

2

0

2

0

1

0

1

0 4

1 1

4 0

3 4

1 0

1 2

0

0

0

1

2

0

0

1

0

1

6

0

habitus less often than do skilled young men. The latter tend to optimize their chances and are less tied to the company than are the skilled young women in our sample. This difference is due to the gender-specific jobentry and career options that characterize the German occupational structure. A third relevant social context is education. We find that the higher the school level, the narrower the range of the preferred BAOs. As expected, low-level school contexts correlate mainly with the wage-worker habitus or with company identification. This can be explained by the relationship between the school levels and the labor-market segments for craft, blue- and white-collar occupations. We also found some youths, however, with the BAOs of optimizing chances and career fixation. These BAOs are more characteristic for skilled young workers with higherlevel education. These young people have access to occupations with better prospects and more room for maneuvering. They develop BAOs that involve more individualized decision making and are less dependent on shop-floor solidarity or the occupational setting. Job-entry and work experiences constitute a dynamic learning context that shape BAOs. According to our theory of occupational socialization, the strongest effect on career patterns should come from transition experiences and occupation as well as from social origin, education, and gender. The cumulative effects of social resources and occupational contexts reinforce or modify the preferred BAO. As expected, we see (Table 9-3) that there are relationships between occupation and the preferred BAO. Hairdressers (mostly women) showed

230 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

a concentration on the BAO of company identification. Their occupation tends to be a dead-end job if it is not possible to become self-employed. Thus, it is biographically meaningful to continue working in the training firm. For the machine fitters (all men) we found that they either attempted to optimize their chances or develop a wage-worker habitus. This difference relates to education resources and a willingness to take risks concerning pathways to higher education. Among bank clerks, the BAOs of optimizing chances and career fixation dominated. This corresponds to the hierarchical organization and human-resource development strategy of banks. The BAO of optimizing chances is based on a mix of excellent education resources and a challenging occupational context. It uses intraorganizational possibilities to upgrade occupational competence and to invest in career resources. Bank employees who developed their occupational biography primarily by "career fixation" tended to rely on promotion patterns that were predetermined by the bank. This restricted the range of occupational choices and advancement options because the scope for the expression of individual preferences was defined by the human-resource management of the bank. Which BAO the employees developed depended on the experiences and preferences of specific individuals. Both BAOs make sense in terms of the employment opportunities in the banking business, but the development of these modes follows a different logic than does that of the other four BAOs. Our machine fitters demonstrated an interesting relationship among education background, job-entry sequences, and BAOs. The ones who decided to stay in their occupation tended to develop a wage-worker habitus, and the ones who decided to return to education, including postsecondary institutions, tended to prefer the BAO of optimizing chances. Though the above-sketched associations among training, job entry, career patterns, and BAOs are not yet based on a complete analysis of our sample, we feel confident that adding the typology of BAO as a moderating dimension between structure and agency will improve the explanation of different transition sequences to adulthood. Conclusion We have argued that combining the notion of social structuration with the concept of occupational self-socialization provides a meaningful explanation for the variations in young skilled workers' transition patterns. Divergent development paths result from the economic embed-

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231

dedness and labor-market options of specific occupations, from young adults' strategies for using their education and occupational resources, and from their interpretations of working and labor-market experiences. The apprenticeship system provides access to skilled employment and influences occupational careers much more strongly than do transition arrangements in North America, which only weakly link education and work. The German system neither determines nor guarantees job entry, however, it can be used as a biographical resource for individually correcting social and educational disadvantages and labor-market risks. In Germany, VET, job entry, and career paths are structurally linked to labormarket segments and institutionalized by the social-partnership politics of industrial relations. Some of the non-college-bound young adults, however, can reshape their life-course alternatives by using an apprenticeship as a resource for improving their labor-market prospects. An apprenticeship does not automatically guarantee life chances and employment options. Its usefulness for job entry, employment, and career depends at least partly on the moderating effect of BAOs. By drawing on qualitative longitudinal data, we could analyze how members of our cohort of skilled young white- and blue-collar workers responded to the discrepancies between expected or anticipated and actual career development over a period of 5 years after VET. Our data show that their experiences with transition requirements and outcomes clearly affected their career development by way of self-socialization that led to specific modes of career development and occupational adaptation. The concept of BAOs, developed from qualitative material, has helped illuminate some of the microprocesses that lead to variations within occupational careers. Despite the considerable significance of the actors' orientations and preferences for career development, one can also clearly see from our qualitative data how occupational contexts set clear boundaries for personal aspirations. Notes 1. This article is based on research conducted at the Special Research Center (Sfb 186) under the title "Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course" at the University of Bremen, Germany, and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The members of the research group were Udo Kelle, Thomas Kiihn, Hilde Schaeper, Andreas Witzel, Jens Zinn, and Walter R. Heinz. 2. The German term Kaufmann/Kauffrau is not adequately translated by clerk because these commercial occupations imply communicative, technical, and organizational skills that surpass simple office or sales tasks like filing, paperwork, or cashier work. They are quasiprofessional jobs at the level of middle management.

PART III

Changes in the Social Context of Transitions

Institutional Networks and Informal Strategies for Improving Work Entry for Youths1 JAMES E. ROSENBAUM

The school-to-work transition in the United States is not working. The "forgotten half/' students who do not complete a college degree, have trouble getting good jobs, getting any jobs, or keeping jobs, and employers complain that they cannot get workers with good academic skills and work habits (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988a, 1998b). The problems are especially great for disadvantaged youths. Most analyses have traced problems in the school-to-work transition to deficiencies in students or in schools, so reforms have tried to "repair" youths or schools, yet few studies have looked at the transition itself. If society is to increase the employment rate of the "forgotten half," more attention must be given to the transition process, which our studies suggest can be improved by school-to-work networks and trusted signals of youths' value. Networks for Low-Income Youths We know how some youths get jobs - they use contacts. Family, friends, and neighbors tell youths about jobs and put in a good word. Family networks help many youths get jobs. This explains part of the difficulty for low-income youths - their family and friends lack job contacts. This points to a direction for policy to help low-income youths get jobs: give them contacts. This is easier said than done, of course. Logic suggests two solutions. First, if low-income youths do not have neighbors who have job contacts, help them move to places where their new neighbors have job contacts. Residential mobility and mixed-income housing are potential solutions. Research has been done on this (Rosenbaum, 1996), but that is not the topic of this chapter. The other logical solution is to give youths new contacts. If they do not have family contacts, give them institutional contacts. By law, all American youths must be in high school until 16 years of age; why do we not give labor-market contacts to their high schools? If the logic here is clear 235

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and easy, the procedures are not. Two difficult questions arise; first, how to create connections between high schools and employers, and second, how to make linkages effective. The most common approach to these questions is to study exemplary programs. Researchers have studied career academies (Stern, Raby & Dayton, 1992), school-based enterprises (Stern et al, 1994), cooperative programs (Stern, Finkelstein, Stone, Latting, & Dornsife, 1995), exemplary school-business partnerships (Pauly & Kopp, 1995), and apprenticeship programs (Bailey & Merritt, 1993; Lynn & Wills, 1994; Hamilton, 1990). These approaches are promising, and they are well described in the cited literature. Given the cost and training resources needed to initiate these efforts, however, large-scale adoption of these reforms will not come quickly, so such exemplary reforms cannot be the entire basis for action. In addition, from a theoretical viewpoint, we still need to understand what is going wrong in ordinary schools and what potential resources already exist in these schools. Without such understanding, school reforms will be misdirected or overlook valuable resources. School reforms sometimes discard old resources and valuable personnel, only to discover their value later. Researchers need to study ordinary schools to provide a basis for reforms. As Kurt Lewin said, nothing is as practical as a good theory. Nowhere is this more true than in education. Every year brings new school reforms that are discarded as total failures a few years later. Because most reforms do not proceed from a theoretical analysis, they are sometimes implemented in a form that fails to fix the underlying problems. A theoretical model can help provide focus to reform. Consequently, this chapter begins with a model to describe a key element of an effective school-to-work system. Then it summarizes research findings on employers, students, and teachers in Japan and in the United States. It concludes with some implications for making effective linkages in ordinary schools and some directions for future research. A Signaling Model of the School-to-Work Transition Networks have recently been rediscovered, but current thinking is somewhat off target. People assume that all kinds of networks are effective for getting jobs; network has become a verb, and many taverns prosper as places to "network." Actually, not every form of network is helpful for getting a job, and the behaviors one shows in a tavern do not always

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help in getting jobs. Networks are helpful only if they say something relevant and trusted about a person. The key to making networks effective is to make them convey relevant and trusted information. As sociologists have noted, a key problem for youths is how to acquire indicators of adult status (Parsons, 1959). In all societies, youths must be initiated into adulthood. They need ways to gain adult status and recognition of their productive value, whereas employers need ways to know that youths are ready to be productive. In simpler societies, youths get their adult status through initiation ceremonies that signal youths' ability to meet tests of survival skills and self-sufficiency. In modern societies, such signals come through schools, which are responsible for preparing and certifying youths for the competencies demanded by employers. A school-to-work transition system must not only provide training, it must also convey trustworthy signals about youths' capabilities. In explaining why work entry is so difficult for youths in our society, particularly disadvantaged youths, we need to explain why they have such great problems acquiring clear signals of their value that employers will respect, why so many work-bound youths are unmotivated in high school, and what actions schools and teachers take that might influence these factors. In addition, we need to consider what attributes networks must have to help youths enter the work world and whether schools currently possess any potential resources for making networks. I propose a new model of the school-to-work transition, one that asserts that information is problematic and that a key reason for youths' work-entry difficulties is poor information - not the amount of information, but rather its trustworthiness. The model posits that employers need trusted information about youths' productive capabilities to make hiring decisions, and youths need to acquire trusted signals to show their value to employers. Low-income and minority students especially need such trusted signals to overcome employers' biases. Affirmativeaction pressures can sometimes help minorities, but they can be subverted if employers do not believe youths have value. The key problem for helping youths, particularly low-income and minority youths, is to find ways to give them trusted signals of value. We usually take information for granted. Indeed, much of what we consider "common sense" is based on our assumption that good information is easily available. When information is problematic, however, common sense may be wrong. As we shall see, information is often problematic in the school-to-work transition, and many common-sense beliefs about the school-to-work transition are mistaken. For instance,

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because employers want academic skills, we assume they consider academic grades in hiring. Because employers often use interviews for hiring, we assume they trust their own judgments from interviews. We assume that employers value training programs because they provide training. We assume that youths know how to get jobs, that applying for jobs is just common sense. We assume that the reason students do not work in high school is because they lack motivational capacity, and we assume that vocational teachers who give students the right training have done all that is needed to help students get jobs. In this chapter, I shall show that all of these assumptions are sometimes false, especially when information is missing or untrusted. In particular, we assume that employers can get good information through ordinary market processes. If the labor market works well, employers do not need to form stable recruiting relationships with high schools, yet findings from interviews done as research for this chapter suggest that we underestimate employers' difficulty in getting trusted information. As comedian Dave Barry has said, "A resume is more than a piece of paper; it is a piece of paper with lies written all over it." Employers seem to concur with this skepticism about the information they get, and in some cases, they have taken novel actions to get better information. Our common-sense assumptions are wrong because they overlook the problematics of information. My model says that analyses of the school-to-work transition must consider the factors that make information problematic. First, the model posits that employers need trusted signals about youths' capabilities. An effective system authorizes certain agents (schools, tests, employment agencies) to evaluate and certify youths' capabilities. In the absence of an effective system, society will not produce trusted signals of youths' capabilities. Second, the model posits that youths need trusted information about how to prepare for jobs, information that reassure them that they are progressing toward adult status. Although teachers claim that youths are making such progress, students do not always trust this information. Contrary to economic theory, free markets do not operate in a vacuum; they require an effective system to ensure incentives. Without an effective system, students may be uncertain whether there are payoffs to school effort. Given this uncertainty, we expect students to vary in whether or how much they believe school efforts have a future payoff, and the variation in these beliefs may explain which students exert effort in school. Third, the model posits that teachers, though not responsible for helping students entery the workforce, will feel pressures to do so, and some teachers may become de facto inter-

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mediaries between students and employers. In an effective system, we expect school staff to have clear responsibilities and authority to provide information about students to employers, as well as information in the reverse direction. The model posits that in the absence of an effective system, teachers will lack authority and responsibility to aid students' entry into the workforce, but they will perceive these needs by employers and students. It is less certain what roles teachers will take and what authority they will have. I expect that some teachers will see the problems arising from this lack of system, that they will be uncomfortable with it, and that they may take informal initiatives in response. I find that in the absence of an effective system to help youths get jobs, teachers take various informal strategies to accomplish the same signaling mechanisms. Unlike the usual model of the school-to-work transition, which emphasizes training, this model emphasizes signals. This is not to deny the need for training but rather to say that training is not enough. Training will not be effective unless the system also provides trusted signals that convince employers of youths' value and that give students trusted information about how to prepare for and get a job. I contend that all societies must construct such signals to enable youth to enter the adult world and that failures to do so will lead to problems. The trusted-signals model indicates some characteristics of an effective system. Japan, a nation with a clear school-to-work transition system, provides a good example of an effective system, and it helps us see some elements that are missing in the U.S. transition. This chapter suggests some problems that arise from the absence of a clear system and the ways they impinge upon employers, students, and teachers in the United States. A High-Articulation System: Japan The meaning of this approach can be seen most clearly by looking at another nation. Today, everyone is in awe of Japan's educated workers, but it was not always so. Facing a serious shortage of skilled workers at a time of mass unemployment in the 1920s, Japan tried several different policies for getting a better-trained work force. After many failures over several decades, Japan arrived at a system that has made its workforce one of the best in the world. Japanese youths excel in academic achievement and productivity. Some people attribute Japan's success to Japanese culture, which the United States cannot easily duplicate. But Japan's culture has not greatly changed over this period, even though

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Japanese practices have, so Japan's practices, not the nation's culture, are likely to explain Japan's great success at training work-bound youth. Japan implemented a system in which high schools directly help students into the labor force. Although both the United States and Japan have similar proportions of high school graduates who directly enter the work force (about 40%), U.S. high schools help only 10% of these students to find jobs, but Japanese high schools help over 75% (Rosenbaum & Kariya, 1989,1991). Japanese high schools do not just give advice, they give job access. High schools have long-standing relationships with certain employers. These employers offer the same number of jobs to a school each year. In return, employers expect schools to nominate seniors of dependable quality for those jobs and to nominate students with better grades for better jobs. Like American employers, Japanese employers are uncomfortable giving up their influence over hiring, and virtually all employers conduct job interviews, yet Japanese employers accept teachers' nominations to a very large extent. Japanese employers hire over 81% of applicants when they are first nominated, and of those rejected, over 84% are hired by the second firm to which they are nominated. Fewer than 3% of all Japanese students have to apply to three or more employers. Japanese employers believe this system gives them young employees with the best academic skills and work habits. Maintaining these relationships is crucial to an employer's success in recruiting capable employees on a continuing basis. Maintaining these relationships is also crucial to a school's success in placing its graduates in jobs in the future. As a teacher said, "Getting jobs is only a one-time experience for individual students, but it is repeated year after year for schools." Every hiring decision reaffirms the mutual commitment of the school and employer to each other for now and into the future. Schools must select students who satisfy employers in order to keep receiving the same number of good jobs in the future. Employers must continue hiring a school's graduates in order to keep on receiving a stable source of employees of dependable quality. Deviations from their agreed standards would jeopardize their relationship, so both schools and employers maintain their standards. This system pays off in higher achievement of Japanese students. Whereas American achievement scores rank poorly in international comparisons, Japanese scores are at or near the top in most comparisons. The Japanese advantage is especially great for students in the bottom half of the class, who have much higher achievement than in other countries. Japan's incentives for work-bound students, which are stronger than in any other developed country, undoubtedly affect the achievement of

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these students (Rosenbaum & Kariya, 1989). Linkages also make work entry less difficult in Japan than in the United States. Of Japanese high school graduates not attending college, 99.5% start working immediately after graduation. By contrast, less than half of American graduates have jobs by graduation, and most (58.3%) of these are only continuing the part-time jobs they already had in high school (see chapter 5 in this volume). Thus, although American youths are floundering from job to job, Japanese youths are settling into jobs, becoming productive workers, and getting experience and training. Finally, because Japanese linkages produce such high-achieving youths and give employers dependable information about applicants, they may contribute to employers' willingness to invest in young employees and give them training for more skilled positions. The Japanese system illustrates the main tenets of my model. As the model suggests, this system gives employers indicators of students' capabilities, which are trustworthy in part because teachers know employers will end their contacts if they are disappointed. The system gives youths dependable signals of their own value in the adult world and incentives to exert effort in school. Finally, the system gives high schools the authority to assure students that their school efforts will have a payoff in the job world. The Japanese system makes the three elements of the model explicit in a formal system. Given that the United States lacks a formal system and that even self-conscious reforms in the United States lack such formal obligations between schools and employers (Seeley, 1984; Spring, 1986; Timpane, 1984), we may wonder to what extent these same elements occur in the United States. The following sections investigate these issues. Employers' Responses to the Lack of an Effective System First, the model posits that employers need trusted signals about applicants' capabilities. In the absence of an effective system, the model makes five contentions: 1. Employers may ignore many signals that are relevant to their stated needs. 2. Employers ignore these signals because they do not trust their validity or relevance. 3. Employers rely on interviews not because they have confidence in interviews but because they have less confidence in any other information.

242 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives 4. Employers will use school information if they have trusted relationships with teachers. 5. Signals are sometimes more important than training. In the following sections, I consider each of these contentions. Ignoring Relevant Signals

Employers often complain about workers' academic skills, so one would expect them to use information from schools. Indeed, economic theory explicitly makes this assumption, defining individuals' value as human capital and measuring it by years of education, grades, and test scores (and also experience). My model suggests, however, that in the absence of a school-to-work transition system, employers may not use the signals they get about students' capabilities. Research supports this prediction. High schools give students grades, test scores, and teacher recommendations, but studies have repeatedly shown that these indicators have no influence on which youths are hired, what wages they get, or what jobs they get. This research provides strong evidence, including that from longitudinal surveys of youths and national surveys of employers' hiring practices (Griffin & Alexander, 1981; Meyer & Wise, 1982; Willis & Rosen, 1979). Although it is possible that employers have trouble getting school transcripts (Bishop, 1993), this is not a sufficient explanation. First, employers are usually well represented on school boards, and high schools are usually eager to respond if employers make requests. Currently, high schools may not respond to an isolated employer's request, but if many employers made such requests, high schools would probably try to be responsive. Instead, research indicates that most employers do not value transcripts. Surveys of personnel staff indicates that their neglect is quite conscious. Employers report that they do not use these indicators (Crain, 1984; Diamond, 1970). In effect, even though employers complain about students' skills, they do not use school evaluations. Such a striking contradiction is puzzling. Employers often complain about academic skills, but they do not use the hiring criteria that could signal those skills. It is evident that we do not understand employers very well. We will need a better understanding of them before we can know how to make schools more helpful in getting students jobs. To investigate employers' thinking, my research group conducted detailed interviews with a sample of 51 urban and suburban employers. We asked open-ended questions about what information they used and

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why they used this information and not any other. The sample was drawn from two chambers of commerce. Although this sample makeup creates uncertainties about generalizability, it yielded vastly better response rates than do ordinary surveys (91% vs. 55%) and a high degree of openness and cooperation (see Miller & Rosenbaum, 1996). We excluded employers who offered only "youth-type" dead-end jobs (e.g., restaurants and small retailers) but included a wide diversity of firms in manufacturing, clerical, graphics, and so forth. We believe these are a good representation of ordinary employers; they are not selected to be "best-practice" firms. The following sections address several issues raised by the signaling model, presents some preliminary findings from my own research, and proposes further research directions. With this new information, I will analyze the remaining questions I posed. Ignoring High-School Information Because of Mistrust

Why do employers not use the high school indicators that would signal the academic skills that they say they need? My model suggests a potential reason: employers do not trust the validity or relevance of school signals. As in national samples, most employers in our sample stated a need for academic skills (35 of the 51), but few used information from high schools in their hiring decisions. Although surveys have not examined why this is the case, our interviews did. The most common reason given for not using school information was mistrust of its validity or relevance. Some employers mistrusted teachers' grades and recommendations because they believed teachers care too much about their students and not about employers' needs. As one employer reported, "I think subjective feelings probably get in the way ... [teachers] want to see [their students] do well ... They might tend to exaggerate skills and abilities." Employers also believe that teachers' evaluations and grades are not relevant to work. Even employers who complain about youths' poor academic skills are not certain that teachers' grades indicate the skills they need. Besides not trusting schools, employers also report that they do not trust other sources of information. Some employers do not trust other employers, who may be trying to get rid of poor workers or get out of paying for former workers' unemployment insurance. Some employers do not trust employment agencies, which often do poor screening of entry-level workers.

244 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Employers Rely on Interviews Because they do not Trust other Information

Although interviews are the most common hiring criterion, findings from decades of psychological research show that interviews are largely based on superficial criteria, are highly biased, and are not good predictors of future performance (Wanous, 1992). For example, Hunter and Hunter's extensive review (1984) found a meager correlation between interviewer ratings and subsequent job performance, and Arvey and Faley (1988) found interviews to be unfair to racial minorities. The short duration of hiring interviews almost ensures superficial information. For instance, several studies have found that interviewers gave higher ratings to applicants with greater amounts of eye contact, head movement, and smiling and that such nonverbal communication accounted for 80% of the variance between candidate ratings (Arvey & Campion, 1982). This literature implies that employers are not aware of these correlations and that if employers were told of such findings, they might change their behavior. Our interview findings indicated that employers know what they are doing. Employers actually reported that superficial cues were the basis for their hiring decisions. Nearly all employers discussed interviewing in terms of the information gathered from applicants' demeanor, not qualifications. They said, "It's how they present themselves"; "the way the person handles himself, communication skills"; "their ability to be at ease or not at ease, inability to look at you when they speak to you ... and their appearance." One employer shuns individuals who slouch. Another said, "Hair's important. It doesn't have to be totally conservative, but not wild and frizzy." Another reported, "You can tell a lot by the way that they walk." Another looks at facial expressions to decide if the individual really wants to work there. Another employer reports that he forms his opinion within the first 30 seconds. Although these criteria may be relevant for customer-oriented jobs, many employers use these criteria for manufacturing and other non-customer-oriented jobs. Research findings about the subtle cues that influence hiring would be no surprise to these employers, who report relying on posture, dress, and style of speaking (Miller & Rosenbaum, 1996). In addition, even though it is commonly assumed that employers think interviewing produces good decisions, our study indicates that many employers realize that interviews are poor predictors of performance. "Some of the few [applicants] that I thought would be outstanding crashed and burned."

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Another reported that he has had applicants who "really seemed upbeat and aggressive. Once they started work, they're very laid back, continually late or tardy, uninterested in the work." Some employers directly complain about the failures of interviewing: "An interview is a bad game. It's a bad setup. We can't really learn much in an interview except the very obvious characteristics of a person. If a person has any skill at all in being deceptive or a good actor, you can learn next to nothing in an interview." As another observed, interviewing mostly selects people who are good interviewers, not good workers: "I don't necessarily need somebody who's been polished and aired at the interview. [We find] that the thing they do best is interview." Even as employers complain about the failures of interviewing, however, their mistrust of other information keeps them using interviews, despite interviews' faults. As noted, they do not trust schools, other employers, or even employment agencies. In sum, even though research finds that interviewing is based on superficial cues and produces poor decisions, this is not a surprise to employers. If our findings are more generally true, then research should not be focused on discovering the faults of interviews but rather on discovering better alternatives and the underlying conditions that make information trusted. Similarly, social policy directed at helping minorities must also focus on weighing alternatives, and research can help with this process. The racial biases of tests are well known, and courts have responded by restricting their use for hiring (Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 1971, 401 U.S. 424). Research has not examined the results of this policy, however, I suspect that when social policy limits employers' use of tests, employers increase their reliance on interviews, which also have a strong risk of biases (Arvey & Faley, 1988). Research needs to examine how employers have responded to restrictions from the Equality of Employment Opportunity legislation and whether their responses have led to less discrimination. One study found that employers who use employment tests are more likely to hire minorities than are employers who avoid such tests (Neckerman & Kirschenman, 1991; see also Kirschenman, Moss, & Tilly, 1995). This is not to say that testing is unbiased, but the alternatives may be a lot worse. More research is needed about the actual consequences of various hiring procedures. Our findings suggest that employers have strong needs for information and that they would rely less on interviews if they trusted other information. Given employers' general mistrust of outside information, one might wonder if some employers take steps to get better information.

246 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Using School Information Because of Trusted Links with Teachers

Our study discovered a previously unrecognized phenomenon. We found that some employers have formed long-term hiring links with certain teachers to get trusted information about youths. In our sample, 7 of our 51 employers did so. These are not traditional old-boy networks; they are not built upon family or ethnic contacts, and they do not help just white young men. Rather, they arise when an employer calls a high school to find a qualified student or when a vocational teacher calls an employer to help a qualified student get a job. Although they were initially skeptical, these employers came to trust certain teachers' judgments after repeated interactions and to believe that these teachers understand and care about employers' needs. Employers using such information were more satisfied with the quality of the youths recommended to them. Because these employers called high schools seeking better-qualified workers, it is not surprising that all the employers with strong high-school linkages offered advancement opportunities. All but one said their workers would be making $40,000 a year by 30 years of age in their own firm; the one firm that did not was a small printing firm, where most young workers were able to leave for better-paying jobs by 30. These contacts did not serve just white young men. Most of these employers said they often got minorities from high-school contacts. When trusted teachers recommend students, both whites and minorities, students are bestowed with trusted signals that employers value. Although employers did not admit to having racial biases, I suspect that these "trusted signals of value" may overcome employers' initial biases against minorities. One teacher reported that he got some employers to hire minorities and young women whom they would not have hired otherwise. In one case, he told an employer that "this female was as good at sheet metal as the last five males I had sent in the past," and the employer hired her, despite some reluctance about whether a woman could do the job. In this example, the employer had never seen a woman do sheet metal work and doubted a woman could do it, but he also knew that this teacher was a good judge of the skills and personal qualities he needed, because the teacher had sent good workers in the past. The teacher's recommendation provided a trusted signal of value that overcame the employer's biases. Our findings also suggest that recruiting methods are related to quality of information, which in turn affects racial outcomes. Most employers said that ads produce poor-quality applicants. One employer said, "You put an ad in the paper, and you get five

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hundred people coming through here ... [many] with no experience at all." Using more picturesque terms, another employer characterized newspaper ads as "cattle calls ... [some applicants seem to] be coming long distance from Mars. They don't know anything." When asked how they recruited minorities, however, most employers reported using newspaper advertising. Thus, the main way that most employers get minorities is a method that also gives hundreds of unselected, low-quality applicants. Even if well-qualified minorities happen to apply, it is difficult to discover them, especially for small firms that cannot afford to develop job-relevant screening tests. By contrast, employers with school links reported that they got many minorities through a trusted relationship that reassured them of applicants' qualities. As one noted, "I do get a better quality of individual coming through school than through ads in the paper." Although surveys have not examined these issues in detail, two surveys had a single question on the topic. Holzer's employer survey founds that although school referrals are not common, they are twice as likely to lead to desirable occupations (3% to 7% of workers recruited into management, sales, clerical, craft) than to undesirable ones (1% to 3% of workers recruited to operative, labor, service; Holzer, 1995, p. 53). The High School and Beyond (HSB) national survey of students in the Class of 1982 had a question on how students found jobs after graduation. My analyses indicate that less than 10% of seniors report receiving help from high school in getting their first jobs. Female and minority students are more likely to rely on school help in getting their jobs; 17% of black women, 12% of Hispanic women, and 9% of black men found their jobs through school help. White men rarely use school help (4.6%), and relying mostly on relatives (25.6%). In addition, in analyzing students' wages immediately after graduation, we found that although school help had no wage payoff for college or general-track students, school help has a large and significant wage benefit for vocational-track students - as large as from help from relatives. Moreover, 10 years later, the wage benefits of relatives' help declined slightly, whereas school-placement help (in 1982) had increased; it had large and significant benefits on 1992 earnings for all students and even larger effects for vocational-education students (Rosenbaum, Roy & Kariya, 1995). Apparently, schools got youths onto good career trajectories that had increasing wage benefits over time. Unfortunately, the Holzer and the HSB surveys each asked only one question about high school job help, and other surveys have asked

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nothing. Nevertheless, these findings indicate that school job help is a promising source of jobs for minority and female students. If we want to understand how school help works, however, more qualitative studies are needed. Our findings suggest that employers who are reluctant to trust test scores, grades, or teachers' recommendations are sometimes willing to trust certain teachers if they have an ongoing relationship. A linkage relationship can provide a way for employers to get trusted information about students, which can help students get good jobs. "You get to know the teachers and get to know [that] they pretty much tell the truth and they tell it pretty straight/' one employer told us. Another reported that "every employer is a little different in what they look for, and in their workforce. Dealing with [the same person over time is] easier, because they know what you're looking for." Indeed, some employers who did not know any teachers reported that they would use teachers' recommendations if they had trusted relationships. As one employer explained, "If I got... a cold call from a high-school teacher that I didn't know, I would worry about that [being untrustworthy]. But if it was somebody that I knew, that would carry a lot more weight." Whereas sociologists (such as Granovetter, 1995) have studied ways networks give workers information about jobs, our research indicates ways networks give employers information about potential workers. Similarly, economists have recognized the value of trusted information, but they have not examined the ways networks make information trusted. Our study indicates the existence of school - employer networks that have not been previously studied. Why do employers choose to use such networks? One factor that makes networks valuable is that they convey information that is hard to convey in other ways. According to national surveys, the main attributes employers want are attitudes and work habits (Educational Quality of the Workplace, 1995). National surveys do not specify what this means, but our employers identified the following attributes: attendance, punctuality, cooperativeness, persistence, and attention to quality. Of course, these attributes are hard to signal with tests or grades, so that might explain why informal linkages are so effective. Although we wondered whether networks might increase discrimination, we found some indications of the opposite. In some cases, linkages gave trusted signals of value to minorities, overcoming employers' biases. Further research is needed to examine how these networks operate and whether they increase or decrease hiring biases.

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Seeing Signals as More Important than Training

In concluding this section, it may seem that I exaggerate the importance of signals. Getting good information is nice, but surely it is no substitute for good training. That is what the British thought when they set up the expensive Youth Training Scheme (YTS) to give apprenticeship training to youth. They found that the program worked, but not because it provided training. Indeed, program success predicted labor-market failure! Youth who successfully completed the program were more likely to be labormarket failures than were program dropouts. Looking more closely, it was found that employers used the program to identify promising workers and then immediately shift them to real jobs, rather than wait for them to complete their apprenticeships (Cappelli, 1993). Apparently, information about youths' performance is more important than training. My model also explains other puzzling findings. Evaluations showed that the graduates of some job-training programs actually had lower earnings than control groups that got no training (Bloom, Orr, Cave, Bell, & Doolittle, 1992; Cave & Doolittle, 1991). One possible interpretation is that although the job training programs offered good training, they also conferred negative signals that hurt employers' willingness to hire. Another puzzling finding is that although the general equivalency diploma (GED) test requires better academic skills than do most high-school diplomas, GED holders have lower earnings than do high-school diploma holders. One interpretation is that employers are less willing to hire GED graduates because they have been stigmatized as quitters. Work-Bound Students' Responses if School Has Future Relevance Second, the model posits that youths need trusted information about how to prepare for jobs. Most people assume that youths know how to get jobs, but this is not always true. In our interviews, employers reported that youths go to great lengths to get job interviews, then undercut their own efforts at the interviews: they arrive late for the interview, wear T-shirts reading "Fuck you" or "Megadeath," wear earphones, are inattentive, bring babies, or bring friends to help them fill out applications. Students also reported problems. One student, eager for a downtown office job, spent $140 on new clothes for the interview: she bought a designer sweat suit. Obviously, common-sense information is not common throughout society. Poor information prevents youths

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from getting jobs, and they do not even realize why. Similar failures occur in terms of youths' preparation. Teachers often tell students about school's future relevance, but students see these messages as self-serving and untrustworthy. Without an effective system, students will vary in whether or how much they believe school efforts have a future payoff, and this variation may explain which students exert effort in school and which ones cause trouble. Economic theory is a good model of rational common-sense assumptions. It says that students are told the incentives for school effort and it implies that the school system effectively selects the most able and most motivated youth. This model does not consider, however, whether students believe the messages they get. Sociological research raises some serious doubts about students' faith in school. Stinchcombe (1964) hypothesized that many students believe school is not relevant to their future careers and that students' school efforts are determined not only by their internal motivation but also by their perceptions of schools' future relevance. Although he provided some intriguing analyses of these issues, his methods were too simple for a convincing test. To test these ideas, I examine two aspects of individuals' perceptions of schools' relevance: whether students believe that high school education has relevance for their future success (hereafter, future relevance) and whether students believe that there is no penalty if they have poor school performance (hereafter no penalty attitude). The first variable refers to students' belief that high school can help students' future careers; the second refers to beliefs that bad school performance cannot hurt students' future careers. Using Stinchcombe's terminology, I shall call these articulation variables. Somewhat similar attitudes have been shown to influence students' achievements (Mickelson, 1990), but because achievement is influenced by many factors besides motivation, I have chosen to focus on the determinants of effort (see also Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992). My group administered surveys to 2,091 high-school seniors enrolled in 12 city and suburban high schools in a large Midwestern metropolitan area. The sample was diverse in ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds (see Roy & Rosenbaum, 1996). We found that students had high occupational aspirations, but, as Stinchcombe indicated, they had different views of school's future relevance to their plans. When we asked students to use five-point scales with values ranging from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree," we found that many youths doubted school's future relevance. For instance, up to half of the students did not agree with such statements as "My courses give me useful preparation I'll need

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in life" (39.3%), "School teaches me valuable skills" (29.7%), and "Getting a job depends on how well you do at school" (52.7%). For the items in our no penalty scale, we saw similar patterns. Almost 46% of students agreed with such items as "Even if I don't work hard in high school, I can still make my future plans come true" (45.9%), "Students with bad grades in high school often get good jobs after high school" (37.9%), and "People can do okay even if they drop out of high school" (43.7%). These various items indicate that many students see high school diplomas, grades, and efforts as not necessary for getting good jobs. We summed these and other related items into a composite scale for each dimension. We found that the two scales were correlated, but the correlation was far from perfect (r = .30). Thus, we examined the determinants of students' school efforts. We found, in agreement with the results of previous research, that parent, peer, and school variables affect students' school efforts (Kandel & Lesser, 1972). Female students showed greater school efforts, but ethnicity had no influence. Students' internal motivation had a large significant influence. Even after we controlled for parents, peers, school, and personality, however, the two measures of students' perceptions of schools' relevance still had strong and significant independent influences (standardized coefficients of .144 for future relevance and -.140 for no penalty).

Stinchcombe was concerned about the causes of youth rebellion, which he measured in terms of acts of minor deviance. We created two scales of rebellion: minor deviance (number of times tardy, skipped classes, unexcused absences), and serious deviance (in trouble for breaking school rules, school suspensions, arrests). Regressions on minor deviance showed effects of parents, peers, teachers, and ethnicity, but even after such controls, the no penalty variable has a significant influence. Regressions on serious deviance also showed effects of parents, peers, teachers, and ethnicity, but even after such controls, both future relevance and no penalty variables had significant influences. These findings have implications for theory and practice. Theoretically, this study's findings support Stinchcombe's 1964 hypothesis: Students vary in whether they see school as relevant to their future lives, and this variable is strongly associated with their school efforts (and their rebellion). In addition, we identified a second measure, the no penalty attitude, and we showed that both sets of attitudes had significant, independent effects on school effort. These results imply that some youths have misread the American emphasis on opportunity. Although Americans want society to provide second chances to youth, Stevenson and Stigler (1992)

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warned that this concept has a risk of being misinterpreted to indicate that school failures never matter. We found that many youths saw very little penalty to avoiding schoolwork and that they might let these attitudes justify poor effort. This study's findings suggest a way for policy to motivate students: American students, like Japanese students, respond if they see school as relevant to their future careers. If policy helps students see school's future relevance, students are more likely to work hard in school. Of course, these initial results are cross-sectional, and they are not very detailed. Research needs to probe more deeply into student's perceptions of these issues, how these perceptions arise, how different transition procedures affect perceptions, and how these perceptions affect their efforts over time. Such research could have important implications for policy, for it would suggest ways to improve students' incentives for school effort. Teachers' Responses to the Lack of an Effective System Third, my model turns to teachers. I propose that the lack of an effective school-to-work system in the United States deprives teachers of responsibility for helping students enter the workforce. One would expect, however, that some teachers will see problems arising from this lack of system and may take informal initiatives to help students get jobs and employers get good workers. It is noteworthy that although sociological research usually stresses that structures impose constraints, structures can also be helpful. Our study examines how teachers' actions provide a structure that helps students cope with a chaotic situation. Heinz (1996c) noted that "transitions from school to work are constructed by individuals [on the basis of the] range of education and employment options available." Given the great amorphousness of the U.S. system, one might wonder whether teachers ever play a role in the social construction of the labor market, in providing information and perhaps even in providing order in the labor market. Such teacher initiatives may be unnecessary in Germany and Japan, where effective systems exist and are well understood, but such initiatives may be particularly important in the United States because it lacks such a system. Because of the meager state of current knowledge, we studied teachers' conceptions of their responsibilities toward students and employers, their assessments of types of help students need, the ways teachers respond to students' and employers' needs by facilitating the school-towork transition, and the constraints that prevent teachers from doing more (see Rosenbaum & Jones, 1995). We conducted detailed 1-hour

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interviews with 26 vocational teachers in a variety of vocational fields at 4 high schools. One of the city high schools has a vocationally focused curriculum; the other three are comprehensive schools offering vocational programs of varying depth. Although our small sample allows only tentative conclusions, our qualitative data provide rich descriptions of previously neglected phenomena. The lack of an effective work-entry system in the United States creates serious problems, missed opportunities, and serious conflicts for vocational teachers. I summarize three main findings: 1. Virtually all vocational teachers said they were not responsible for aiding work entry. It was neither their responsibility nor the school's in general. Even teachers who placed students in cooperative jobs said that helping students get jobs after high school is not their responsibility. Moreover, every teacher reported that there were no incentives to encourage them to assist students in getting jobs after high school. None of the high schools rewarded such activities, and none provided any time for such help. 2. Virtually all vocational teachers, however, felt informal pressures to help students enter the labor market - many students asked for help in finding jobs and many more needed help. As we expected, informal pressures by employers and students affect teachers. Teachers noted that students lacked future orientation, lacked practical knowledge about how to search for jobs, and held unrealistic expectations about job requirements, market conditions, work environments, and pay scales. Thus, even as teachers denied responsibility for aiding entry, into the workforce, they knew that students have great needs that are going unmet. Even though they are not required to attend to students' needs, vocational teachers cannot ignore them: 76% of our respondents reported that seniors regularly approached them for help in finding a job, and another 10% observed that students regularly went to teachers in cooperatives for help. Even in higher-income suburbs, where it is commonly assumed that students have relatives, friends, or neighbors who can help them get jobs, teachers reported that many students asked them for help in getting full-time jobs. Many teachers reported that as a result, they felt a personal responsibility to do more than what their job required them to do. 3. Many teachers also got requests from employers to nominate students who could fill job openings. Some teachers reported that employers asked them to recommend good students to apply for

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jobs, and some of the employers we interviewed confirmed that they made such requests. Although helping employers fill part-time jobs is a formal responsibility of teachers in cooperatives, some employers requested teachers' help in filling full-time jobs, which is not teachers' responsibility, and many of the requests were to teachers who were not working at cooperatives. Even though this is not a formal responsibility, teachers reported that they would like to help employers because they feel doing so can also help students, their programs, and the school. Teachers are confronted with a conflict: even though job placement is not their responsibility, they see that many students need help to enter the labor force. These teachers face a choice between simply doing their jobs and extending their duties to include helping students gain entry into the work world. Teachers must figure out for themselves how to respond, since neither their jobs nor their personal training specifies these matters. No wonder policy makers do not know what teachers are doing. Our study found that virtually all our vocational teachers expressed interest in helping young people make contact with the work world and that they engaged in various activities to help their students make the transition. Teachers respond in four different ways. Offering General Information and Providing Exposure

Most teachers offer general information about work, and most also provide practical work exposure by way of field trips, guest speakers, cooperative jobs, and simulations. Many teachers give vague and abstract information through common platitudes: telling students to dress right, to show intiative, to acquire good academic skills. Providing Specific Information

In addition, some teachers give very specific information: telling students how to get jobs and which skills to acquire. These teachers tell students what kinds of clothes are appropriate for different work settings. They also tell students how to show initiative, and in classes, they continually show students what they can do to show initiative. They do not just say to acquire academic skills, they say which skills are needed and they may illustrate this need with specific examples from particular

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work tasks. Students who have these teachers will not appear in a downtown business office in a sweat suit or in a Megadeath T-shirt. Matching Students with Jobs

Some teachers match students with relevant desirable jobs after graduation. Teachers figure out employers' needs and students' attributes and then try to match them. Such matching sometimes resembles the Japanese matches based on achievement and work habits. Sometimes the match is more ideosyncratic; one teacher matched a motorcycle-riding youth with an employer who rides a Harley. We found that half of our 26 vocational teachers gave their graduating seniors access to desirable full-time jobs in the area of the students' preparation. These teachers had contacts with specific employers in relevant fields and tried to match students' interests and abilities with employers' needs. They stressed that they were putting students in jobs that used their skills. In turn, this led teachers to structure their instruction to prepare students for employers' needs. Because research indicates that vocational education improves students' earnings only if they get skill-relevant jobs (Grasso & Shea, 1979), teachers' efforts to match students with jobs are an important contribution to making students' preparation have a career payoff. Providing "Warranties" to Employers

Finally, some teachers provide "warranties" to employer; they have long-term relationships with employers so their recommendations carry an implicit promise of dependable quality. We call this "warranty" help because it provides employers with quality assurances about students' skills. The long-term character of these teacher-employer relationships improves the flow of information in both directions. In our sample, eight teachers provide such warranties. These teachers knew specific employers' needs, posed standards that corresponded to employers' needs, and selected students of suitable quality to meet these needs. These teachers recommended the best students for the best jobs. If no students had suitable skills in a given year, they did not recommend any student. If the teachers had reservations, they would "tell employers exactly what they're getting." Teachers said that they would not jeopardize their long-term relationships with employers to help an inappropriate student. These linkages became trustworthy relationships, as some of the employers we interviewed also noted.

256 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Value of Teachers' Responses

Both matching and warranty create "career linkages": They make students' classroom performances the first step on a career leading to specific adult jobs. Linked teachers can help students who meet classroom demands get good adult jobs. In turn, students can see their classes as a quasiapprenticeship offering the opportunity to learn and show competence in the skills employers seek. Although we have seen that schools help few students get jobs, teacher linkages are qualitatively important. As noted earlier, linkages are valued by employers. Employers with linkages reported that trusted teachers provided a valuable source of workers. One employer noted that when he hired from a particular teacher, "I [knew] I [had] the top of the class." Another reported that he got "the better ones" from a teacher. Still another reported that when he got a student highly recommended by a trusted teacher, he was confident the student could handle the job. Thus, teacher interviews provided evidence of the same phenomenon that we discovered in interviewing employers. In turn, linkage teachers were confident they could place highly recommended students into jobs. Such contacts are also a way to motivate students to work in class. Students knew that if they did well in classes, the teacher would recommend them to good local employers, which would increase their chcinces of getting a good job. Although teachers knew that their schools did not value their contacts, the teachers valued them personally. When asked what would happen if they moved to another local school, most teachers indicated that they would take their contacts with them; their successors would have to develop their own contacts. Implications for Further Research Directions I have shown a number of ways that information is problematic in the school-to-work transition, and that common-sense assumptions are often wrong. My research group found that even though employers want academic skills, they do not use academic grades in hiring and that although they often use interviews for hiring, many do not trust their judgments in interviews. We found that employers sometimes value training programs for the information they provide, not for their training. We found that common-sense information about how to get jobs is not common to everyone in our society. We found a much simpler explanation for why students may not work in high school than the common assumptions about motivation, and we found that vocational teachers can help stu-

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dents get jobs by doing much more than simply providing training. We found that common-sense assumptions are wrong because they overlook the problematics of information, and we suggested some of the factors that make information problematic. The evidence on these issues is too meager to be used for policy actions at present, but it suggests important hypotheses for further research, which, if confirmed, would lead policy in new directions. 1. Students need signals of their value. Japan and Germany have institutional ways of giving such signals to youths, but U.S. students do not get such signals, which hurts their school efforts it makes labor-market entry difficult. In Japan, school information gives youths clear value in the labor market. In Germany, apprenticeships give such signals. In biographical studies of German youths, it is striking how apprenticeship certification gives a sense of purpose and confidence that work-bound youth cannot easily get in the United States or in the Great Britain (Evans & Heinz, 1994). In a good labor market, youth are nearly guaranteed a job, but even in a bad labor market, German students still know they have qualifications. If they are unemployed, they feel unlucky but not incompetent. 2. High schools can provide signals of youths' value and skills. Employers need workers with academic skills, and schools can provide signals of these skills. Schools could probably provide better signals than they now do. Employers need specific academic skills, yet grades and many tests give only ordinal rankings, and grades do not even define the dimension. Information could be more specific. Some schools have experimented with skill inventories, listing specific academic and vocational skills, but we do not know how employers have responded. Research is needed on employers' responses to schools' skill inventories. 3. Schools must devise ways to provide signals of work habits, because employers value work habits more than academic skills. "Employability ratings" are one way to do this. In Japan, employers interpret good grades to indicate work habits; hard work, persistence, and attention to quality are required to do well in Japanese high schools. Thus, it is possible for grades to signal these qualities. High schools could go further by creating special "employability" ratings that would be tailored to employers' needs. Critics (such as Bowles & Gintis, 1976) argue that high schools should not focus on employers' needs, but many of these needs are attributes that youth need in all realms -

258 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

attendance, punctuality, cooperation, persistence, attention to quality, problem solving, initiative, and responsibility. Research needs to examine how high schools can make such ratings trustworthy and to what extent employers would use them. 4. Teacher-employer linkages may be a good way to convey information about work habits. Work habits are hard to convey in objective ways. By their nature, judgments of work habits are subjective, and subjective ratings will not be used unless teachers are trusted. Linkages are particularly useful for creating trust in subjective ratings. Research needs to examine what kinds of subjective ratings employers trust without linkages, and what kinds of linkages are most effective in fostering trust in ratings. 5. Linkages are rare, but the basic preconditions are present for making linkages more common. Our findings indicate that virtually all vocational teachers want to help students get jobs and most employers want more information, yet we found few linkages. Why are linkages so rare? Near the end of a school year, one employer wrote to over 25 local high schools to ask guidance counselors to recommend students for well-paid jobs with benefits. Not one person responded. Other employers had similar stories. In turn, some teachers report they had contacted many employers trying to get jobs for their students, but no employers responded. There appear to be needs on both sides of this "potential market/' yet markets rarely happen. 6. Some current practices are not far from a system of informal linkages. We have discovered that some teacher-employer linkages exist. They provide effective routes for conveying information about youth to employers, for conveying information about employers to youth, and for providing clear incentives for youth to exert effort in school. It is not clear what is needed to make such linkages more common. Perhaps only the idea is missing. Over the course of our interviews, some teachers and employers suddenly got the idea that they could form linkages to address their needs. One employers asked us, "Do you think high schools would select good workers for us? They couldn't be worse than employment agencies. What do you think high schools would charge for this service?" Teachers may need encouragement and time in order to make links happen. Many teachers said they got calls from employers, but most teachers said they just posted the information on a bulletin board - they did not have time to do more and it was not their responsibility. A few did use the call to begin a contact. Changing that

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mindset and providing some time might have changed those teachers' behaviors. Of course, more research must be conducted to discover what is required to encourage new behaviors. Studies should examine what it takes to encourage the formation of linkages and to make them effective. Research also needs to examine how informal linkages affect classroom effectiveness and whether they improve student motivation. Finally, research is needed to examine whether such linkages benefit low-income and minority youths and whether they provide signals of positive value that overcome traditional employer biases. The studies we have reviewed indicate that there is still much that to be understood about the school-to-work transition and its potential for improvement. Currently, much policy is designed on the basis of common-sense assumptions. Studies that are conducted in the context of my trusted-signal model indicate that common sense is often wrong, which suggests that policy may be misdirected. Research needs to examine these issues in greater detail if we are to make social policies more effective. Notes 1. I thank Amy Binder, Stephanie Jones, Takehiko Kariya, Shazia Miller, Karen Nelson, Kevin Roy, and Melinda Scott Krei for their assistance with various phases of this chapter. I also benefitted from comments from Lesley Andres, Mark Granovetter, Frank Furstenberg, Walter R. Heinz, Christopher Jencks, and Katherine Newman. Support for this work was provided by the Spencer Foundation, Chicago, Illinois, the William T. Grant Foundation, New York, New York, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Of course, the opinions expressed here are solely mine.

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values: What's Changing in Canada?1 HARVEY KRAHN GRAHAM S. LOWE

The Graduates: Out of School, Out of Work (Maclean's, June 22,1992, p. 40) Generation Faces Grim Job Outlook: Underemployment, Cutbacks Stunt Twentysomethings' Careers (Globe and Mail, September 6,1993, p. Bl) Want a Job after Graduation? Good Luck (Globe and Mail, March 17,1995, P-A9) Grads' Day of Glory: For an Instant, Smiles Outshine Gloom Surrounding Job Outlook (Edmonton Journal, June 10,1995, p. Bl) Job Vacuum Sucks Graduates' Hopes (Globe and Mail, October 3,1995, p. 8) Headlines like these capture recent public concerns in Canada about the labor-market problems of youth. Policy makers frequently echo these sentiments, as did the federal minister of human resources when he stated that "[w]e're going to have a lost generation in front of us if we don't work fast" (Edmonton Journal, November 6,1993, p. A3). Images of a lost generation of youths were also prominent during the recession of 1981-1982, when youth unemployment reached record post-World War II heights of over 20%. In response, a number of new youth-oriented employment programs and training schemes were introduced. The problem seemed to solve itself, however, when the economy began to recover in the mid-1980s and the last of the large cohort of "baby boomers" moved out of the education system into the workforce. The recession of 1991-1992 and the period of "jobless recovery" that followed, however, have resurrected fears about a "generation on hold" (Cote & Allahar, 1994). Popular culture has depicted Generation X - a creation of Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland (1993) - as marginalized, alienated, and cynical, yet also capable of finding innovative personal solutions to economic uncertainty. Disquiet about young people's movement into adult roles pre-dates the economic turmoil that has been going on since the 1980s. During the Depression of the 1930s when youth unemployment rates were alarmingly 260

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values high, concerns about declining morale, skill loss, prolonged dependency on parents, and rising crime rates were widespread. By contrast, low unemployment in the booming wartime economy sparked fears that young people were opting for paid employment at the expense of formal education (Coulter, 1993, p. 71). The pendulum had swung back by the 1950s, as surveys by the Canadian Youth Commission revealed concerns among youths about access to education and good jobs (Coulter, 1993, pp. 77-83). During the 1960s, some observers were asking whether automation was bypassing youths who did not have the training required for entry into new high-skilled jobs (Meltz, 1990, p. 290). Generally, though, economic expansion in the 1960s and 1970s deflected attention away from the labor-market entry problems of youths. Instead, concerns about access to higher education for disadvantaged groups began to be expressed (Anisef, 1982; Breton, 1972; Porter, Porter, & Blishen, 1979). The assumption appeared to be that, if such groups did enjoy equal access, they would be able to compete for good jobs along with other members of their age cohort. If there were worries about youths, they tended to focus on the possibility that the current generation of school leavers might not be motivated to work as hard as had the cohorts ahead of them (Burstein, Tienharra, Hewson, & Warrander, 1975). Since the Depression, then, a prominent theme in public discourse about youths has highlighted how structural changes affect their individual labor-market prospects. Even so, is there something distinctly different about current concerns over the disaffected Generation X? Are the labor market and institutional changes occurring today affecting youths in more fundamental ways? Have we moved into a postmodern era in which the general orientations and world views of youths have been indelibly altered? This chapter critically examines this proposition, using current public debates about youths' labor-market problems as a springboard into theoretical discussions about the possible destructuring of school-to-work transitions in an era of intense economic uncertainty. We argue that although significant structural changes in the Canadian youth labor market are clearly observable, there is less evidence that the values and beliefs of Canadian youths have changed as dramatically. Using longitudinal data from a study of school-to-work transitions in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, we show that, in comparison with the cohort immediately ahead of them, today's youth are only slightly less optimistic and less willing to rely on traditional assumptions about appropriate entry into adult roles.

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To interpret these findings, we juxtapose the theoretical arguments of postmodernist theorists with a more structural perspective on the life course. Postmodernists propose that fundamental cultural, social, and economic transformations are ushering in a new era in which the influence of old institutions is declining. Cultural norms are crumbling and traditional social roles are becoming less distinct as individuals are confronted with an increasing array of choices and forced to take more responsibility for shaping their own future. The counterargument, from the structural tradition in sociology, holds that social and economic structures and institutional arrangements continue to influence values, beliefs, and behaviors in systematic ways. Hence, differences in values, beliefs, and behaviors as a result of gender, class, and local labor-market conditions remain larger than cohort differences that may have emerged because of economic and social change. Against the backdrop of this theoretical debate, which mirrors the broader public discourse on the labormarket problems of contemporary youths, we attempt to assess the continuing effects of gender and class, in contrast to the impact of temporal change, on the values and beliefs of Canadian youths. Structural Change and Individualization Several recent postmodernist analyses of youths' transitions into adult roles have drawn on the theoretical arguments of Beck (1986; translated in 1992). Echoing themes developed by such writers as Lash and Urry (1985) and Giddens (1991), Beck's Risk Society (1992) argued that scientific and industrial developments in the late 20th century have weakened institutional constraints on individuals and, at the same time, generated increased risk that greatly complicate individual and collective life. In the "risk society," the central problem is no longer the distribution of wealth and power but rather how risks and hazards created by modernization can be minimized. Although they do not disappear completely, class structures and inequalities lose some of their significance as they are redefined and reshaped.2 Beck extended his analysis to changes in labor markets and work arrangements, emphasizing the shift toward more flexible work hours and work organizations and the decentralization of work locations due to the introduction of new technologies (1992, p. 129). This movement toward greater employment flexibility is occurring, he noted, against a backdrop of chronically high unemployment, growing part-time employment, and a serious problem of underemployment. Thus, a less

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structured labor market requires more choices on the part of workers and introduces additional risks for individual members of society. The same general "loosening" of structural forces and institutional patterns can be found, according to Beck, in the realm of gender roles and relations. Citing growing labor-force participation by women, higher rates of divorce, and greater diversity in family forms, Beck suggested that "[t]he 'freeing' relative to status-like social classes is joined by a 'freeing' relative to gender status ..." (1992, p. 89). Again, this greater individualization brings with it new options and choices, but it also adds new risks, such as the greater risk of poverty for divorced women. For Beck, the most important outcome of these societal changes was that the individual becomes the agent of social reproduction. Traditional structures and institutions of industrial society - class, family, and gender - no longer provide clear guideposts for "mapping" one's life (1992, p. 88). Cultural norms and social institutions do not lose their influence entirely. Instead, they provide "construction kits of biographical combination possibilities" from within which individuals construct their own identities and biographies (1992, p. 135). Although Beck did not develop explicit hypotheses regarding school-towork transitions for youths, his ideas (and those of other postmodernist theorists) have had a strong influence on European research on youths (Chisholm, chapter 13 in this volume; Chisholm & du Bois-Reymond, 1993; Irwin, 1995; Jones & Wallace, 1992; Roberts, Clark, & Wallace, 1994). A variety of studies have observed how changing social structures and institutions have led to new patterns of individualized transition behaviour among youths. At the same time, the individualization thesis has been criticized by researchers who discern considerably more continuity in the influence of social structure (Jones & Wallace, 1992; Mayer & Schoepflin, 1989; Roberts & Parsell, 1992; Roberts et al., 1994). Such critics provide evidence that class, gender, family background, and local labormarket conditions all continue to strongly influence transition patterns and outcomes. Although these studies offer only indirect evidence countering the individualization thesis (i.e., they do not include direct cohort comparisons), they are nevertheless useful because, when this thesis is pushed to its logical limit, it proposes that class, gender, and other structural factors are no longer key explanatory variables. Jones & Wallace (1992) thus argued that even though class effects may not be as strong in Great Britain today as they were in the past, "pathways out of school are still structured by factors such as social class, family background, academic achievement ... and opportunities

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in the local labour market" (1992, p. 45). In fact, they observe that "young people are so constrained by the structures of education, employment and training, that they have less choice than in previous decades when there were more jobs" (1992, p. 46). The choice used to be between education and employment and among different kinds of employment, but now training has been added, but with tighter limits on the kinds of jobs available (see also Roberts & Parsell, 1992). Similarly, Furlong (1992) suggested that extended periods of unemployment and long delays in finding full-time employment for British youths are clearly a product of labor-market changes rather than greater scope for individual choice. "The new transition," he argued, "is characterized by mass unemployment, underemployment and increased participation in education and training schemes by young people trying to escape the dole" (1992, p. 52). In a more recent comparison of youth transitions in England and Germany, Roberts et al. (1994) concluded that although British researchers may have overlooked individual choices, German observers may have overstated the declining importance of structural factors. Roberts et al. (1994, p. 51) concluded that a pattern of "structured individualisation" describes youths' transitions in both countries, explaining that "[e]ven when individuals had moved consistently towards pre-formulated goals, these aims themselves, and the individuals' ability to realize them, were products of their structural location." Empirical Questions It is important to reemphasize that the individualization perspective on youths' transitions does not deny the importance of social structure. In fact, according to this postmodernist argument, social, economic, political, and technological change have led to increased risk and uncertainty for individuals and to a decline in the influence of normative guidelines. These structural changes have required greater individualization on the part of social actors. Consequently, the influence of structural forces (e.g., class, gender) on individual values and behaviors has declined. In its emphasis on increasingly problematic school-to-work transitions, the structural perspective shares the premise that structural changes have led to increased risks and uncertainties for contemporary youths. The structural position questions whether young people today really make more individualized choices, however, and points to a continuing strong correlation between structural factors and individual values and behav-

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values iors as evidence that a "loosening" of structural and institutional forces and a weakening of traditional normative guidelines has not occurred. Both the postmodernist and the structuralist perspectives on youths' transitions have been developed mainly with reference to Great Britain and Western Europe. As other writers have observed (e.g., Chisholm, chapter 13 in this volume), though, similar values and the same patterns of transition behavior may not be observed in countries with different institutional structures. Consequently, it would be useful to examine these questions with respect to North American youth (in this chapter, represented by young people in one western Canadian city), particularly because popularized accounts of Generation X attribute similar individualized values and behaviors to North American youths today. Specifically, have the values, beliefs, and behaviors of North American youths changed as much as postmodernists and popularized accounts claim, or as little as a more structural perspective on school-to-work transitions would predict? Are young people today relying less on traditional norms and expectations when moving into adult roles within the community and the workforce? Alternatively, to what extent do class origins and traditional gender roles continue to influence the career and family choices of young women and men? Typically, most empirical studies of school-to-work transitions have relied on cross-sectional data. It is clear, however, that the types of questions raised above are about cohort change and, hence, require longitudinal data. Although aggregate data demonstrating labor market and institutional change over time are available, it is more difficult to find longitudinal evidence of cohort change in beliefs and values and in patterns of school-to-work and youth-to-adulthood transition. With respect to such behavior patterns, a longer-term perspective does provide us with some useful benchmarks. When we compare the situation today with the decades of economic growth and expansion immediately after World War II, we do observe less predictability and stability today in transitions into employment and adult roles. School-to-work transitions have become more prolonged, complex, and difficult and youth-to-adulthood transitions have also been extended in Canada (Krahn, 1996; Krahn & Lowe, 1991), in Great Britain (Ashton, Maguire, & Spilsbury, 1990; Furlong, 1992; Jones & Wallace, 1992; Roberts et al, 1994), and in Germany (Evans & Heinz, 1994). Recognition that transition patterns appear to be more disorderly today needs to be balanced, however, with the observation that uncertainty and risk for youths may also have been greater in the late 1800s and early 1900s, both in Great Britain (Jones & Wallace, 1992, p. 94) and North America (Coleman, 1984; Gee, 1990;

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Modell 1976; Furstenberg, & Hershberg, Rindfuss, 1991, Stevens, 1990). Compared to the mid-20th century, this earlier era was characterized by a great deal more uncertainty and complexity in transition processes. Thus current debates about changes in youths' transition processes make implicit comparisons with the midcentury decades when economic growth and labor-market stability were typically the norm. Our tasks in this chapter, then, are twofold. First, we will review aggregate Canadian data on labor-market trends and data from various sources on changing school-to-work and youth-to-adulthood transitions to highlight the greater labor market risks and uncertainty for youths today compared with several decades ago. Second, having established the context of change, we will look for evidence of greater feelings of uncertainty, increased perceptions of risk, less reliance on traditional assumptions about appropriate adult roles, and reduced impact of class and gender on the transition process. Although our data do not permit cohort comparisons over several decades, we will attempt to address these questions over a shorter but critical period, namely, the period immediately before and after the Canadian recession of 1991-1992. A Restructured Youth Labor Market

After two recessions since 1980, it is clear that significant labor-market restructuring has occurred in Canada (Osberg, Wein, & Grude, 1995). The country has acquired a long-term problem of structural unemployment (Gera, 1993), and a new economic term, "jobless recovery/' has been invented to describe periods of economic growth, without job creation, between recessions. At the same time, average real incomes have stopped growing, and for many workers at the lower end of the income continuum, they have declined (Love & Poulin, 1991). Part-time employment rates have also risen. By the late 1970s, about 12% of employed Canadians were in part-time positions. The recession of 1981-1982 pushed part-time rates up to around 15% the most recent recession brought an increase to 17% (Krahn, 1995). The number of employed Canadians holding more than one part-time job has also increased (Cohen, 1994; Krahn, 1995; Pold, 1995); by 1993, part-time jobs constituted 23% of all jobs (Pold, 1994). The proportion of Canadians working long hours (> 50 hours per week) has also risen (Cohen, 1992; Sunter & Morissette, 1994). Because hours worked and total income are correlated, the polarization of hours worked helps account for a slow increase in income inequality in Canada in recent years. Limited-term contract positions have also

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Unemployment Rate 25

20

15

10

-*-Age 15-19 1976

1979

1982

20-24 1985

1988

1991

1994

Source: Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, Annual Averages

Figure 11-1. Canadian unemployment rates by age, 1976-1994.

become more common in the 1990s (Schellenberg & Clark, 1996), resulting in greater polarization between short-term (< 1 year) and long-term jobs (Heisz, 1996). By 1994,9% of all paid employees 15 to 64 years of age were in temporary jobs with a specified end date (Krahn, 1995). Canadian youth have been most negatively affected by these trends. Some demographers predicted that youth unemployment would decline as the large youth cohort of the early 1980s grew older (Foot & Li, 1986), but youth unemployment rates have remained consistently higher than adult rates. The 1994 annual average unemployment rate for all ages was 10.4%, compared with 18.9% for 15 to 19-year-olds and 15% for 20- to 24year-olds (Figure 11-1). Over the course of 1995, adult unemployment rates dropped slightly, whereas youth unemployment rose from 14.8% in January to 16.1% in December (Statistics Canada, 1996). In addition, increases in part-time employment during the past decade have been experienced almost totally by young workers. Between 1975 and 1994, the part-time employment rate for young women (15 to 24 years of age) more than doubled, from 22% to 48% percent (Figure 11-2). The equivalent trend for young

268 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

-°- Female 15-24 A Male 15-24 "•• Female 25 + • Male 25 + * Total

Source: Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, Annual Averages

Figure 11-2. Part-time work in Canada by age and sex, 1975-1994. men was from 17% to 38%. By 1994, 54% of young employed women were in nonstandard jobs (part-time and/or temporary positions), along with 45% of young employed men (Krahn, 1995). Changes in income distribution also have disproportionately affected young workers. In his analysis of the restructuring of the North American economy and labor market since the 1970s, Myles (1992) highlighted two key changes: the end of real growth in incomes, and a significant shift in the age - earnings profile, (Morissette, Myles, & Picot, 1994) with large relative declines in average wages among young employed Canadians (< 25 years of age). The combined impact of these trends has been greater income inequality and reduced economic mobility opportunities for youths. Expansion of the service industries since the 1960s opened up a new student labor market. The retail trade, food and beverage, tourism, and other consumer service industries came to rely heavily on the availability of a large cohort of student workers willing to work part-time for low hourly wages (Cohen, 1989). By 1980, 30% of full-time students (15 to 24

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values

269

years of age) were employed. Ten years later, the figures were 40% for all 15- to 24 year-olds and 48% for 17- to 19-year-old high school students (Sunter, 1992). Many of these student workers, particularly teenagers, still live at home with their parents, so their part-time jobs typically provide discretionary income. For young adults (20 to 24 years of age) no longer attending school who are seeking financial independence, however, parttime employment is frequently a second-best alternative to a full-time job. More recently, we have observed the growth of a temporary/contract labor market within the service industries. In the lower-tier consumer services, a sizable minority of the part-time jobs are also temporary positions (e.g., in the tourism industry). In the public sector upper-tier services, the response by governments to demands to reduce the deficit has been to lay off or offer early retirement to permanent employees and replace them with contractually limited positions (Osberg et al., 1995). Thus, by 1994, about one in eight public sector jobs (e.g., in the education, health, and welfare industries, as well as in public administration) were temporary jobs. Young workers, last hired, are much more likely to be in such precarious employment situations (Krahn, 1995). A university degree is little protection against temporary employment, because many private and public sector employers have begun to rely more heavily on contract workers for higher skill /status positions. Thus, in the 1960s, the typical school-to-work transition pattern for youths was from full-time schooling to full-time employment. Rising postsecondary enrollments and the emergence of the student labor market added another transition stage for many Canadian youth, essentially prolonging the transition from youth to adulthood. Today, with the emergence of the temporary/contract labor market, the transition to adulthood for Canadian youths is taking even longer and appears to have become more complex and difficult (Krahn & Lowe, 1990). Large numbers of well-educated youth trying to leave the student labor market are faced with the prospect of trading part-time student jobs for temporary full-time positions. Research Design A complete assessment of the postmodernist structuralist debate regarding youth transitions from school to work would consider changes in labor-market conditions (and other related structural changes) as well as changes in the attitudes and values of youths (because postmodernist and Generation X arguments clearly imply that contemporary youths are

270 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

aware of the greater risks and uncertainty faced by their generation and act accordingly). A third type of change - the extent to which young people's transition choices are influenced by structural factors - is also directly relevant, but we leave this issue for future research. We have addressed the first category in our overview of changes in the Canadian youth labor market, and the survey results reported below provide additional information. Much of the remainder of the chapter focuses on the second kind of change, namely, shifts in the attitudes and values of youth as a result of labor-market restructuring. Our data were obtained from a 7-year panel study of high school and university graduates in Edmonton, a large western Canadian city. Baseline data were collected in 1985 when almost 1,000 12th grade students in six local high schools completed questionnaires in class. At the same time, approximately 600 graduates of the five largest disciplines at the University of Alberta (arts, business, education, engineering, science) were surveyed by mail. Follow-up questionnaires for both samples were administered by mail in 1986,1987,1989, and 1992. By 1992, sample attrition (and the fact that not all of the original participants had provided their name and address for follow-up purposes) had reduced the samples to 357 members of the 1985 University of Alberta graduating class and 404 of the original 1985 12th grade graduates. 3 Over the 7 years covered by this panel study, members of the two samples slowly made transitions from school to employment and into adult roles. So that we could monitor these changes, as well as changes in the social and economic environment, each wave of data collection introduced some new questions. Many questions about attitudes and behaviors were repeated across successive waves, however, to allow the examination of individual-level change in these indicators. Hence, it is possible to undertake a short-term cohort study by comparing 1985 university graduates with a subset of the 1985 high school graduates who, approximately 5 years younger and trailing the original university sample, had made their way through university by 1990. Specifically, in the following analysis, we compare the responses to identical questions obtained 2 years after graduation from 1985 university graduates and from individuals who had graduated from university by approximately 1989-1990. Thus, the class of 1985, represented by all 357 remaining members of the university sample, provided us with data for this analysis in 1987. For the class of 1989-1990, represented by 127 members of the high-school sample who had obtained a university degree by 1992, we obtained data from the 1992 follow-up survey.4

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values

271

Admittedly, a more rigorous test of the postmodernist arguments would compare graduates in the 1990s with graduates several decades earlier, but the data needed for such an analysis do not exist. Although our cohort comparison covers a much shorter period, we nevertheless believe that the comparison of pre-1990 with post-1990 is critical. In 1987, unemployment rates were considerably lower than they had been during the recession at the beginning of the decade (Figure 11-1). Thus, the class of 1985 was encountering an expanding labor market, but the recession of 1990-1992 altered the Canadian youth labor market in very significant ways. By 1992, unemployment rates were again high, corporate and public sector downsizing had become the norm, and part-time and temporary employment had become much more common among young workers (Figure 11-2). Compared with the earlier cohort (in 1987), the class of 1989-1990 was experiencing a contracting and much less welcoming labor market in 1992.5 Results Cohort Differences in School-to-Work and Youth-to-Adult Transitions

Comparisons of education activity and objective employment outcomes for these two cohorts (in 1987 and 1992, respectively) reveal a few significant changes (Tables 11-1 and 11-2). Almost half of both cohorts had continued their education after obtaining a first degree, and members of both cohorts were planning equivalent amounts of additional education. Thus, comparing the class of 1985 with the class of 1989-1990, we do not find evidence of a further extension of the process of school-to-work transition. Aggregate data on postsecondary participation rates over a longer time span do clearly indicate that larger proportions of Canadian youth are staying in school longer (Krahn, 1996), however. Significant differences over time were also not observed in the proportion unemployed, in full-time positions, or in part-time jobs. In fact, the proportion of the class of 1989-1990 in full-time jobs was actually somewhat higher, although the difference over time was not significant. By contrast, the proportion of the most recent cohort of university graduates in managerial/professional positions was lower, and somewhat smaller proportions of this cohort were positive in their assessments about the link between their education and their job (Table 11-1), again, however the differences over time were not statistically significant.

272 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Table 11-1. Cohort Comparisons of Education Activity, Employment Outcomes, and Transitions to Adult Roles for Edmonton University Graduates in 1987 and 1992 University Class University Class of 1985 in 1987 of 1989-1990 in 1992 (n = 357) (n = 127) Educational activity Continued education in past year For job-related reasons Additional years of education expected (average years) Employment outcomes Currently unemployed* Currently employed full time* Currently employed part timefl Of those employed: In managerial/professional positions Feel underpaid, given education, training, and experience Agree that job is directly related to education and training Agree that education has been useful in helping find a job Transitions to adult roles Living with parents Married /common-law relationship Have children Might begin family in next 3 years

48% 47%

43% 44%

2.0

2.1

5% 73% 12%

3% 80% 9%

75%

66%

47%

47%

59%

53%

70%

60%

26%* 33% 8% 13%

38% 33% 2% 17%

^Percent of total sample (i.e., these are not standard employment and unemployment rates). ^Statistically significant difference between cohorts (one-tailed test, p < .05).

Table 11-2 continues the search for cohort differences in subjective assessments of employment by contrasting the work values of each cohort with their assessments of their current jobs (see Appendix 1 for specific items and index reliabilities). Reduced job satisfaction would be expected to result from increased discrepancies between work values and job rewards (Kalleberg, 1977). The job-value discrepancy scores in Table 11-2 measure the gap between the job rewards these two cohorts of young workers desired in a full-time job and what they were receiving in their current job (in 1987 and 1992, respectively).

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values

273

Table 11-2. Cohort Comparisons of Work Values, Job Assessments, and Job Assessment-Work Value Discrepancies for Currently Employed Edmonton University Graduates in 1987 and 1992

University class of 1985 in 1987 (n = 357) (average scores, 1-5 range) Intrinsically rewarding (index)*7 Good pay Good job security Good promotion chances University class of 1989-1990 in 1992 (n = 127) Intrinsically rewarding (index)^ Good pay Good job security Good promotion chances

Work Values

Job Assessments

Job-Value Discrepancy*

4.43 3.75 3.76 3.89

3.68 3.20 3.28 2.93

-0.74 -0.57 -0.50 -0.96*

4.53 4.08 4.00 3.98

3.64 3.36 3.50 2.78

-0.91 -0.80 -0.56 -1.21*

^(Average job assessments - average work values) does not exactly equal the discrepancy scores, because the latter were calculated for only those respondents employed at the time of the survey. A very small number of individuals were not employed, but they were still asked about their work values. Hence, the average "work values" are based on a slightly larger sample. ^See Appendix 1 for specific items and index reliability. ^Statistically significant difference between cohorts (one-tailed test, p < .05).

For both cohorts, the gaps were sizable, particularly for "good promotion chances." The gaps themselves are not particularly surprising, because 2 years after completing their degree, many university graduates might still not have found employment in the kinds of jobs they trained for and desired. It is also apparent, however, that for each of the four dimensions, the work value-job reward gap had increased between 1987 and 1992. Even though only one of these over-time discrepancy score differences is statistically significant, there does appear to be some evidence that the most recent cohort of university graduates has been less able to close the gap between employment expectations and outcomes within 2 years of leaving university. The significant over-time change for "promotion chances" may reflect the more widespread reliance on temporary workers by employers today, compared with the mid-1980s. To the extent that this is occurring, young, well-educated workers today may be less optimistic about their promotion opportunities within their current jobs.

274 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Returning to Table 11-1, it is apparent that members of the class of 1989-1990 were significantly more likely to still be living at home with their parents, and less likely to have children. Thus, along with evidence of somewhat more restricted employment opportunities for university graduates entering the labor market during the recession of 1990-1992, we also find some indications that transitions to adult roles may have been postponed for a larger proportion of the most recent cohort. Cohort Differences in Education, Social, and Political Attitudes

Our school-to-work transition study was not explicitly designed to test the postmodernist individualization thesis. Consequently, a full range of relevant attitudinal indicators is not available. Even so, a number of questions asked in both the 1987 and 1992 surveys do allow us to see how much the university classes of 1985 and 1989-1990 differed in their educational, social, and political attitudes. Members of both cohorts were asked whether they agreed that individuals who have worked hard in school and who have trained for a particular job are entitled to a good job or a job in their area of training (see Appendix 1 for item wording). Presumably, such job entitlement beliefs should decline as young people come to believe that traditional educational credentials are less important than personal job-search efforts; however, Table 11-3 reveals that, compared with the class of 1985, the class of 1989-1990 was significantly more likely to exhibit beliefs in job entitlement.6 Beck (1992) argued that traditional gender role expectations have lost some of their ability to influence behavior. To the extent that his thesis accurately reflects the postmodernist perspective on youths' transitions, we find some support for that position. Specifically, we observed a significant decline over time in commitment to traditional gender role attitudes (Table 11-3). We might also expect that the most recent cohort of university graduates should be more inclined to believe it important to delay marriage until they have finished their education and begun their career, however, the two cohorts responded similarly to questions about delaying marriage. Our panel study provided us with several measures of individualism, an orientation central to the postmodernist thesis. We would expect individualism to be more pronounced among members of the most recent cohort of university graduates. Although the cohort comparisons revealed no change in responses to the statement that "the only way to

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values

275

Table 11-3. Cohort Comparisons of Education, Social, and Political Attitudes for Edmonton University Graduates in 1987 and 1992 University Class of University Class 1985 in 1987* of 1989-1990 in 1992* (n = 127) (n = 357) Educational attitudes Job entitlement index*7 Gender/marriage attitudes Traditional gender role index*7 "Delay marriage for school/career" index*7 Individualism "The only way to get ahead is to look after yourself first" "Unemployment/poverty is your own problem" index*7 Power lessness / alienation Powerlessness index*7 "I don't think the government cares about what people like me think" Social structure critique "Big corporations have far too much power in Canadian society" "People with high incomes should pay a greater share of the taxes than they do now"

2.97*

3.30

2.01*

1.71

3.36

3.31

3.14

3.17

3.09*

3.35

1.74

1.63

3.22*

3.48

3.27

3.34

3.51

3.51

fl

Average scores, 1-5 range. See Appendix 1 for specific items and index reliability. *Statistically significant differnce between cohorts (one-tailed test, p < .05).

b

get ahead is to look after yourself first" we did observe a significant difference in responses to statements blaming the poor for their own predicament (Table 11-3). Members of the class of 1989-1990 were more inclined to agree. Although we might be extending the individualization thesis beyond what its creators intended, we could hypothesize that young people forced to construct their own identities and careers without relying on traditional norms might experience greater feelings of powerlessness and political alienation. Our cohort comparisons failed to uncover an overtime difference in self-reports of powerlessness, but we did observe that the class of 1989-1990 was significantly more likely to agree that the government does not care "about what people like me think" (Table 11-3).

276 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Finally, following Beck's (1992) argument that traditional class-based perceptions of society have declined in importance, we might also predict that members of the most recent cohort of university graduates would be less likely to agree with statements critical of social and economic inequalities. We observed no cohort differences, however, in responses to statements critical of the power of big corporations or advocating greater income redistribution (Table 11-3). The complete set of findings in Table 11-3 provides only minimal support for the predictions regarding cohort differences in attitudes and beliefs extracted from the postmodernist perspective on youth transitions. Only four of the nine cohort comparisons reveal statistically significant differences, and one of these (job entitlement beliefs) is in the opposite direction to that predicted. Furthermore, some of the over-time changes could be explained without reference to the postmodernist thesis. For example, greater agreement with statements blaming the poor for their own predicament and the government for not listening to citizens might simply reflect the impact of recent ideological shifts to the right in North America and the reemergence of populist political sentiments (Harrison, Johnston, & Krahn, 1996). The Impact of Class, Gender, and Education Attainment

As noted earlier, in the absence of explicit cohort comparisons, some of the criticisms of the individualization thesis by European researchers have been based on demonstrations that social class, gender, local labormarket conditions, and other structural factors continue to strongly influence the beliefs and behaviors of youths (Jones & Wallace, 1992; Mayer & Schoepflin, 1989; Roberts et al, 1994; Roberts & Parsell, 1992). Following the lead provided by these studies, we extend our analysis by asking whether differences in attitudes and beliefs are associated with a number of structural variables.7 For this analysis, we do not use our 1985 university sample, because given the extent to which class background influences university attendance, variation in class background is considerably more restricted within a sample containing only university graduates. Instead, we focus on the complete sample of 1985 high school graduates, 31% of whom had acquired a university degree by 1992. Using the same attitudinal measures employed in our previous analysis and displaying adjusted mean scores, Table 11-4 compares the effects on attitudes (in 1992) of class background, gender, and whether a respondent had acquired a university degree. In other words, when com-

Table 11-4. Education, Social, and Political Attitudes by Socioeconomic Background, Gender, and Education Attainment for 1985 Edmonton High School Graduates in 1992 Family Income a'b

Educational attitudes Job entitlement index^ Gender /marriage attitudes Traditional gender role indexc "Delay marriage for school/career" indexc Individualism "The only way to get ahead is to look after yourself first" "Unemployment/poverty is your own problem" indexc Powerlessness / alienation Powerlessness indexc "I don't think the government cares about what people like me think" Social structure critique "Big corporations have far too much power in Canadian society" "People with high incomes should pay a greater share of the taxes than they now do"

Gender*7

Degree?*7

Average

Above

Female

Male

Yes

No

3.40

3.36

3.38

3.60

3.08*

3.29

2.01* 3.41

1.98 3.36

1.84 3.40

1.87 3.38

1.98 3.34

1.73 3.41

3.35 3.49

3.49 3.56

3.45 3.46

3.35 3.53

3.15 3.33

3.53 3.56

1.85

1.59*

1.65

1.86*

1.67

1.77

3.82

3.74

3.77

3.82

3.49

3.93

3.48

3.25*

3.42

3.31

3.39

3.37

3.85

3.55*

3.73

3.71

3.55

3.80

«In 1985 (while still in high school), respondents were asked about their parents 7 financial situation (poverty level, below average, average, above average, wealthy); responses are collapsed into two categories (average/below average; above average). b Means adjusted (multiple classification analysis) - range, 1-5 - to control for the other two variables (e.g., for family income, means are adjusted for differences by gender and by whether the respondent had acquired a university degree by 1992). c See Appendix 1 for specific items and index reliability. * Analysis of variance; statistically significant main effect (p < .05) controlling on the other two independent variables.

278 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

paring differences by class background (indexed by a simple self-report of family income in 1985), the mean scores for the "average" and "above average" family income groups are adjusted for the effects of gender and education attainment. Similarly, the gender comparisons are adjusted for class background and education attainment differences, and so on. The mean comparisons reveal that respondents from wealthier backgrounds were significantly less likely to express feelings of powerlessness and to agree with statements critical of social inequalities. Male respondents reported significantly greater feelings of powerlessness but were less inclined to express beliefs about job entitlement. Education attainment had a significant impact on a wider range of attitudes and beliefs, however. Members of the 1985 high school sample who had acquired a university degree by 1992 were significantly less likely to agree with traditional attitudes regarding gender roles, to express individualistic beliefs (about their own success and about the predicament of the poor), to believe that the government does not care about people like themselves, and to recommend income redistribution (Table 11-4). So what are the implications of these findings for our question about the applicability of the postmodernist individualization thesis to recent changes in the attitudes and beliefs of Canadian youths? First, it is apparent that class, gender, and education attainment do influence attitudes and beliefs, not necessarily to a great degree, but to at least the same extent as we observed in our cohort comparisons of attitude differences in Table 11-3. Explicit cohort comparisons of the effects of class, gender, and education attainment would be needed for a more rigorous test, but like the European research reviewed earlier, these findings do demonstrate that structural factors continue to influence the beliefs and attitudes of Canadian youths in significant ways. Postmodernist processes of individualization have not eliminated such structural effects. Second, education attainment is associated with lower scores on the measures of individualism, the most direct indicators of postmodernist individualized orientations. Consequently, even if our cohort comparisons suggest some movement toward greater individualization (and they offer only weak support, at best), this trend may be countered by the fact that the proportion of Canadian youths entering university has been increasing since the 1970s. Thus, greater risk and uncertainty in the labor market may, to a limited extent, encourage more individualized orientations among Canadian youths in transition from school to work. At the same time, many young people have responded to the difficult labor market by staying in school,

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values investing in additional education. To the extent that our attitudinal measures can be seen as reasonable indicators of individualized values, the choice to invest in a university education may, in fact, counter some of the individualizing forces of "postmodern" society. Discussion Aggregate data on labor-market changes, along with our own survey findings, reveal that young Canadians are encountering a more difficult labor market in the 1990s. There is also clear evidence, from aggregate data and our own surveys, that the typical process of school-to-work transition for Canadian youths has become prolonged and more difficult. We found relatively little evidence, however, that these structural changes have been accompanied by a shift toward more individualized beliefs and values within the most recent cohort of university graduates. In fact, job entitlement beliefs have become more pronounced, in contrast to the hypothesis we extracted from the individualization thesis. Furthermore, the other statistically significant attitudinal changes observed when we compared the class of 1985 with the class of 1989-1990 (e.g., less traditional gender role attitudes, more political alienation, and more of a tendency to blame the poor for their own situation) can also be explained with reference to general value changes and ideological shifts to the right observed over the past decade in North America (Harrison et al., 1996; Hughes, Lowe, & McKinnon, 1996). Thus, even though these cohort differences match the general predictions of the individualization thesis, they are also congruent with other theoretical explanations. These findings force us to question the applicability of the postmodernist theoretical perspective on youth transitions to the Canadian (and by extension, the North American) setting. Similarly, these survey results caution against uncritical acceptance of the assumptions about value change in the popularized Generation X argument. Given some limitations in our research design and measurement, however, we draw these conclusions cautiously. First, although we believe that the comparison of pre-1990 with post-1990 cohorts focuses on a time of critical change in the Canadian youth labor market, we recognize that a 5-year span is really very short. Social theorists who discuss the emergence of a postmodern society are clearly using a longer time-frame in their arguments. Second, even though national labor-market trends reveal significant changes after the onset of the 1990-1992 recession, we must take into account regional variations in labor-market opportunities. Specifically,

279

280 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives Unemployment rate 25

•15-19 -0-20-24 * 15-24 * 2 5 + 20

15

10

Source: Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey, Annual Averages

Figure 11-3. Unemployment rates by age, 1979-1994. although the recession at the beginning of the 1980s had ended in central Canada by 1982, its effects were still being felt in Alberta some years later (Krahn & Harrison, 1992). Thus, Alberta unemployment rates for young adults (20 to 24 years of age) were still relatively high in 1987 (Figure 11-3). In fact, they were marginally higher than the unemployment rates faced by young adults in the province in 1992. Thus, one could conclude that the class of 1985 was facing as difficult a labor market in 1987 as was the class of 1989-1990 in 1992. In response to this criticism, we would argue that for university-educated youth in the 1990s, unemployment has not been so much the problem as has the shift to nonstandard forms of work (see Figure 11-2) and the economic insecurity that accompanies part-time and temporary jobs. Hence, we maintain our argument that a critical change in the youth labor market occurred at the beginning of the 1990s.8 Third, we acknowledge that our attitude measures touch on only some of the dimensions of risk, uncertainty, and normative destructuring addressed by postmodernist theorists. It might be useful, for example, to directly ask young workers whether they believe the future for youth

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values today is more uncertain than it was in the past, whether they are optimistic about gaining satisfactory employment, and whether the social expectations for participation in adult roles are as clearly defined as they appeared to be in the past. Unfortunately, our longitudinal study was not influenced by these theoretical ideas and so we must rely on the measures available. Nevertheless, we do believe that the attitudinal measures included in our analyses do touch on at least some of the more important arguments put forward in the postmodernist individualization thesis. Thus, despite these methodological limitations, we conclude that we find relatively little support for the postmodernist description of the changing values and beliefs of youth, even though the Canadian labor market is offering young workers fewer opportunities for satisfactory employment. At the same time, our (very basic) analysis of the impacts of class background, gender, and education attainment reveals that these structural factors continue to have a significant effect on values and beliefs. In short, both the direct and the indirect tests of the hypotheses we extracted from postmodernist arguments (i.e., the cohort comparisons and the cross-sectional examination of structural factors) fail to present convincing evidence that a tougher youth labor market has significantly altered the values of young people and that gender, class, and other structural factors have come to play a minor role. The evidence of significant attitudinal differences by education attainment (Table 11-4) suggests a possible explanation for the largely absent cohort differences. Even though young people in North America seek employment in a very individualized fashion (compared with the more institutionalized patterns of school-to-work transition in countries like Germany), they place a great deal of faith in the labor-market value of postsecondary education (Davies, Mosher, & O'Grady, 1994; Krahn & Lowe, 1991). They continue to believe that "getting a good education" will significantly improve their job opportunities. They are largely correct because even though the youth labour market has contracted, university graduates continue to fare much better than do those less educated (Bowlby, 1996; Little, 1995). Thus, even though employment risks and uncertainties have increased, many Canadian youth have responded by investing in additional postsecondary education. The power of this belief in the value of higher education is also evident among young people who have not continued in school, including high school dropouts, because many reassure themselves by promising to return to school sometime in the future (Tanner et

281

282 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

al., 1995). As a result, we may not have observed the predicted shift toward more pessimistic and even cynical attitudes among Canadian youth. Whether redundant this pattern will continue is another question, however. If access to higher education becomes more difficult - and rising tuition costs in Canadian postsecondary institutions would have this effect - and/or if the youth labor market becomes even less welcoming, we may yet see a change in these patterns. Notes 1. We appreciate the useful comments provided on an earlier draft of this chapter by Ansgar Weymann and Jeylan Mortimer. Data discussed in the paper are from a research project funded primarily by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development, and Alberta Education, Edmonton, Alberta. 2. Such questions are, of course, not new to theoretical debates in sociology. Durkheim, Simmel, and other classical theorists addressed similar issues in their sweeping analyses of early-20th-century social change in Western industrialized societies. More recently, Inglehart's arguments (1981, 1990) about postmaterialist value shifts in Western democracies share many of the assumptions of Beck's analysis of "risk society." 3. See Krahn & Mosher (1992) for additional details on the study design, including tests for attrition bias. These tests revealed that, in the high school sample, male respondents and those who were less academically oriented were more likely to drop out of the study. Men were also more likely to drop out of the university sample, as were members of racial /ethnic minorities. 4. Because to a large extent both cohorts attended the same university and were making their school-to-work transition within the same city (a small number of the members of the class of 1989-1990 left Edmonton to attend university elsewhere), this comparison essentially controls for differences in formal education and in local labor-market characteristics. 5. An interesting comparison to our study of two youth cohorts is provided by Weymann (chapter 4 in this volume), who compares the labor-market entry experiences of East German youths who left school in a socialist regime (in 1985) with those who left after reunification (in 1990). 6. It could be argued that the first item in the job entitlement index ("If someone has worked hard in school, he or she is entitled to a good job") reflects more of an individualistic orientation. Comparison of responses to the two separate entitlement measures shows that agreement with both increased over time, however. 7. Obviously, structural variables also influence school-to-work transition behaviors; our data provide strong evidence of such effects. For example, previous analyses have shown that high school graduates from less-advantaged backgrounds are much less likely to continue on to attend university (Krahn & Lowe, 1993b). Because our focus in this chapter is primarily on values, attitudes, and beliefs, however, we restrict our analysis here to these subjective dependent variables. 8. It could also be argued that values and beliefs of the kind that we have examined are shaped by the social and economic climate at the time young people are attending university. If so, the class of 1985 would have been influenced by the very high youth unemployment rates at the beginning of the 1980s, whereas the class of 1989-1990 would have

School-to-Work Transitions and Postmodern Values

283

been completing their university education during the period of relative economic growth during the late 1980s (see Figure 11-3). We believe, however, that the postmodernist position is better tested by focusing on the labor-market conditions faced by graduates once they are out of school and in the adult labor market.

Appendix 1: Index Construction and Reliability Intrinsically rewarding work values: (When looking for a full-time job after leaving school, how important would the following be for you? 1 = not at all important; 5 = very important) Work that gives a feeling of accomplishment Work that lets me develop my skills and abilities Work where you make most of the decisions yourself Work that is interesting (1987 Alpha = .75

1992 Alpha = .66)

Intrinsically rewarding job index: (How much do you agree or disagree that the following statements describe your present job? 1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) The job gives me a feeling of accomplishment The job lets me use my skills and abilities I have the freedom to decide what I do in my job The work is interesting (1987 Alpha = .86

1992 Alpha = .87)

Job entitlement index: (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) If someone has worked hard in school, they are entitled to a good job Everyone has the right to the kind of job that their education and training has prepared them for (1987 r = .61

1992 r = .70)

Traditional gender role index: (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) A husband should be mainly responsible for earning the living for a family A wife should be mainly responsible for raising children in a family (1987 r = .71

1992 r = .70)

Delay marriage for school/career index: (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) It is important to finish your education before getting married It is important to get your work career well underway before getting married (1987 r = .67

Unemployment/poverty

1992 r = .65)

is your own problem index: (1 = strongly disagree; 5 =

strongly agree) Most poor people are poor because of their own lack of effort Many younger people who get welfare are just too lazy to work Young people are too choosy about the jobs they will take It's too easy to get welfare and unemployment insurance (1987 Alpha = .82 1992 Alpha = .74) Powerlessness index: (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) There is little I can do to change many of the important things in my life I have little control over the things that happen to me (1987 r = .62

1992 r = .49)

Education and Employment in Great Britain: The Polarizing Impact of the Market FRANK COFFIELD

This chapter has two main aims. First, it will argue that the conventional explanation of the relationships between education and employment is dangerously oversimplified and needs to be replaced by a model of increasing polarization in Western societies. The British government's strategy of driving the market principle into every area of policy is evaluated with relation to education and training. Second, because this theme is currently discussed in a language that has been imported from management training manuals, from the market and from industry, the social significance of this new vocabulary will be explored briefly before the main argument is discussed. Industrialization of the Language of Education Students have become "customers" or "consumers" as well as "inputs and outputs," heads of departments in universities are openly described as "line managers," and many vice-chancellors now prefer to be called "chief executives." The length of a degree course has become "the product's life cycle," lecturers no longer teach but "deliver the curriculum," and aims and objectives have been replaced by "inputs" and "outputs" and by ubiquitous, vacuous, and interchangeable "mission statements." Financial cutbacks are now presented as "efficiency gains," short and cheap courses are claimed to be "cost effective," and staff are no longer made redundant - institutions "restructure," "downsize," or "rightsize." Who can object if his or her institution decides to reach its right or optimal size? Understanding is being replaced by "competence," knowledge by "information," and education itself is being transformed into a mass commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Most revealing of all, possible scenarios for the future are called "visions for UK, pic" - the industrial model has reached its zenith, but the horizons and aspirations on offer are those of the public limited company 284

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This chapter argues for the rejection of the industrialization of the language and the downgrading of certain key values within education by the new vocabulary. This is not a pedantic or a typically "academic" concern for words and their "correct" usage: There are more serious issues at stake. For instance, the language we use encapsulates our values; it conditions our thinking and so predisposes us to act differently. Such euphemisms as "efficiency gains" are being used in an attempt to disguise the severity of the cuts being imposed on the system. The new vocabulary, which even in the 1980s was derided and resisted in staff rooms up and down the country, is slowly becoming the common and unthinking parlance of academics. A new mindset is being created, a new agenda is being formed, and a new curriculum is being constructed. In this way, the critics of the education service have limited and reordered the terms of the debate to their advantage; the notion of education as a social process, or as a dialogue between the generations, is being misrepresented by this transplanted vocabulary and the contribution education can and should make to the common good is being ignored. All areas of education are being translated into the language of industry and being reinterpreted as a purely economic domain in need of industrialization (see Poerksen, 1995, p. 53). More specifically, the new language heralds the introduction of more industrialized forms of teaching and learning, as predicted by Otto Peters, the German expert on distance learning and the first Rektor of the German open university (Fernuniversitat) (Keegan, 1994). Shortly before his death, English playwright Dennis Potter claimed that the trouble with words is that you never know whose mouth they have been in last, but in this case, the source of the infection can be easily traced to those who wish education to be controlled by the principle of the competitive market. Education and Employment: Two Contrasting Views The main theme here is that the modern economic imperative - that dominant discourse of gaining a competitive edge over "rivals" who used to be called "trading partners" - tells only half the story. It needs to be matched by a democratic imperative, which argues that a learning society worthy of the name ought to deliver social cohesion and social justice as well as economic prosperity to all age groups and all sections of the population, those with decent jobs and especially those without. It will be claimed that market forces are intensifying the polarization within British

286 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

society and that there are structural features of the labor market in the United Kingdom that militate against the growth of the type of education and training culture needed if Great Britain is to become a learning society. David Raffe (1992), for example, argued that instead of constantly reforming education to solve the problems of the labor market, we must now reform the labor market to solve some education problems. That education has throughout the 20th century slowly accommodated itself to waves of economic, social, and technological change is not a matter of dispute. What is in contention, however, is the differing explanations offered for these socioeconomic changes and what are thought to be appropriate responses from education. Two main explanations will now be compared. The Technocratic Model

The common sense view, which Brown and Scase1 (1994) called "the technocratic model" and which is presented in Figure 12-1, presents a dangerously oversimplified account of the relationships between employment and education. The argument is usually presented in the following way: Developments in technology, in methods of production, and in the globalization of world trade are said to require a more highly skilled workforce. As a result, employers begin to apply pressure for education standards to be improved. The outcome of this pressure can be seen in all three of the Government's white papers on competitiveness (HMSO, 1994, 1995, 1996). The first white paper was subtitled "Helping Business to Win," and Prime Minister John Major argued in its introduction that the skills of our young people "will be the key to our future." In the second white paper on competitiveness, the main aim of the government in introducing the new National Targets for Education and Training was "to improve the UK's international competitiveness by raising standards and attainment levels in education and training to world class levels" (HMSO, 1995, p. 80). The third white paper on competitiveness aims to make the United Kingdom "the unrivalled Enterprise Centre of Europe, with an open, flexible and dynamic economy, able to win in world markets; one which keeps social costs down for business so that prosperity can rise for all" (HMSO, 1996, foreword). This strategy of opting out from the European Social Chapter and opposing the application of European health and safety provisions to British industry has succeeded in attracting two fifths of all U.S. and Japanese investment in Europe

Education and Employment in Great Britain Rapid technological

Increasing ->

skill levels

->

change

Expansion ofHE/FE*

287

->

Shift to learning society

HE = Higher Education /FE = Further Education Figure 12-1. Relationship between education and employment: the technocratic model.

(HMSO, 1996, p. 8); as such, it represents a real economic threat to the unity of the European Union (EU). Since 1988, extensive reforms have addressed fundamental weaknesses in education and training provision, including a massive expansion of higher and further education to supply the increased number of professionally trained and technically qualified workers that the modern economy claims to need. This technocratic argument takes one final step the United Kingdom should become a learning society, and should develop "a culture of continuing improvement [because] competitiveness is dynamic. We cannot ever afford to stand still. For as we change and innovate, the outside world also changes. And so the pressures continue" (HMSO, 1994, p. 159). The key to sustainable economic prosperity is considered to be highly skilled workers who are also lifelong, flexible learners. This argument could be used to justify a further expansion of higher and further education, but it is too one-sided: The interactions of physical and human capital have always been more complex, and are especially so in the new high-tech manufacturing industries, where the organization of work and robotic technology are both constantly employed to diminish dependence on skilled workers. For instance, Fujitsu, which produces microchips near Darlington, invested approximately £1 million in plant and equipment for each of the 500 jobs it originally created and a further expansion (involving another 600 jobs) will again cost £1 million per job (Aviss, 1995). Many thousands of the 140,000 unemployed in northern Great Britain (Labour-Market Trends, March 1996) could, in fact, be trained to perform these jobs, but the region would still need 127 such plants to eradicate unemployment. The paradox of modern industry is that a strong manufacturing base is an essential precondition for long-term economic growth, but it does not create many jobs, so high structural unemployment is likely to continue to coexist even with a high-tech, high-investment economy as in

288 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Germany. Investment in education and training is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of sustained economic prosperity: The point is neatly captured in the phrase "Let them eat skills." This exhortation is the title of an article by Douglas Noble, who argues that in the United States as in the United Kingdom, "there is a dire shortage of decent jobs, not a shortage of skilled labour ... The wages and job security of those still employed are steadily eroding, as organized labour has been all but destroyed, and most new jobs are in the low-wage, temporary, part-time, service sector, requiring minimal skills" (Noble, 1994, p. 22). The result may be, for the United States and for the United Kingdom, a highly skilled elite and a growing army of the (at best) semiskilled and expendable. Noble's account, however, does not, despite his claims, accurately describe the situation in Germany, where industry continues to create high-tech jobs and where the trade unions remain a force to be reckoned with. Such views are a necessary corrective to the current conventional wisdom, eloquently and influentially advocated on both sides of the Atlantic, which restricts attention to improving both the quality and quantity of the skills of the workforce. In the United States, Reich (1993) has maintained that the only true competitive advantage lies in enhancing skills and capacities, particularly of the new category of workers he calls "symbolic analysts." Rifkin (1995, p. xvii) pushed this argument further by claiming that the new technologies and globalization: ... are fast polarizing the world's population into two irreconcilable and potentially warring forces - a new cosmopolitan elite of "symbolic analysts " who control the technologies and the forces of production, and the growing number of permanently displaced workers who have little hope and even fewer prospects for meaningful employment in the new hightech global economy. In Canada, the province of British Columbia produced a report with the apposite title Training for What? that argued persuasively for "an industry-led workforce development strategy, linked to an economic development strategy." Unfortunately, the development of the economic policy that is to create all the new jobs for "the world-class, highly skilled and adaptable" Canadian workforce was considered beyond the scope of the report (1995, p. 34). Swift quoted this irresponsible remark of the premier of New Brunswick in Canada (1995, p. 131): "If you have the training, the jobs will take care of themselves." Swift's book is a sustained attack on "the seductive myth of salvation through ever more training." A jet aircraft needs engines as well as trained pilots.

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In the United Kingdom, Sir Christopher Ball (1995) continues to proclaim that "the quality of the education and training of the workforce is the single most important characteristic in determining economic competitiveness." What is overlooked in these arguments is acknowledgement of the comparatively low demand for high-level skill in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The work of Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew is particularly associated with the view that significant sectors of the British economy "are concentrating on low-specification, lowcost, standardized goods and services that create a weak demand for additional skills" (Keep & Mayhew, 1995, p. 9). Additional public investment in higher and further education, therefore, may result in only disappointment and frustration for future cohorts of graduates unless a means is found of increasing the demand for skills across the British economy. Brown and Scase (1994) advanced different reasons for rejecting the "technocratic model," principally because it does not stand up to examination, either theoretically or empirically. On theoretical grounds, the technocratic model is thought to be seriously deficient because it ignores "the power play of competing vested interest groups [which] is vital to a full understanding of both educational change and the labour market" (Brown & Scase, p. 17). In a similar vein, Stephen Ball (1993) concluded that the market reforms that have been implemented in British education are producing winners and losers. The winners tend to be middle-class families, who, through their knowledge of the system, are reasserting their advantages in education; the losers tend to be working-class families who so value their local community that they send their children to the nearest school rather than compete for places at "successful" schools, which may be some miles away. The comparative lack of both economic and "cultural" capital also ties working-class families to their immediate locality. The questions that need to be asked of the society that has been created in the United Kingdom are: How many losers can the system stand? What practical concerns are expressed by the privileged for the most needy? What happens to social solidarity when the wealthy increasingly withdraw from state services, such as education and health, into private provision? Taylor-Gooby (1991, p. 16) caught the moral tone of contemporary Great Britain in the following passage: In a polarized society, the idea that many poor people constitute an undeserving underclass, corrupted by state aid, is likely to find a ready audience among the advantaged, since it confirms their own merit, and gives a moral gloss to the material gulf between the established and the marginal.

290 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives 1 Academic:

-^Upskilling -> Expansion -> Intensification —>1 Core workers: of Hierarchy ofHE/FE* middle class among monopolization Institutions: of superior jobs -> Multiskilling "Oxbridge" "Redbrick"

2 Vocational:

-> New hybrid skills

A Levels

GNVQs* 3 Employment:

-> Increasing Diversification:

-» Reskilling

"Plateglass" Ex-Polytechnics

NVQs*

Colleges ofHE/FE 4 No qualifications -> Deskilling -> YT* 50% get

qualifications 24% become unemployed

-> 2 Peripheral workers: part-time, casual, shortterm contracts

Firm-based YT -> 3 Unemployed "under-class"

* GNVQs = General National Vocational Qualifications NVQs = National Vocational Qualifications YT = Youth Training HE/FE = Higher Education/Further Education

Figure 12-2. Relationship between education and employment: the Polarization model, with, increasing competition between occupational social group. The Polarization Model

A model of social polarization, again based on Brown and Scase's original argument about social exclusion, is therefore preferred to the "technocratic model." This alternative approach is presented in Figure 12-2. Support for this competing explanation comes from the empirical examination of the claim that there has been a general upskilling of the workforce. Gallic studied patterns of skill change in the United Kingdom and assessed the evidence for three competing claims: Is the workforce being upskilled, deskilled, or polarized? He concluded that "the argument that is best supported is that of a polarization of skill experiences between classes ... those that already had relatively high levels of skill witnessed an increase in their skill levels, while those with low levels of skill saw their skills stagnate" (Gallie, 1994, p. 75). Gallie's research suggests that two factors appear to be at work simultaneously. First, the skill requirements of some forms of work are rising

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sharply and are being extended to many more members of the workforce. At the same time, however, a deep class and gender divide in skill formation is taking place: "There are also great differences in virtually every aspect of training and development between those in higher-level jobs and those in jobs at lower skill levels. There was a marked lack of provision for the one-third of employees with very low levels of qualification" (Gallie & White, 1993, p. x). It is far too sweeping, then, to claim that the workforce is being extensively upskilled when certain groups, such as unskilled manual workers, are struggling to find casual, ill-paid jobs without any training. Bynner (chapter 3 in this volume) has also emphasized the polarization that is taking place among women themselves; Those women without children and with the most human and social capital receive as much work-based training as men, whereas those women with children and with very little human and social capital lag way behind men at every occupational level in the amount of training received. The long controversy between upskilling or deskilling interpretations of the changing conditions of work has recently been reviewed, and the conclusion was reached that "the nature and direction of skill change is unclear because there is no uniform effect" (Parsons & Marshall, 1995, p. 7). Braverman's well-known thesis (1974) about the increasing degradation of work in the 20th century founds only limited support, but Parsons and Marshall added that "many of the lower-skilled jobs ... have been effectively de-skilled out of existence through process automation" (Parsons & Marshall, 1995, p. 15). New hybrid combinations of skill across occupational boundaries were also found to coexist with upskilling, deskilling, reskilling and multiskilling: In short, the picture is becoming increasingly muddled, with traditional skill boundaries breaking down and with much still to be learned about the direction and detail of skill change.2 Figure 12-2 is an attempt to capture some of the main features of the growing polarization in contemporary Great Britain, so not only are the three pathways (A level, general national vocational qualifications [GNVQs] and national vocational qualifications [NVQs]) in the national framework of qualifications listed, but a fourth pathway has been added, consisting of those who leave school with no or minimal qualifications. Sir Ron Dearing's review of qualifications for 16- 19-year-olds shows that as many as 21% of 17-year-olds were neither in education nor training (Dearing, 1996, p. 5). This sizable minority has, in effect, precious little hope of ever becoming successful members of a global economy that celebrates and rewards a trained capacity to continue learning.

292 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Moreover, the value of education credentials begins to fall as a higher percentage of each generation achieves graduate status (up from 6% in the early 1960s to almost 30% in the early 1990s), when there is no corresponding expansion of elite jobs. Hirsch accurately described one of the main consequences of this inflationary spiral that has taken off, with graduates reading for higher degrees to increase their chances of employment in a job market where the entry requirements are constantly rising: "Where educational expansion overcrowds superior positions as a whole ... the effect will be to push competition by hitherto qualified applicants down the hierarchy of jobs: screening will be intensified at each level" (Hirsch, 1977, p. 50). This process of "downgrading" is already excluding many of those with middle ranking qualifications from the jobs they used to do. A Canadian study (Tanner, Krahn & Hartnagel, 1995, p. 152) took up the argument here: In turn, competition for the remaining jobs at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy is more intense. High school dropouts are at the end of the job-seekers' queue. In the past, some dropouts could hope, in time, to move into reasonably well-paying and secure jobs. But such opportunities are rare today. In 1976, Dore accurately described the paradox of the diploma disease, whereby "the worse the educated unemployment situation gets and the more useless educational certificates become, the stronger grows the pressure for an expansion of educational facilities" (Dore, 1976, p. 4). What is happening to those at the bottom of the British system? Only 50% of those who complete 2 years of youth training obtain a qualification, and 24% complete their training only to become unemployed (MacLagan, 1996, p. 9). These percentages are the global national figures, so they disguise both considerable regional variations (with far poorer outcomes in such areas as Merseyside and the northeast, which reflect the state of local labor markets) and high rates of early leaving: The national completion rate is 46% (Dearing, 1996, p. 13), with 25% completing in Merseyside and 63% in Hertfordshire. Raffe and Surridge's review (1995, p. 3) of the evidence about the participation in Great Britain of 16to 18-year-olds in education fully endorses the alternative model that is advocated in this chapter: Britain may stabilize as a medium participation system in which participation and attainment are highly polarized. In this scenario a large proportion of the age group will graduate from higher education but few will leave with intermediate qualifications. A large minority will continue to leave early, or will stay on but achieve little of value; this minority will be at greatest risk of unemployment and other disadvantage.

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293

The expansion of the higher education/further education (HE/FE) sectors and the market in education have also brought in their wake an increasing diversification and an intensification of the hierarchy among institutions, because, just as with the school system, markets require variety and choice. In the words of Halsey (1995, p. 31), "In Britain the paradoxical outcome has been a more elaborate pyramid of prestige, with Oxford and Cambridge never more securely placed at the apex on the basis of academic merit while retaining more sumptuous amenities and superior social connections/' Britain's blue chip companies are not, of course, evenhanded in the universities from which they are prepared to recruit graduates, with the result that more than 20% of graduates from some of the "new" universities are still unemployed 6 months after graduation. The unemployment rate for new graduates in the system as a whole was 11% in 1993. The final column of Figure 12-2 summarizes the alternative thesis: British society is polarizing and three main groups can be discerned. Hutton (1995, p. 105) labels the United Kingdom "the thirty, thirty, forty society," where the bottom 30% are the disadvantaged (unemployed or economically inactive), the next 30% are the marginalized and the insecure, and the final 40% are the privileged in full-time, secure jobs. The most anxious of all are those who have cause to fear that they may slip into a lower category. If this model of educational and economic polarization is a reasonably accurate description of some of the main trends in the United Kingdom, then future plans for all sectors of education will have to take account of it. A useful start would be for the sectors of higher and further education to acknowledge openly that, for reasons of financial exigency, their employment policies have been contributing to the divisions in society by creating armies of part-time, casual teaching staff, predominantly women, on short-time contracts, who receive little or no staff development or training. 3 Such measures help large institutions cope with sudden fluctuations in funding, but a temporary expedient has become standard procedure, raising moral as well as financial questions about its continued use. Evidence to support a thesis of polarization in the United Kingdom has been accumulating for years, but this is not the place for a comprehensive review; instead, two powerful, detailed, and representative studies will be briefly discussed. First, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published in February 1995 a two-volume report entitled Inquiry into Income and Wealth. Some of the key finding from the report can be summarized as follows:

294 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Income inequality in the United Kingdom grew very rapidly between 1977 and 1990 and reached the highest level recorded since World War II. It might be argued, however, that this finding is simply reflecting an international trend, whereby all nations are affected by global markets, which domestic policy can do little to mitigate. The report refutes this interpretation by showing that, apart from New Zealand, the United Kingdom was exceptional in the pace and extent of the increase in inequality in the 1980s. There has been no general trend toward greater inequality. Between 1975 and 1993, a growing polarization took place in the United Kingdom between "work rich" and "work poor" households. The proportion of two-adult households where both adults were earners rose from 51% to 60% whereas the proportion with no earner rose from 3% to 11%. Polarization between deprived and affluent neighborhoods gradually increased during the 1980s. Poverty is becoming concentrated on "peripheral" council housing estates, which have been called "landscapes of despair" (Donnison, 1994, p. 20). Wealth has not "trickled down" from the richest section of society. Between 1979 and 1992, the poorest 20% to 30% of the population did not benefit from economic growth, and children were disproportionately represented in this group. More specifically, the wages of the bottom 10% hardly changed in real terms, but those of the top 10% rose by 50%. The second study also supports the basic findings of the Rowntree report. Gordon Forrest (1995, p. 5) produced an atlas of some of the key social and economic divisions in Great Britain, using data from the 1991 census, and after measuring and mapping deprivation in three different ways, they concluded that, "poverty had become so widespread in England by 1991, and its manifestations were so varied, that the same broad patterns can be discerned almost irrespective of the methods used to measure it. To put it bluntly, when there is a lot of poverty it becomes relatively easy to measure." Two examples out of a total of 36 maps and charts are given here: the percentage of children in households with no earners and the geographical concentration of the new, highly educated middle class. First, the percentage of children in nonearner households shows a striking contrast between:

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... poorer inner city areas, the older industrial districts and affluent rural and semi-rural areas. In Tower Hamlets (in East London) nearly 46 percent of children are in households with no earners and, in 30 districts, over a quarter of children are in that category. Among the major cities, Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham are in the top ten ... At the other extreme are the affluent rural and semi-rural districts in the south east and in the north west. In those areas, only around 5 percent of children are in non-earning households (Gordon & Forrest, 1995, p. 51).

The spatial concentration of the highly educated tells the same story, with the district of the City of London having the highest proportion of adult residents with degrees (29.9%), whereas the district of Barking and Dagenham in East London was at the other end of the scale with only 1.5% with degrees (Gordon & Forrest, 1995, p. 69). The message of all their 36 maps and charts is the same: This atlas provides ample evidence for the existence of social polarization with strong spatial characteristics. Problems of unemployment, poverty and ill health are concentrated in the major cities, the depressed industrial north and in the forgotten corners of England. By contrast, areas of affluence and privilege are found in the extended suburban south east. These patterns suggest a country divided, rather than at ease with itself (Gordon & Forrest, 1995, p. 9).

Conclusion This is the social context within which new models of education and training need urgently to be developed: Existing divisions appear to be deepening and new divisions are also being created. If evidence continues to mount of sharpening polarization, then the case for increasing the proportion of young people entering higher education will have to be considered alongside other options for investment. Keep and Mayhew, for instance, argued that public money spent on basic skills training and on retraining the adult unemployed and the peripheral workforce "... would probably produce a significantly higher social rate of return than any additional expansion of undergraduate provision" (Keep & Mayhew, 1995, p. 94). The three options to which they accord priority would benefit "those who are currently among the most disadvantaged in the labour market, and whose educational and training problems, not least in terms of consequent unemployment, impose very significant social and economic costs on society as a whole" (Keep & Mayhew, 1995, p. 93). It is now widely argued that a prosperous economy and a just and cohesive society are not conflicting but complimentary objectives: Here is an opportunity to turn that slogan into reality.

296 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

This chapter has argued that the common-sense technocratic explanation of the need for Western societies to become learning societies does not, on close examination, make much sense. Instead, evidence has been advanced of a sharpening polarization between and within social groups, a polarization in part structured and intensified by new education and training pathways. The rapid rise in inequality in the United Kingdom since the 1970s, which has made the United Kingdom more like the United States or Canada than its partners in the EU, has, however, been caused by many factors, including the changing nature of work, the differential strategies of employers toward "core" and "peripheral" workers, and the intensification of competition in the global market with the resultant steep increases in unemployment. The policy of the British government of allowing the market free rein has contributed to the deepening of divisions, however. Notable evidence includes the abolition of the wages councils that sought to protect the income of the poorest paid, the refusal to increase social security benefits in line with inflation, and changes to the tax system that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. The reforms in education and training, detailed earlier, are also part of this overall policy. In sum, the government's strategy appears to be advocating two economies, each of which is profitable, for two different sections of the community: a high-salary, high-skills economy that produces highquality goods and services and, simultaneously, a low-wage, low-skills economy trading in low-quality goods and services. It remains to be seen at what point these two economies begin to come apart and at what cost to the cohesion of British society. Hungarian financier George Soros (1997) has begun to fear: ... that the untrammelled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.

In the United Kingdom at least, the spread of market values has not been the result of laissez-faire capitalism but the deliberate and planned action of the conservative government, which at least has the advantage that it could be reversed.4 Notes 1. I am grateful for the stimulus provided by the arguments presented by Phillip Brown and Richard Scase (1994) and I freely acknowledge them as the source of the ideas pre-

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sented here. A comparison, however, of the two accounts will show that the original argument has been considerably elaborated on and developed. 2. Professor Francis Green (Leeds University), Professor David Ashton, and Dr. Alan Felstead (Leicester University) are conducting the first detailed survey in the United Kingdom of skill levels and reward as one of the 14 projects within the Economic and Social Research Councils (ESRC's) Learning Society Programme. Further details about the these projects are available from the director, Frank Coffield, Department of Education, University of Newcastle, St. Thomas Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom. 3. One estimate puts the number of university-based researchers on short-term contracts at some 18,000 in 1995 (see SET Forum, 1995, p. 25). 4. I am grateful to Lesley Andres and to Walter R. Heinz for their perceptive comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

From Systems to Networks: The Reconstruction of Youth Transitions in Europe1 LYNNE CHISHOLM

This chapter addresses two linked questions about the directions of contemporary European social change processes. First, what kinds of changes appear to be taking place in the social construction of the life course that impinge on the modalities of youth transitions? Second, what kinds of flexibilities are demanded of individuals and forms of social organization in "knowledge societies/' a term gaining increasing currency in both theoretical and policy discourses on the nature and implications of economic and social change for education, training, and employment? To date, public sphere debate has focused on how to promote change at the level of individuals themselves (how to become more innovative, adventurous, autonomous, enterprising, qualified, and so on). There is considerable room, however, for institutional and organizational change toward forms of openness and flexibility that can both facilitate active citizenry and assist people to meet the increasingly complex circumstances in which they must plan and carry through their education/ training and their paid working lives. It would be implausible to argue that the risks and difficulties people experience in initial (and increasingly, recurring) education-to-employment transitions are either caused or might be resolved by the withering away of institutionalized arrangements for managing these processes. Such arrangements clearly vary between European countries: Some national-cultural traditions display quite highly structured transition management systems, whereas others have developed looser frameworks in this respect. There is no prima facie superiority of one type of arrangement over another, beyond the evident fact that existing arrangements in any one country have developed in conformity with the historically specific characteristics and evolution of a given society and are therefore, in a general sense, adapted to the working character of that social formation as a whole. 298

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There is reason to suppose, however, that different transitions systems do harbor characteristic chances and risks for those passing through them, and that the learning processes these experiences engender may favor particular profiles of perspectives and behavioral dispositions. Recent Anglo-German comparative research and related analyses offer an example of this point; see Bendit, Gaiser, and Nissen (1993); Bynner and Roberts (1991); Chisholm (1993); Evans and Heinz (1994); and Kriiger (1990). Yet, however these arrangements presently operate, it is plausible to argue that the relations between individuals and institutions have entered a process of social reconstruction and recontextualization. This is so simply because established relations between the two are less appropriate and less workable under emerging conditions, whether the perspective taken is purely economic (present arrangements are no longer financeable), more technological (present arrangements are replaceable by other instruments), macro social (present arrangements are functionally inefficient and ineffective), or indeed full-blooded culturalist (present arrangements are redundant in the face of individualization 2). Most education-to-employment transitions research is necessarily empirically retrospective (using data referring to the past, albeit often recent), even when it is explicitly future oriented (i.e., interested in forecasting future trends). The perils of social trend forecasting are legion and its frequent inaccuracies are well known; it remains, however, an indispensable element of social theory and policy. The task of judging the extent to which the future can and will replicate the past or can be extrapolated from existing data is the crux of futures analysis. This can be hazardous, especially in periods of very rapid change (such as the present) and in particular when the pace and nature of change suggest that our societies and economies are undergoing a genuinely qualitative change (for example, the transition to postindustrial economies or knowledge societies). Envisaging the prospective - as distinct from simply calculating it - then becomes particularly salient, and this is why prospective analysis is essentially heuristic, relying on theoretical plausibility rather than direct empirical evidence. The argument in this essay rests on some elements that are empirically undisputed (economic globalization, a new technological era, unemployment, and labor-market restructuring), whereas others can draw on little existing research or are perhaps less readily accessible to empirical analysis in the first place (the idea of patchworkers; ontological and epistemological questions about types of knowledge and modes of thinking). It is acknowledged that empirically oriented researchers may find this problematic, but there is

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the point that theory has a way of running ahead of the data - and this is very much part of its role. This chapter falls into two main parts. It begins by looking at some basic points about institutionalized practices and change processes in the context of youth transitions, followed by a summary of theoretical developments that link the study of youth transitions more closely into a recontextualized field of the life course and social change. The second part then considers the nature and implications of knowledge societies for the reconstruction of transitions between education, training, and employment for young people, but within the framework of the challenges of life long learning and recurrent transition cycles; some indicative material from recent policy studies in this field is included. Adaptation, Flexibility, and Change The frequently made observation that interactions between individuals and institutions are increasingly out of sync has, by and large, prompted proposals for readjustment that demand innovation from individuals but nothing from institutions, which have been left to continue to behave as they "always" have (Chisholm, 1995). It is individuals and their significant others who are enjoined to cope with the contradictions and discontinuities of contemporary modernization processes; it is they, and not institutional collectivities, who are currently expected to achieve social and economic integration (Berger & Hradil, 1990, p. 4). This is a question of the relation between individuality and community, not of the subordination of the latter to the former or vice versa. If we translate this statement into a substantive example, then it is not a question of whether the pluralistic deregulated structuring of youth transitions in the United Kingdom is preferable to the firmly regulated modalities of educationto-employment transitions in Germany. They are both expressions of established transitions arrangements, but both remain oriented toward the notion of systems: Germany wants fewer of their constraints (such as inflexibility of occupational trajectories), and the United Kingdom wants more of their advantages (such as clarity of accredited occupational positions). Social systems and their institutions are patently capable of adaptation and must adopt continuously to avoid social inertia and counteract dysfunctional tendencies. For example, then, Roberts (1996) recently argued that youth transitions have adapted to new labor-market conditions in the advanced economies, so that the new patterns of youth transitions

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(in particular, extended and fragmented education-to-employment trajectories) are now being normalized. This means that European countries have been able to develop flexible transition systems and the vast majority of young people have proved themselves able to cope, given sufficient family support and an adequate supply of good-quality employment for young adults at the end of the transition process. Persistently high unemployment rates in most parts of Europe, however, render this analysis empirically optimistic, at least in the short term. Furthermore, the idea that "flexible transitions systems" now exist across Europe may require significant qualification and differentiation. Flexibility can mean several different things, and these differences are meaningful both for describing the way particular arrangements work and for the ways in which people experience and respond to their terms. Flexibility may mean that the links between certification/qualification and employment/occupation are relatively loose and unpredictable. This is traditionally so in the United Kingdom and in North America: Flexibility of this kind is not a new adaptation to changing conditions but rather part and parcel of established arrangements in these societies. It may also mean that previously inflexible systems, such as those operated in the planned economies and societies of pre-1990 central and eastern Europe, have lost their rationale and logic. Under former arrangements, education-to-employment trajectories were very much prestructured and largely nonalterable once embarked upon (see Weymann, chapter 4 in this volume). Flexibility in this case came suddenly and unexpectedly, in the sense that the collapse of existing transitions systems left little more than a vacuum - no reliable signposts at all. For those caught up in the (continuing) transformation period, such flexibility looks more like disorganization, even blockage: Former transition routes no longer exist or function, but reliable new options or strategies have not taken their place (Dubsky, 1993). But flexibility can also refer to societies in which the public secular sphere has never generated socially institutionalized arrangements for education-to-employment transitions, but in which, for example, a privatized clientelism has traditionally served similar purposes, such as is the case in southern Italy's Mezzogiorno (Leccardi, 1995). This alternative system, neither a vacuum nor disorganized, was able to underpin youth transitions satisfactorily as long as the region's traditional society and economy remained in closed-system equilibrium. The examples noted above could be multiplied. Essentially, the term flexibility refers to the amount and kind of room for institutional and individual maneuvering in an established social configuration that regu-

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lates, in this particular case, trajectories between education origins and initial labor-market destinations, but it is difficult to produce a generalized empirical description of what flexibility comprises that is appropriate across a range of social and economic contexts. For the purposes of this chapter, however, it is the kind (rather than the amount) of room for maneuvering that concerns us. Are the kinds of flexibilities required by contemporary processes of economic and social change well exemplified in our present and various transitions systems? What kinds of flexibilities are likely to be required in the future? The proposal made here is that in the negotiation of transitions between education and the labor market, formal credentials are paradoxically losing relative significance, whereas the capacity to analyze and respond proactively across a range of contingencies and alternatives is becoming relatively more significant. Nevertheless, at the same time, qualifications or competencies per se continue to rise in their overall absolute significance. Thus, Brown (1995) argued that corporate restructuring under conditions of heightened global competition and changing forms of symbolic control in work organizations favor changes in personnel and staffing practices that presage the construction of flexible careers that take fluid shape over a long period. On the other hand, research findings to date have continued to show the significance of initial transition for the quality of subsequent employment and career development (Mayer & Blossfeld, 1990). The argument made here thus breaks with established empirical patterns in that it suggests the quality of initial transition may become a less secure indication of the directions subsequently taken than has hitherto been the case (see Heinz, chapter 9 in this volume). This calls for explication. First, high-technology and service-oriented economies operating in global markets are generating upward pressure on labor-force qualification levels. This pressure is of a continuous nature, so that the acquisition and renewal of competence becomes a salient element of people's active lives as a whole, and not simply at the point of initial entry. Similarly, under these conditions, occupations as clusters of related competences in given organizational and task contexts also change, dissolve, and are reconstituted into new clusters much more rapidly than was hitherto the case. It is likely that more people will more often move between employers, organizational contexts, and occupational categories than has been the case for at least several decades - but bear in mind that this has been a familiar experience for some sectors, and especially for those in unqualified and casualized employment.

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Corresponding changes in personnel and staffing practices are bound to follow, if not to lead. Second, imbalances in labor-market supply and demand continue to generate credential inflation in many sectors, including among the highly qualified. This means that for many young adults, routes into appropriate and good-quality employment that corresponds to their interests and qualifications are now lengthier and more complex, building in a range of additional elements. Faced with a surfeit of qualified applicants, some of these elements are used by potential employers as extra filters - that is, as indicators of applicants' added value in terms of competencies that are not necessarily accounted for by formal credentials. These indicators will include useful kinds of work experience and skills gained along the way, but they will also include a whole range of personal, social, and communication skills that combine not only old-style class-based cultural capital (persona, accent, dress, family contacts ...) but also new-style individualized cultural capital (mobility/languages, patchworker trajectories, evidence of distinctive creativity and initiative). This implies a rebalancing between formal and nonformal credentials, in which the latter gain in importance for wider groups of young people in transition. Taken together, the two factors described above illustrate the emergence of a certain democratization of risk in education-to-employment transitions: Gaining marketable qualifications is a highly significant factor in securing reasonable initial integration chances - necessary, but of themselves not sufficient. More is needed, and this more is neither formally accreditable nor necessarily meritocratic in nature. There is abundant evidence to show that the reproduction of elite groups has always worked in this way; the difference is that our societies' increasing inability to deliver a social justice legitimated through education meritocracy and corresponding labor-market rewards may now be generating precisely what we have generally sought to minimize since 1945. If those young people who underachieve and fail at school and in initial vocational training are now added into this picture, a decisive modification arises for the proposition that the quality of initial transitions may become a less significant predictor for subsequent life chance. Research evidence unequivocally underlines that school failure and lack of vocational training together with insertion into second-sector employment and the experience of youth unemployment are highly likely to place individuals onto trajectories of labor-market marginalization and social exclusion in general. The reasons for this are complex, in that

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school failure itself continues to be strongly correlated with social background and origin; the best predictor for young people's own trajectories into marginalization and exclusion is having come from a highly disadvantaged family"1 (Paugam, 1996; Room, 1995). A democratization of risk for the majority is therefore accompanied by an intensification of social polarization that places a minority on the wrong side of a widening gap in life chances, a gap that is characterized by cumulative disadvantage and that is increasingly difficult to bridge. The quality of initial transitions between education and employment remains one of the critical markers of that divide, and insofar as benchmarks of achievement are generally pressured upwards without corresponding changes in school organization and pedagogy, the generation of social exclusion through education underachievement and failure will continue. In sum, although poor-quality initial transitions are likely to remain negative predictors of employment and career chances across the whole period of active life, satisfactory initial transitions are likely to provide less of an "insurance policy" in this respect. In a curious way, we might propose that a "feminization" of transitions biogaphies is on the horizon (Chisholm, 1996; Kriiger, 1994). This term summarizes a cluster of features that until now have characterized women's education-employment relations and worklives: level for level, poorer transition outcomes in terms of the exchange values of qualifications on the labor market, higher risk of underemployment and unemployment in most contexts and countries, nonlinear employment and career progression patterns, greater openness to lifelong learning practices and to the idea of changes in direction during active life, and the development of personal and social competencies that are typically more amenable to improvization and rapid response to unpredictabilities and contingencies. In this context, existing transitions systems look increasingly anachronistic. Where such systems can no longer effectively guide, control, or predict outcomes (as in the formula "formal education and training, appropriately selected and provided, results in corresponding employment on a secure basis and, for the good achievers, career advancement"), their logic becomes redundant - above all, for those expected, cajoled, or forced to pass through their machinery. Young people may and perhaps must, - continue to absolve the ritual performances involved, but they no longer need to believe in their efficacy (and indeed, it could well be risky to do so).4 On the contrary, they must gain access to and acquire competence for a "second system" - effectively a communication

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network - in which they learn to play a gameboard whose configurations change with every move. What kinds of knowledge and skills underly and are required by such a transitions game? Cohen and Gomm's (1987) role-playing board game (1987) for young people, "Livelihoods/' was developed by youth workers and education practitioners in inner London as a realistic simulation of decision making about transition routes from school to work; its currency was "street creds." Today, the street is turning into a data highway - a virtual labyrinth - and the creds have a rapidly declining half-life. Where does that leave youth transitions, from a life-course perspective? Changing Youth Transitions and Life-Course Perspectives The 1980s were a period of renewal in youth studies, one enriched by the emergence, perhaps for the first time, of genuinely transnational problematics in the European context. This dynamic has continued into the 1990s.5 The "first wave" of the renewal process was a crisis response to the collapse of youth labor markets at the close of the 1970s. Its problematic was quite specifically that of youth unemployment. Empirical research in northwestern Europe studied "blocked" and "broken" transitions to adulthood, but with linear and sequential life-course patterns as the normative conceptual baseline. Where young people could not find stable employment (whether preceded by formal training or not, given the diversity of conventional transition systems in European countries), their access to full economic and social independence was constrained, with knock-on effects in other areas of their lives (household and family formation, patterns of social participation, freedom of movement, and lifestyle). Under this kind of model of the life course, the youth phase is conceptualized as a series of milestones and tasks that are completed more or less one after another, one in which securing paid work occupies a key position in the process.6 There had always been problems with this kind of conceptual framework: There were obviously individuals and groups whose lives did not match the normative expectations that had been carried over, unquestioned, into sociological discourse on the life course. Until the 1980s, these "atypical" patterns were effectively treated as deviant or deficient. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, much of the Anglo-American literature on education and occupational transitions from the 1950s onward was quite explicit in this respect: Minority-group and lower-class men, together with almost all women, were simply "not up to standard."

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The poverty of theories that could adequately integrate the life patterns of the majority of the population had not gone unnoticed, most particularly by feminist researchers. It was not until young men generally began to have serious problems in meeting the tasks and milestones of youth transitions between education and employment that the mainstream youth studies community (as well as government policy making) started to raise more fundamental questions about the social construction of youth transitions altogether, however. Clearly, not all young men began to experience transition difficulties to the same extent, in the same ways, and at the same time. Precisely which groups triggered research and policy concern is an interesting question. Certainly, young workingclass men have historically prompted political and public anxiety over civic and moral disorder when their time is seen not to be sufficiently productively occupied, whether gainfully or in their free time. (See Pearson, 1983, for a British account; for a comparable Canadian account that, in contrast, considers the moral panic that accompanied young women's entry into employment and urban life at the turn of the century, see Strange, 1995). Furthermore, British youth research that began to address the problem of youth unemployment and its effects from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s paid much more attention to young white working-class men than to any other group, feminist revanches notwithstanding. (For a summary, see Chisholm, 1990; for an extended account of Anglo-American youth research altogether, see Griffin, 1993). It is arguable, however, that major policy measures with significant funding to respond to transition difficulties gained momentum only once it became clear that many "ordinary kids" who were neither unqualified nor necessarily from lower-working-class backgrounds were affected. Be that as it may, from the mid-1980s, a resurgence of interest in life-course theory and research took hold (Heinz, 1991a, 1991b, 1992). Together with the analysis of gender-specificity and the life course, it was the attempt to understand the social deconstruction of the youth phase (or alternatively, reconstruction; see Krahn & Lowe, chapter 11 this volume) that fueled the "second wave" of renewal in contemporary youth studies. It is worth mentioning here that the framing of the new problematics has not notably been European in any inclusive or mutually interrogative sense of the term, They have been primarily framed within northwestern European social and economic realities and discourse traditions; it is only quite recently that southern European realities and analyses have begun to make their own transnational impact. There are no good reasons for this relative neglect, but the potential parallels with "gender blindness"

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are instructive. With persistent and very high rates of youth unemployment, with labor markets that can be structured in ways wholly alien to northern European eyes, how do young people growing up in much of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece envisage, construct, and manage their lives? Some of the most imaginative contributions to life-course theory and research currently come from these parts of Europe, where the material exigencies and the cultural framings of youth transitions have never corresponded well to dominant sociological conceptualizations. Similar observations potentially apply to postsocialist youth studies in central and eastern Europe, where institutional and political framings of youth transitions have collapsed like a house of cards. It is here, more than anywhere else in Europe, where studies of the Restructuring and ^standardization of educationemployment transitions are at the top of the agenda.7 The renewal process in the study of youth transitions has moved into a "third wave," in which the social construction of the life course itself is implicated in the attempt to describe what are everywhere judged to be fundamental changes in the advanced economies - to describe, in effect, the transition to reflexive modernity (Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994). Characteristically, life-course structuring appears to be positioned in a tension field between simultaneous differentiation and homogenization processes across biographical and social time and space. Differentiation processes would include the thesis that a new life-course phase (called postadolescence or young adulthood) between youth and adulthood is crystallizing into personal and social visibility. Homogenization processes would include the idea that transition patterns between education, training, and the labor market are converging, for example, between young women and young men, or between different parts of Europe. For these two examples - and this is, once more, characteristic - both the extending horizon and the increasingly contingent quality of the status passages between youth and adulthood find their origins in the nature of changing equations between education and employment. Long-term cultural changes toward the individualization of subjectivity and biography are seen at least to accompany these processes, although, as ever, the extent of the relative autonomy between cultural and economic change remains in dispute. Finally, contemporary demographic change is refiguring both biographical horizons and intergenerational divisions of labour. As various commentators have pointed out, longer life expectancy means that people do not have to rush to get everything done by the time they are 40-something (except, perhaps, having children, in the case of women, but biotechnology is pushing back this barrier too). Higher numbers and proportions

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of older people might also mean, for example, that grandparenting could (in some sense: once again) replace or complement parenting as far as childcare/preschool socialization and education is concerned. And, of course, formal education and training is mainly predicated upon young people as learners. This is no longer appropriate, in view of a more general reorientation towards lifelong learning, as noted earlier. In effect, the simultaneity of differentiation and homogenization processes coincides with a rising permeability of what have become, in modern societies to date, traditional boundaries between life phases and their corresponding activities and normative subjectiveies. This is at the heart of the social reconstruction of youth transitions as understood in this chapter: The core problematic has become the contextualization of youth transitions themselves within the broader study of transitions and social change across the life course. The intention is not to deny the legitimacy or rationality of specialist youth studies but rather to suggest that the emergent features of youth transitions can be better appreciated, theoretically and empirically, if they are related more systematically and explicitly to the changing features of the social life course as a whole. Heinz (1991c, p. 13), in drawing all these kinds of features of change together, described modern life planning in risk societies as the construction of a "patchwork in time." Liebau (1993, p. 94) concluded that for ever longer periods of time, transitory and status inconsistent states are normal experiences. The conclusion would be that an improved understanding of youth transitions demands a reconceptualization of the social life course that dispenses with linearity and unidimensionality - as encapsulated, for example, in Machado Pais' use (1996) of the term yo-yo generation. In the interim, the term patchworkers has entered the vocabulary of both policy makers and - arguably more so, though some treat this fact with reserved suspicion - progressive-minded employers. Patchworking evokes the curricula vitae of what would once have been described in transitions studies as normative outliers people whose lives do not fit the expected patterns of biographical structuring, who do not follow the recipes. Of course, the patchworkers everyone is thinking of are the creative supercooks who never use recipes but still serve up winning dinners every time. The failing candidates sink without trace; for most of us, learning how to use recipes imaginatively helps considerably. On that basis, the proposal here is that successful patchworkers in time need access to "networks in space" and the knowledge to navigate them autonomously. These are the core skills and competencies referred to at the close of the previous section,

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and I do not think their heightening significance is solely a function of intensifying competition for the scarce resource of secure, good-quality employment and incremental career advancement, as Brown's account (1995) might be held to suggest. They correspond to the idea that macrolevel changes in advanced societies and economies have implications for modalities of thought and knowledge production, and thus for social organization and social action. From Systems to Networks Gibbons et al. (1994) argued that the ways in which legitimate knowledge is produced are undergoing a modal transformation. What they call "Mode 1" knowledge - what we generally call science - is in fact derived from Newtonian physics, is fundamentally cognitive, is discipline-based, and is produced in an institutionalized context. "Mode 2" knowledge - the emergent modality - is created in a broader, transdisciplinary framework that takes cognizance of the social and economic context in which it is produced and used. This kind of knowledge constitutes a response to identified problems, and it is essentially transient in nature in that it is produced across a variety of sites. Of particular interest here is the following; Even though problem contexts are transient and problem solvers highly mobile, communications networks tend to persist and the knowledge contained in them is available to enter into new configurations ... [It is a] capacity on the move ... [in which] communications in ever new configurations are crucial ... [These are] maintained partly through formal and partly through informal channels (Gibbons et al., 1994, pp. 5ff).

Under this emerging modality, teams change according to context and demands, but these changes are not centrally coordinated by any particular organization or authority. Instead, they are prompted by problems that emerge in specific times and places. New organizational forms are needed to fit these characteristics: In particular, they call for a lesser degree of institutionalization. The key competence is that of transferable experience, which is operationalized through an organization and communication matrix that allows further groups to be formed as new problems emerge. Communications at institutional levels, Gibbons et al. (1994, pp. 48, 75) add, tend to be bypassed because of the need for rapid, flexible responses to problems. In sum: The notions of competence become redefined and boundaries of organisations tend to become blurred. Problem solvers, problem identifiers and strategic brokers move back and forth. Knowledge resources are held in

310 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives different organisations and can be shifted between environments which are at one moment competitive and at another collaborative ... Education and training in advanced industrial societies have the paradoxical task of preparing people to perform difficult jobs competently, while bringing them to accept that they will have to change their jobs and skills quickly and often ... To travel fast one must travel light, in skills as well as attitudes. The only skill that does not become obsolete is the skill of learning new skills. They take the position that Mode 2 knowledge production (the evidence for whose existence remains admittedly fragmented at present) is the emergent modality and will become increasingly widespread. They identify both the "oversupply" of well-qualified individuals (for whom the availability of Mode 1-oriented jobs has declined since the late 1970s) and the communication opportunities provided by new technologies (which enable virtual mobility) as the key factors behind the shift. Stehr (1994) took a similar view but attributed more weight to directly economic and technological factors. Access to and use of knowledge is becoming the constitutive principle of the social formation (hence the term knowledge society, in distinction to industrial or feudal society, for example); and the dominance of specifically scientific knowledge paradoxically generates an increasing contingency of social action. Following the reasoning of Touraine (1986,1988), Stehr (1994, p. 231) opened up an explicitly optimistic prospect: "Knowledge societies offer the unprecedented means to empower social actors/' Individual citizens "know'7 more (as ever, through education and training, but broadened and enhanced through access to new information and communications technologies), whereas the complexity and unpredictability of social life makes control more difficult and thus tends to disempower macroinstitutional agencies. The optimism may not be generally shared, but the problem of creeping institutional paralysis in the face of economies' and societies' moving too rapidly to catch hold of is plausible, so that "one of the better images symbolizing and summing up the nature of the change from industrial to knowledge society would be to refer to the former as a community organised and controlled in a pyramid-like fashion, while the latter type of society more closely resembles delicate mosaics without definite centres" (Stehr, 1994, p. 228). For the purposes of this chapter, the important point in these kinds of analyses is the assertion that institutionally organized knowledge and resources stand in increasing contradiction with the demands and realities of emergent economic and social formations. In effect, Mode 1

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knowledge corresponds to systems-oriented modalities of production, whereas Mode 2 knowledge corresponds to network-oriented modalities of production. Systems are closed, networks are open; systems are prestructured, networks are flexibly structured; systems position their subjects, individuals can position themselves within networks; systems operate on technical rationality principles, networks work through communicative rationality; and so forth.8 Essentially, systems are predicated on a supply-side logic, in which it is the providers/managers who possess useful knowledge and the users who must be guided, selected, and placed. Networks, on the other hand, are oriented toward a demand-side logic that seeks to explicate, develop, and use the competencies that individuals and their situated histories bring with them. By way of empirical illustration of these points, this chapter concludes by signaling some of the problems of present transitions systems through two recent policy studies in the field of vocational guidance and counseling. From Supply to Demand: Vocational Guidance and Counseling Services According to the Young Europeans 1990 Eurobarometer survey (CEC, 1991, Table 6.6),9 at least three fifths of 15 to 24-year-old employed (full-time, part-time, or through a job placement scheme) respondents from Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain found their present job through their parents or friends of the family. This proportion fell to one fifth or less for only Danish, Dutch, and West German respondents. The scarcity of employment opportunities for young people is, on the whole, much more severe in southern Europe than in northern Europe, and in southern Europe, the provision of public advice, information, and placement services for those making the transition between education, training, and the labor market remains patchy. Together with longstanding traditions of clientelism and familism in the economic and social organization of these parts of Europe, such figures are predictable (Leccardi, 1997). These traditional arrangements and means of securing paid work are not modern networks in the sense described above; they are more like community-based and particularistic transitions systems, although, it should be noted, they are highly communicative systems that rely on webs of personal relations. In those parts of Europe where such public services do exist on a systematic basis, however, they are not necessarily used to the extent we

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might expect, and they are used much more frequently by some groups rather than others. In Belgium, for example, the Eurobarometer survey found that whereas only 28% of the employed respondents had found their jobs through family or friends, no more than 15% mentioned job centers, employment agencies, schools, or training centers either. The largest proportion, one third, had found their jobs by directly contacting employers. The Belgian contribution to a recent CEDEFOP (European Center for the Promotion of Vocational Education and Training) study of vocational guidance and counselling services in all European Community countries (Chisholm, 1994) presented survey findings that confirmed these low usage rates. It also showed that young people of nonindigenous origin and nonnationals were more dependent than average on official guidance and placement services but were less likely to have found them useful (both in their own views and in consideration of their poorer employment positions).10 The German contribution to the CEDEFOP study looked specifically at studies of young women's use patterns and their levels of satisfaction with the services provided. The information available indicates that although young women use official vocational guidance and counseling services to a greater extent than do young men, they are less satisfied with the services they receive. A number of factors appear to be involved. First, women of all ages and situations are more likely to seek information and advice in general than are men. Women are more open to the idea of self-reflection, and they are more likely to judge themselves as needing assistance in planning and decision making. Second, women may expect more from the services they use; their standards and criteria are perhaps more demanding, in particular as far as professional human relations skills are concerned. Third, women's labor-market prospects offer less room for maneuvering to fit aspirations with expectations and outcomes; it is more likely that they will not be able to secure what they would prefer. This may be intensified when they sense that guidance counselors are not optimistic or are perhaps actively discouraging at the mention of nontraditional jobs and occupations they might be considering. In addition, young women with above-average education credentials and those with very poor school achievement levels are underrepresented among service users. Formal transitions systems seem to work best for the middle levels of education achievement and employment prospects; they seem to be modeled toward average profiles, one might say. This may never have been ideal; but where individualized modali-

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ties of life planning and transition biographies gain ground, this model becomes less and less effective for more and more people. The 1990 Eurobarometer survey data, for their part, show broadly similar patterns of job finding for West Germany as for Belgium: comparatively low levels of use of family and friends combined with high levels of contacting employers directly or through advertisements. One fifth of employed German respondents, however, had found their jobs through public employment agencies, a proportion matched only by Dutch and British respondents (whose direct contacts with employers had been far less significant). These kinds of differences reflect, in some measure, the differential state of member states' youth labor markets, but they also point to differently organized transitions systems. Ultimately, the picture is not so different from southern Europe: Universalism and personal action (contacting employers directly, responding to ads) may replace particularism and family action (kinship and community connections), yet jobs do not come via the formal employment services in either case, and information and advice services do not play a prominent role in the education-to-employment transition process as a whole.11 Perhaps the most striking figure of all from the Eurobarometer survey is that 34% of the East German respondents (compared with only 21% of the West Germans) had found their jobs with the help of their parents and family friends. By contrast, very few had done so via advertisements or the official employment services (compared with much higher figures for the West Germans). A "second system" in the form of a communication network based on personal relations - the only resource in abundant supply - clearly existed here as for other goods and services, enabling young people, in some measure at least, to circumvent inflexible and ineffective formal systems. It might be countered that institutionalized arrangements for managing and supporting education-to-employment transitions are bound to prove inflexible and ineffective for some kinds of individuals and groups, and that it is positively desirable that people may choose to take advantage of these or not, as they prefer. This presumes, however, that access to such services is genuinely equally distributed, that the quality of services provided responds to a broad spectrum of potential users, and that the results are effective in terms of training and employment outcomes. Both the CEDEFOP study of young Europeans' needs and demands for vocational guidance and counseling and a second similarly focused study of adult women returning to the employment after inter-

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ruption for family-related reasons (Chisholm, 1997b) conclude that this is not, by and large, the case. The evidence from the 12 national studies included in the CEDEFOP study indicated that providing better-quality and more effective services requires reconsidering their purposes, scope, methods, and contextualization altogether. Four dimensions for change were identified. First, active response to client demand, including outreach strategies, should take priority over the supply of predesigned services. Second, proactive and experiential methods of guidance and counseling offer greater scope for providing individualized services. Third, services will be more acceptable and effective where the relations between professionals and clients are as balanced as possible (recognizing, for example, that young people may well possess useful knowledge about training and employment opportunities, acquired from a variety of sources). Finally, vocational guidance and counseling services will become more attractive and productive where they integrate their activities into the personal and social life contexts of their user populations. In particular, this implies the development of networking, liaison, and cooperation across the full range of formal and informal contexts in which young people negotiate the transition process (e.g., mentoring, see Hamilton & Hamilton, Chapter 8 in this volume). Women returners, for their part, are an increasingly heterogeneous as well as a rapidly expanding group. They are also making transitions into the labor market, increasingly frequently in various combinations with education and training participation (and sometimes these are initial transitions, which can occur independently of age and generation). Women are much more eager to train, retrain, and renew or upgrade their qualifications and experience. Their demand for information and advice quite clearly outstrips the supply, and once more, that which is provided is not always appropriate to their needs. In some cases, they are ineligible to use formal services at all, on the grounds of, for example, age, family circumstance, employment status and history, citizenship, and residency status. Good-quality and women-friendly services are heavily oversubscribed, however. Women's requests for advice and information are generally multifaceted, which reflects the complexities of their personal circumstances and biographies: Women's lives do not, by and large, fit the standard normative patterns that inform the logic of transitions systems. In overall terms, the solution is the development of more open and holistic approaches to guidance and counseling contexts and their practices. The institutionalized nature of mainstream agencies

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poses problems of access and flexibility of response. This explains the rapid growth of grassroot and noninstitutionalized services, including women-only projects. These provide targeted flexibility of service at a local level and with an open-door, low-threshold access policy. They also place great emphasis on the development of communication networks across the full range of human services, enabling teams to converge together on demand to address a specific problem for specific individuals and groups. Here, the similarities with Mode 2 knowledge production are evident. Nevertheless, women's seemingly better grasp of an arguably emergent modality has not so far paid off in terms of notably improved labor-market chances and distribution. This may simply mean that some closely textured empirical research to explore this whole area is called for. In any event, Mode 2 is still a minority modality in terms of social power relations; I am prompted to add that even though knowledge may be power, the two have never been synonymous. Different kinds of knowledge are invested with quite different kinds and amounts of power, whereas relations between knowledge and power are differently constructed according to the identity of the subject representing that relation in any one instance. Both gender and generation are significant identity markers in this respect. Analogously, although we might admire the personal initiative and survival skills of many of the young marginalized and excluded (whether in the Mezziogiorno or in Liverpool12), it is of little comfort to know that they seem to derive small benefit from the kinds of services that are intended to help in the management of education-to-employment transitions. One hypothesis might run that their relative success (without applying absolute definitions of what that means) can be attributed, in part, to the ability to apply Mode 2-type strategies to making their way through the transition to active life (whether through employment as such or other means of economic survival). Once more, this calls for some systematic research, in which the operationalization of what could be meant by Mode 2-type strategies would constitute a central task. Theoretically, it reminds us that modalities of knowledge production do not simply emerge from nowhere but are all capable of being socially generated at any time. The salient question is much rather one of determining the conditions under which particular modalities become dominant rather than complementary, subordinate, or submerged - and who has access to learning how to use powerful modalities effectively.

316 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

Conclusion This chapter has argued that the social construction of the life course is increasingly marked by internal permeability, fluidity, and recursivity; this might be described as the sociological feminization of biography. Changing relations between education/training and employment/career, alongside cultural individualization and demographic shifts, are expressed in longer-term life-planning horizons and higher levels of biographical contingency. The rapidity of economic and technological change will probably demand, for more and more people, commitment to education and training on a continuous, lifelong basis. This contrasts with the "oneway, one-chance, and front-loaded" logic of present education-toemployment transition channels. Coupled with what appears to be the inevitability of more flexible employment patterns, it is now possible that initial transitions between school and paid work will gradually lose some of their longer-term significance for the direction and quality of biographical trajectories. Life-course uncertainties and risks are likely to rise for all people, but their distribution over biographical time may become more evenly balanced and ultimately fall across a longer span of active life. The key competencies for individuals will therefore become the ability and the motivation to learn and relearn continuously, together with the flexibility to respond proactively and on demand to less predictable tasks and problems in a range of different contexts with changing groups of colleagues. The patchworkers, "ideal-type" active citizens in this scenario, will need access to communication networks and the knowledge of how to turn the resources they offer to good use in life worlds where education-to-employment transitions effectively become stable, longterm features. Institutionally organized knowledge and resources are not well suited to these developments. The established arrangements for managing and supporting youth transitions that exist in much of Europe are becoming anachronistic: They take the form of closed systems that design and provide services from supply-side perspectives. Open systems operating on a demand-side logic would be more appropriate - that is, communication networks that enable more autonomous participation and mobility between problems, sites, and personnel. Vocational guidance and counseling services offer one example of this lack of fit between individual needs and demands and conventional institutional forms of provision.

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Many young people do not use or value these services, and many find their way through education-to-employment transitions without (and even despite) their assistance. Perhaps it would now be sensible - and possibly even more cost-effective - to look at what young people actually do; discover thereby what kinds of information, advice, and support they would find most useful; and then design and provide targeted services on that basis. This is, after all, one way of ensuring that institutions keep up with individuals. Notes 1. This chapter represents the personal professional views of the author, does not necessarily reflect European Union policy positions and does not engage the European Commission in any field of its activities. 2. Take, for example, the following: "until now, the developmental dynamic of the code of individuality has been integrated in the institutionalized structuring of the life course. In the future, it is one's own individuality that takes the place of institutionalized structures - or, to put it more accurately, the permanent search for one's own individuality." (Kohli, 1989, p. 268; translated by L.C.). 3. This should not lead to a static view of the consequences of poor initial transitions: Failure at one point in time can still be followed by success at later date, failure and success are not absolute constructions to be imposed solely by observers of other people's lives. Interim outcomes are snapshots of processes that continue to unfold in different ways over the biographical span, even if statistically speaking, the probabilities point much more sharply in some directions rather than in others. 4. A certain "empty instrumentalism" coupled with an intense search for meaning and self-actualization, as described in recent hermeneutic youth research, could be taken as an indicator (e.g., Helsper, 1991; Zoll, et al., 1989). 5. CYRCE (1995) provides a digest of the field's main networks and literature. 6. The British-dominated youth cultural studies school had, of course, cogently argued for the independent sociological significance of youth as cultural expression, within which strategies of resistance to social hegemonies could be observed and analyzed (see Chisholm, 1997a). The concept of transitions, whether between school and work or whatever, did not play a central role in perspectives that focused on the internal features of youth cultures, whether seen as generational or as universal phenomena. But the pioneering theory and research had taken place in the 1970s, before youth labour markets collapsed: employment or the lack of it was simply not the core problematic at that time, but rather the production and reproduction of class and gender relations (ethnicity/race was added much later on). 7. See the range of contributions included in Cavalli and Galland, 1993; Chisholm, Biichner, Kriiger and du Bois-Reymond, 1995; Chisholm and Liebau, 1993; Machado Pais and Chisholm, 1997; Youth and Policy, 1994. Preel and Le Bras (1995) conducted a secondary analysis of survey and research studies in which they proposed two contrasting models of youth transitions in Europe: southern prolongation versus northern autonomy. 8. Organizational theorists will immediately contend that systems can take open as well as closed forms and that they are not necessarily always or wholly reactive or inert in their response to the changing contexts and demands. This is evidently so (as noted early on in this paper), just as it can be argued that dichotomies such as those used here

318 From Education to Work: Cross-National Perspectives

9.

10.

11.

12.

to distinguish between systems and networks polarize and oversimplify complex realities. Real systems and networks operate between the poles of such dichotomies, which simply fulfill the basic task of analytical description. An empirical distribution of real and random examples is nevertheless likely to produce a clustering toward the expected polarities of the continuum. It thus seems reasonable to distinguish between the two clusters terminologically. Eurobarometer public opinion surveys are conducted regularly under the auspices of the European Commission. Respondents make up a statistically representative sample (and not a panel) of community citizens 18 years of age and older and drawn from all member states. Standard items are joined by blocks of questions on particular themes of topical interest or of relevance to particular areas of policy action in which the European Commission engages. The Young Europeans surveys belong to this latter category, and in this case, a supplementary sample drew in respondents 15 to 17 years of age who were not included in the main survey sample. To date, three youth surveys have been conducted: in 1983,1987 and 1990. The questions asked in the latter two surveys were very similar, so that comparisons across a 3-year period are possible (although few genuinely significant changes emerge, and none of these are relevant to the data included in this chapter). The fourth youth survey was scheduled to take place during 1997, but few questions were to be be repeated: in the years that have elapsed since the third survey, not only have young people's circumstances and concerns changed their complexion, but policy concerns have also evolved, especially in relation to the implications of European integration processes for young people. Young people on trajectories of marginalization and exclusion are very poorly served by transitions services, as a study of 16 to 18-year-olds in South Glamorgan United Kingdom described with brutal clarity (Istance, Rees, & Williamson, 1994). Although most of those studied had had at least occasional contact with education, training, career advice, and youth service agencies, they had gained the impression that no one cared about them. The accounts of both young people and professionals across the spectrum of official agencies concerned with youth and social services also confirm a piecemeal and unstructured interagency practice at the level of the individual clientuser. The need for improved networking and liaison was undisputed. Harvey Krahn and Graham Lowe (1991) have noted, in response to these findings, that the reliance on informal networks and personal contacts by young European job seekers resembles the typical job-seeking behavior of North American youth. They raise the question of whether this empirical similarity is producing a convergence of policy perspectives on respective sides of the Atlantic: Although North American policy makers are calling for a greater measure of institutionalization of their school-to-work transitions systems, European policy makers are seeking to promote individual responsibility and initiative on the part of young people themselves rather than looking to "more schemes and systems" as solutions to easing transitions. These are only two contrasting examples among the many possible, but they are not coincidental. The Italian contribution to the CEDEFOP study referred to earlier described the technical and social skills young people in southern Italy had acquired and were using to survive despite the lack of regular employment opportunities and despite their formal status as unqualified school leavers. The Anglo-German studies cited earlier (in footnote 2) included Liverpool as an economically depressed large British city offering poor transitions chances to its young people, but the findings illustrated their confidence, optimism, and initiative in negotiating the obstacles they faced in search of personally satisfactory solutions.

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Index

Academic skills, hiring practices and, 242-243 Adolescent part-time work, 111-148 academic performance and, 113-114 academic self-esteem and, 120-121 adult adaptation and, 112-113 distribution of transition markers, 123-128 early family formation and, 126-128,136-137 education and work status cooccurence, 125-126 low-intensity vs. high-intensity work, 121-122 parenthood and, 128 patterns of working and, 119-120, 134-138 precocious development syndrome and, 115 role adaptation and, 113-115 social background measures, 146-148 Youth Development Study data, 138-145 Age, defining adulthood and, 47 Agricultural skilled occupations, 43 Apprenticeships, 194-213. See also Subbacculaureate labor market bringing young and old together, 198-199 certification and, 199-200 costs of, 209-210 demonstration project in U.S., 200-213 career paths and, 206-207 cross-national policy research implications, 212-213

employer commitment and, 209-210 implications of, 208-209 infrastructure and, 210-211 social and personal competence and, 205, 207 technical competence and, 205 work-based learning types, 211-212 employers role and, 199 European, 197-200 in Germany. See Germany, apprenticeship system in identifying promising workers and, 249 motivation and, 198 reemployment and, 95 unemployment and, 91-93 Aptitude, 177 Biographical action orientations, 226-230 definitions of, 227-228 education level and, 229 gender differences and, 228-229 occupation and, 229-230 region differences and, 228 theory of, 226-227 Biographical control competence, 102-104 Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction, 226 British Cohort Study 70-84 Canada labor-market restructuring in, 266-269 multiple life sphere study, 149-170 345

346 Index Canada (continued) postmodern values and labor-market problems, 260-283 social and geographical mobility, 25-44 unemployment in, 267-268, 280 vocational training in, 85-86 young adults' multiple transitions, 46-63 Career, cultural meaning of, 8 Career fixation, 228 Career mobility. See also Inter generational occupational mobility factors in, 29-35 patterns in, 43 Career routes, literacy and numeracy and, 72 Carl Perkins Act, 190 Charismatic skills, 68 Cohabitating relationships. See also Marriage adolescent work activities and, 133-134 Common sense, 177 Community colleges. See Subbacculaureate labor market Company identification, 228 Computer literacy, 68 Contacts, 235-236 Coping strategies, 102-104 Corporate restructuring, 302 Counseling services, 311-315 "Credential society/' 6 Democratic imperative, 285 Democratization of risk, 303-304 Denmark, apprenticeship system in, 197, 200-201 Deskilling, 44 Diploma disease, 292 Early family formation, 136-137 Earnings, education level and, 195-196 Economic changes, occupational opportunity and, 26

Economic imperative, 285 Educational expectations, 56-57 Educational level. See also Postsecondary education; Subbacculaureate labor market attitude belief and, 276-279 biographical action orientations and, 229 career mobility by, 33-35 career opportunities and, 218-219 earning and in U.S., 195-196 first time jobs and, 31-33 linkage to employment in Germany, 107 long-term impacts of, 33 multiple life sphere activity and, 154-165 reemployment and, 95 trends regarding, 67 unemployment and, 91-93 Education attitudes class, gender, and education attainment and, 276-279 postmodern values and, 274-276 Employability skills, 68-70 Employee needs, qualifications and, 65 Employer commitment, apprenticeships and, 209-210 Employers, hiring practices of. See Hiring practices Employment. See also Unemployment adolescent work activities and, 130-133 basic skills and, 71-73 flexibility, 262-263 labor-market changes and, 66-67 social exclusion and, 67-70 tests, 245 work-related skills and, 73-77 work-related training and, 77-78 Europe, youth transition systems in, 298-317 European apprenticeships, 197-200 European Center for the Promotion of Vocational Education and Training study, 312-315

Index Experience, in subbacculaureate labor hiring, 181-185 Family action, in job seeking, 313 Federal Institute for Vocational Education, 210 "Feminization" of transitions biographies, 304 First time jobs, 30-33 Flexible transition systems, 6, 301-302 "Floundering period/' 4 Forgotten Half, The, 195, 212

Foundation skills, 177 Free-market approach, to school-towork, 6-7 Full-time jobs, young adult attitudes towards, 51-52 Gender activity patterns nongraduates, 161-163 nonuniversity graduates, 159-161 postsecondary education nonparticipants and, 163-165 university graduates, 157-159 actual transitions by, 58 adolescent part-time work activities and, 128-134,136 attitude belief and, 276-279 attitudes and postmodernist prospective, 274-275 basic skills and, 71-73 biographical action orientations and, 228-229 educational expectations by, 57 intergenerational occupational mobility and, 36-38 labor-force participation and, 59 in life-course theory, 28 marriage expectations by, 55 occupational distributions by, 32 out-of-sequence transitions and, 52-54 parenting expectations by, 56 part-time work and, 168 role experience attitudes, 50-52

347 skill demands and, 69-70 skill polarization and, 291 social exclusion and, 82-84 unemployment and, 59, 80-81, 96-97 vocational guidance and counseling services use, 312-315 work-related skills and, 73-77 work-related training and, 77-78, 82 General equivalency diploma (GED), 249 Generation X values, 260, 265, 269-270, 279. See also Values, postmodern Geographical mobility, life-course transitions and, 28-29, 40-42, 43 Germany apprenticeship system in biographical action orientations and, 226-230 economic shifts and, 215-216 education level and career opportunities, 218-219 entry into labor market and, 215 job stability and, 221 occupational comparison, 221-226 overview of, 197-200 social exclusion and, 84-85 social inequality and, 216-217 transition to employment and, 219-226 unemployment and, 221 youth unemployment and, 215 job-entry patterns in, 214-231 social transformation of, 87-107 biographical discontinuties and, 102-105 dual training system in, 106-107 modernization process and, 106 occupational mobility and, 98-101 transitions from employment to unemployment, 91-98 unemployment rates, 90

348 Index Great Britain education and employment in, 284-296 employment studies, 65-86 labor market changes in, 264 High school diploma, 178 High-tech industries, 287-288, 302-303 Hiring practices academic skills and, 242-243 apprenticeships and, 249 interviewing and, 244-245 mistrust of academic information, 243 newspaper advertising, 246-247 school help in, 246-248 Hiring standards, in subbacculaureate labor, 181-185 Homemaking roles, 58 Horizontal skills, 68 Income attainment, adolescent work activities and, 133 Income distribution changes, in Canada, 268 Income inequality, 293-295 Individualization attitudes towards, 274-276 structural change and, 262-264 of subjectivity and biography, 307 Individualized routes to employment, 66 Industry-led workforce development strategy, 288, See also Technocratic model Informality, in subbacculaureate labor hiring, 180-181 Infrastructure, apprenticeship, 210-211 Inquiry into Income and Wealth,

293-294 Institutional networks and work entry. See also Hiring practices employers practices and, 241-249 future possibilities, 256-258 Japanese system, 239-241

low-income youths and, 235-236 signaling models and, 236-239 teacher attitudes towards, 252-256 work-bound students attitudes toward, 249-252 Intergenerational occupational mobility, 36-38 Interpersonal skills, 177 Interviews, 244-245 work-bound student performance in, 249-250 Japan, institutional networking system, 239-241 Job-creation programs, 6 Job entitlement attitudes, 274-275 Jobless recovery, 266 Knowledge society, 310 Labor-force participation, 59 Labor-market changes in, 66-67 education linkage with, 35 literacy and numeracy and, 72-73 supply and demand, 303 Language of education, industrialization of, 284-285 Leaving home, normative sequencing and, 62 Life-course perspective changing, 305-309 mobility research in, 27-29 transitions and institutions in, 3-7 Life expectancy, 307-308 Life-sphere participation, multiple. See Multiple life spheres Lifetime job concept, 9 Literacy, 68, 71-73 Livelihoods, 305

Location, in life-course theory, 28 Low-income youths, job entry and. See Hiring practices; Institutional networks Marriage adolescent work activities and, 126-128

Index education level and, 166, 277 employment chances and, 97-98 gender attitudes and, 277 individual expectations and, 54-55 normative sequencing and, 61 ordering of, 52-54 postmodern attitudes and, 275 social status and, 277 young adults attitudes towards, 51, 52 Migration patterns, 28 Minority groups employment tests and, 245 hiring practices towards. See Hiring practices Mobility research, in life-course perspective, 27-29 Models of education and training contrasting views, 285-286 language of education and, 284-285 polarization model, 290-295 technocratic model, 286-290 Motivation, employment and, 177 Movers, 40-42 Multiple life spheres, 149-170 activity patterns, 154-157 for nongraduates, 161-163 for nonparticipants, 163-165 for nonuniversity graduates, 159-161 for university graduates, 157-159 expectations and, 168-169 family patterns, 166,167 sociotemporal patterns and, 151-152 sociotemporal rigidification, 165-170 transition context, 152-153 transition space conceptualization, 149-150 National Child Development Study (NCDS), 70-84 National Targets for Education and Training (U.K.), 286 National vocational qualifications (NVQs), 67 Nation at Risk, A, 195,196

349 Networking, 236-237 Network-oriented modalities of production, 311 Nonparticipants, postsecondary education, 163-165,166 Nonuniversity graduate, multiple life sphere activity, 159-161 No penalty attitude, 251 Normative attitudes out-of-sequence transitions and, 52-54 role experiences and, 50-52 Numeracy, 68, 71-73 Occupation cultural meaning of, 8 preferred biographical action orientation and, 229-230 Occupational mobility, in East Germany, 98-102 Occupational structure career and social mobility and, 25-26 intergenerational occupational mobility and, 37-38 "Off time" transitions, 47 "On time" transitions, 47 Optimizing chances, 227-228 Out-of-sequence transitions, young adults attitudes towards, 52-54 Parenthood adolescent work activities and, 128 early family formation, 136-137 individual expectations and, 55-56 normative sequencing and, 61 ordering of, 52-54 young adults attitudes towards, 51, 52 Part-time employment adolescent cohabitating relationships and, 133-134 future employment and, 130-133 future income attainment and, 133 postsecondary education and, 129-130

350 Index Part-time employment (continued) in Canada, 266-267 nongraduates, 161-163 nonuniversity graduates and, 159-161 postsecondary education nonparticipants and, 163-165 university graduates and, 157 Patchworkers, 308 Permeable employment systems, 65 Personal action, in job seeking, 313 Personal competence, apprenticeship systems and, 205 Polarization model, employment and education, 290-295 Political attitudes class, gender, and education attainment and, 276-279 postmodern values and, 274-276 Postadolescence life-course phase, 307 Postsecondary education adolescent work activities and, 129-130 demand for, 26 expansion of, 7 individual expectations and, 56-57 multiple life sphere activity and, 157-159,165-166 young adults attitudes towards, 51, 52 Postsecondary part-time work, 130, 157 Precocious development, 115 Promotion, in subbacculaureate labor market, 185 Public employment agencies, 313 Risk, democratization of, 303-304 Risk Society, 262

Role experience, normative attitudes towards, 50-54 Rural /urban origins, life-course transitions and, 39^40 School referrals, 246-248 School relevance, student perceptions on, 250-252

School-to-Work Opportunities Act, 190, 211 Self-employment, 44, 228 Service industries, 268-269 Service-oriented economies, 7,302-303 Signaling model, of school-to-work transition, 236-239 employers attitudes and, 241-249 teachers attitudes and, 252-256 work-bound students attitudes and, 249-252 Skills employment, 68-70 basic skills, 71-73 as foundation of employability, 81-82 as human and social capital, 79-81 interpersonal skills, 177 social exclusion and, 82-84 subbacculaureate labor market and, 175-178 work-related skills, 73-77 polarization and, 290-295 class divisions, 291 education value and, 292-293 gender divisions, 291 income inequality, 293-295 upskilling or deskilling, 291 Social attitudes. See also Socioeconomic status class, gender, and education attainment and, 276-279 postmodern values and, 274-276 Social competence, apprenticeship systems and, 205, 207 Social mobility, problematic nature of, 25 Socioeconomic status adolescent part-time work and, 120 attitude belief and, 276-279 effects on education and occupation, 216-217 geographical mobility and, 40-42 in life-course theory, 27 life-course transitions and, 38-40, 42^3

Index measures of and work experience, 146-148 skill polarization and, 291-295 social exclusion, 67-70, 82-84 social inequality, 216-217 social polarization and. See Polarization model; Skills, polarization and Sociotemporal patterns, 151-152 Sociotemporal rigidification, 165-170 Stayers, 40-42 Stratification, 25-26 Structural change, individualization and, 262-264 Student perceptions on education, 250-252 Subbacculaureate labor market, 171-192 cooperative education and, 192 cyclical nature of, 180-181 education as factor in, 181-185 employment skills and aptitude and common sense, 177-178 basic skills, 178 job-specific skills, 175-176 motivation and interpersonal skills, 177 hiring standards, 181-185 implications for education and training, 190-192 incentives for skill investment in, 189 informality of hiring in, 180-181 local nature of, 178-180 as part of labor force, 171 policy interventions and, 189-190 problems for employers in, 187-189 promotion, 185 student uncertainty in, 186-187 supply of individuals to, 172-173 wages and, 171-172 Systems-oriented modalities of production, 311 Teachers, job placement and, 252-256 matching students with jobs, 255

351 offering general information and exposure, 254 providing specific information, 254-255 providing warranties to employers, 255 referrals, 246-248 value of teachers7 responses, 256 Technical competence, apprenticeship systems and, 205 Technocratic model, employment and education, 286-290 Temporal regularity, environmental, 168-169. See also Multiple life spheres Temporary/contract labor market, 269 Transitional experiences actual, 57-60 individual expectations and, 54-57 normative attitudes and, 50-54 into and out of work and school, 59,60 sequencing of, 60-62 Transition space, conceptualization, 149-150 Transition systems, youth, 298-317 adaptation, flexibility, and change, 300-305 changing, 305-309 from systems to networks, 309-311 vocational guidance and counseling services, 311-315 Unemployment apprenticeship systems and, 215, 221 in Canada, 267-268, 280 nongraduates and, 161-163 nonuniversity graduates and, 159-161 postsecondary education nonparticipants and, 163-165 skill levels and, 79-81 strategies regarding, 9-10 transition in East Germany, 91-98 university graduates and, 157-158

352 Index United States adapting German apprenticeship in,194-213 adolescent part-time work in, 111-148 earning and education level, 195-196 high school graduation levels, 194 institutional networks and work entry, 235-259 secondary education completion rates, 194-195 subbaccalaureate labor market, 171-192 vocational training in, 85 Unskilled occupations, 43 Upskilling workforces, 66-67 Values, postmodern, 260-283 conclusions regarding, 281-282 education, social, and political attitudes and, 274-276 empirical questions, 264-266 impact of class, gender, and education attainment, 276-279 school-to-work transitions and, 271-274 structural change and individualization, 262-264 Vocation, cultural meaning of, 8 Vocational Education and Training (VET), 65, 66, 215, 217. See also Germany, apprenticeship system in

Vocational guidance, 311-315 Vocational insurance, 66 Vocational preparation systems, new labor markets and, 66-67 Wage benefits, of school placement help, 247 Wage-worker habitus, 228 Welfare-state policy, 6 Women issues. See Gender Worked-based learning, 211-212. See also Apprenticeships Work entry, institutional networks and. See Hiring practices; Institutional networks Work-related skills, 73-77. See also Skills Work-related training, 77-78 Work-study programs, 176 Young adulthood life-course phase, 307 Young Europeans 1990, 311

Youth Development Study (YDS). See also Adolescent part-time work employment and schooling findings, 116-117,138-145 Youth rebellion, 251 Youth Training Schemes (YTS), 67, 215 Yo-yo generation, 308