Social Mobility:

Education and social mobility

Jayantha Senevirathna

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: As a mid-career professional, looking for a lucky break, I have been called for interviews for four times since the dawn of this new millennium. Fascinatingly, all of my prospective employers or senior executives I came across with were all cheerful young men around early thirties.

As usual, I performed at my best chatting with ease, but to my utter dismay they never paid any attention to my neatly packed folder of educational certificates. First, as a prospective writer, it always was a questionnaire testing my abilities of separating wheat from the chaff, and then a friendly chat followed for some time.

Sometimes we discussed personal matters also. And, remarkably, they never wasted my time keeping me guessing on. Final outcome was obvious at the end of the discussing.

Why? Are they not interested in educational achievements? I sometimes came out with a heavy heart trying to answer such questions myself, but they all were educated young men. First, I just asked the young foreigner if he is not interested in degrees conferred by local universities.

Reply came swift and straightforward. Higher education is highly desirable, but his is not a learning institution, and he has to concentrate on application as well. All entrepreneurial attempts are technological based and technology is driven by knowledge.

And, learning is an on-going process concerning innovation. The employees should be technological innovators as well as learned people. Therefore, understanding and application have to converge. If your knowledge is not a platform for innovation, new technologies will not be in place.

With the ever-increasing forces of globalization, even for the professions, which demand advanced education, office and personal skills are vital in rendering the expected services effectively. Apart from some exclusive professions limited to laboratories and regarding research, most of the professionals are connected to the outside world at different levels according to the skills spectrum, and personal skills matter a lot.

This need is really severe at the middle and lower levels of management. Employers need employees with office and personal skills rather than more advanced education. For the part of acquiring personal skills, it is due to lapses in school education. Instilling character, culture and morality into youth is the responsibility of the schools.

And again, it is the government's failure to provide school leavers with the necessary office skills just after leaving the school. Even though it was a magnanimous step to provide graduates with jobs in the government sector, it is no secret that the majority of department heads are in trouble giving them necessary responsibilities. We always overhear administrative officers complain of such difficulties.

In the private sector, a CEO publicly announced that it is a waste to spend another six months training them to pick up the skills for an office job. They could do that by the age of 19 and start moving up. Spending three or four years at the university and then take another year to pick up office skills is a real waste of time and youth.

In the private sector, in fast growing industries, untrained graduates find it impossible to prosper, especially in the fields of leisure, retailing, public relations and customer care.

This deficiency has led most of the employers into hiring people with less education but armed with the desired skills even for management jobs. Employers say that formal education does not necessarily bring the desired skills such fields demand.

The belief that more education will bring youth more opportunities for employment has led them towards their determination to get into universities. The idea that we live in a "knowledge economy" has strengthened that notion. But, increasingly, employers are realizing that education plays a smaller role in social mobility than it used to in earlier times. The impact of education on social mobility is declining.

That's happening for two reasons.

Part of the job of higher education is to send the essential signal to employers, that it enabled its subjects to learn to think, persevere, absorb information and present ideas. But as the intake of children into schools is increasing at exponential rates the quality of teaching in urban, crowded schools are declining. At the same time, increasingly, the qualities that children should acquire at school are missing.

That are the skills that private schools induce in children in well-disciplined and managed circumstances. They allow their children to take part in sports, drama, associations, social work etc. So they acquire the essential skills such as articulacy, confidence and smartness at their school age. In government schools, sometimes even with the facilities, children shy away from such activities and sacrifice their pleasure for mere book learning.

Most of the prestigious global enterprises admit non-graduates for their graduate trainee schemes. Concentrating mainly on inter-personal skills, awareness, attitude and eagerness to learn, such enterprises recruit only well rounded individuals who are successful in their social lives as well as professional lives.

Apart from being fluent in the theory, jargon and the technique, they expect them to come across well and build relationships vital for the service sector. As a result, even for the middle level management they stipulate less educational qualifications nowadays. As such skills as communication and team working are vital in performing at their best, employers sacrifice educational qualifications that can be acquired at a later stage. Further, appearance, good manners, character, and presentation also matter much.

The ability to adapt also counts. The ability to interact with the class of people you are expected to be familiar with is also important. You will do better if you are familiar with their style, manners etc. So gracefulness in attitude is really critical to perform at your best.

This is not to undervalue your hard earned, impressive degree. But with the forces of globalization, the skills spectrum has changed a lot, and it demands people who possess talents that are of real commercial use. Even though, we see it as nepotism, it is just a safe selection from the people with whom they are familiar with. Employers know what they want, and, basically, they don't want to fail.

Therefore, at school and in the university, we must encourage them to develop just these skills. You must learn to speak in a businesslike way and to that small talk when needed.