Deriving a Typology of University Graduates’ Career Pathways Using Theoretically Driven Sequence Analysis
Bożena Wielgoszewska · 2016
Graduates' social mobility is an area of growing interest, especially as more and more people are obtaining higher education degrees, and a decreasing proportion of those with degrees can count on stable, full-time, paid employment upon graduation.The findings from previous studies with respect to graduates' social mobility in this contemporary setting are unconvincing.They tend to assume that education can guarantee a 'good job' in the future to the same extent as it did in the past, they tend to exclude those who are in less conventional forms of employment, and they tend to compare the situation of a given individual to the situation of their parents several years apart, paying little attention to graduates' own work histories.Since these work histories are what inevitably lead to a given social mobility outcome, more understanding is needed regarding the dynamics, processes, and mechanisms, which result in the ascent or descent of graduates across social strata.In order to contribute to better understanding of graduates' social mobility, this study investigates the relationships between individuals' work histories and their social mobility trajectories, accounting for several additional characteristics.These characteristics can either be observed before graduates undertake their employment, which implies that they are outside of their control, or during graduates' own careers, which shifts the importance towards their ability, effort, and the decisions they make.The results show that social mobility is more complex than simply moving up or moving down the social strata, and the outcome may be different depending on when and how it is measured.Employment histories play an important role in these processes, but they are, to some extent, dependent on the social class of their parents, and the local labour market in which they reside.In addition, this study points to several strategies, which can allow graduates to do well 'against the odds'.These include temporary migration to bigger cities, as well as careful consideration of the subject studied at the level of higher education.However, the extent to which these strategies may be beneficial depends on which employment route a given graduate takes.