Transcript Youth in Transition - Society for Research into Higher Education

@RFMacDonald
[email protected]
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…to consider youth transitions (to/ from university)
…in context of socio-economic, political & generational
change
…in so doing, to identify elements of a crisis in the relations
of education, economy and society - globally, nationally,
locally
Parts
Youth Studies & Political Economy: a useful theoretical
approach
Signs of crisis? global, national, local
How do we explain all this?
Conclusion – and some live questions
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(Journal of ) Youth Studies over-privileges
direct research with young people - their lives,
subjectivities/ agency…
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…neglecting how ‘youth’ is constructed
ideologically by powerful social actors &
forces, & how young people are situated
materially (e.g. class inequalities) in a global
political economy of neoliberal capitalism
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[see Côté (2014) & Copenhagen 2015/ Sukarieh &
Tannock (2015 )/ Debate in Journal of Youth Studies
(2014, 2016+)/ TASA 2016]
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Young Adults in post-Communist Georgia & Armenia: Transitions to
what? (2006)
2/3 unemployed. Higher education increasingly popular – 66-80% enter
university
‘Most of the local young people go to the local universities. Others go to
Tbilisi. They do not get jobs but the tradition of education continues, and
it gives the young people something to do’. (Education Department
official)
Patience [& migration] dominant youth responses
‘Those who remain may never abandon hope that the market will arrive
eventually—if not for them, then for their children or grandchildren...
At the time of our fieldwork the local populations were relearning the
arts of living without proper jobs [e.g. via small-scale, subsistence
farming] and without the kinds of consumption that are now normal in
major cities’.
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??‘Emerging Adulthood’ = US, psychology; a new life stage (20s,
university student) ‘age of possibilities’, ‘high hopes and great
expectations’ (Arnett, 2004). Individualism, optimism, choice.
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??‘Waithood’: global south research; young adults’ aspirations
raised (IT, global consumer culture) but blocked from ‘successful’
adulthood; prolonged dependency, boredom, un(der)employment:
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‘one of the most unsettling paradoxes of contemporary social
change in the global south is that at almost the precise moment that
people formerly excluded from schooling have come to recognise
the possibilities held out by education for individual improvement,
opportunities for these groups to benefit economically from
schooling are disintegrating’ (Jeffrey, 2009; cited in S &T 2015)
x2 EUF7 programmes, 5 years, concluding now (March 2017):
‘SAHWA’ and ‘Power2Youth’…
 MENA: Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, OT Palestine
 Social/ political/ economic exclusion of youth
 Post-Arab Spring – optimism; how can EU policy help?
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6 years later: war, terrorism, migration, successive autocratic
governments; role of ‘deep state’ in perpetuating power &
inequality
 Some similarities (to UK youth research); but extreme &
qualitatively different (e.g. fear/ physical safety/ violence/
harassment/ repressive state/ ‘wasta’)
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Poverty, corruption, political repression,
graduate unemployment (c. 45% Tunisia)
Arab Spring (2010-11)
Post-war public sector expansion &
professional jobs; still strong aspiration for/
large numbers into university
 Crony capitalism of corrupt regimes
diverting aid & development funds
 Some inward investment by MNCs – but
low-level assembly work
 Mismatch in graduate supply & demand
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(34% graduate unemployment in Egypt, 48%
for women, under 5% for least educated)
‘I think it is probably the first time, at
least since the Second World War,
that a new generation faces the
future with less confidence than the
previous generation’.
(José Manuel Barroso, President of the
European Commission, 2011)
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Nearly 5 million under 25s were unemployed in the EU;
21.4% (Dec 2014)
Even higher rates of under-employment...
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Neo-liberal, flexible labour markets
give rise to new global class defined
by their insecurity of work & life
conditions
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Mass, diverse, global membership,
with “youth at the core of the
Precariat” (career-less graduates,
migrants, unemployed, the working
poor, & insecurely employed)
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in the absence of collective social movements/ progressive
welfare state…
in more & more countries…
university promoted as the best/ only route for personal
advancement (to good jobs, high standard of living)
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Having a degree = ^ employment, higher
skilled jobs, salaries
 BUT effects reduced if female, Black,
disabled, social science, 2:2/ 3rd
 AND gradual decline 2006-2015 in higher
skilled employment rate; c.1/3rd graduates
not in higher skilled employment
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AND not disaggregated by university/ region
 e.g. XXX University = predominantly local
students who graduate to local (depressed)
labour market
 ‘Only’ 65% in FT work/ study, and only 40% in
jobs that ‘require’ a degree
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‘Rebecca’, 22, BSc Youth Studies (Hons), 2:1, 2010
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‘Just thought that I would email and ask how you are as it is nice to keep in
touch! I thought I would let you know I have FINALLY got a job! It’s as a
temporary education assistant with a wildlife centre, it's not exactly what I
wanted to do but good for now and sounds like it will be good fun!
Have been volunteering with Safe in Tees Valley (YIP) - they will be gone
[closed down] at the end of this month, which is an outrage because
although …the way they target some young people is flawed, it is wrong to
have no targeted preventative services for young people left! I will be
gutted as well because I loved working with the kids, really taught me a lot.
Anyway, just thought you might have been interested in what’s going on!
Feels so good to be employed, I start on Monday and can't wait! It's good
to know that my degree might eventually get me somewhere! Haha’.
[9 months after graduating, Minimum Wage, part-time/ temporary,
person spec: ‘a good level of education – e.g. GCSE passes in English &
Maths’]
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Low aspiration & low skill → youth
unemployment
 ‘NEET’ (magically) solved by harsher
benefit conditionality & ‘up-skilling’ – by
expanded FE/ HE
 Numbers of low-skilled jobs will decline
drastically
 More graduates needed for the current/
coming ‘high-skill, information economy’
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Nonsense! This is voodoo sociology
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Supply of better skilled workers has
increased markedly (with massive
expansion of HE; globally too)
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BUT no equivalent increase in demand
from UK employers for skilled/ graduate
workers
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Up-skilling strategy ignores ‘the scale
and persistence of low-paid
employment within the UK economy …
the numbers of jobs requiring little or
no qualification appears to be growing
rather than shrinking’. (Keep and Mayhew,
2010).
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Growth in ‘lovely’ jobs & ‘lousy jobs’ –
hollowing out of middle
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Underemployment becomes the most serious
issue: involuntary part-time work/ sporadic
insecure jobs/ over-qualification...
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‘...significant under-employment of wellqualified people in Tees Valley, with science
graduates, for instance, working as school
laboratory technicians and in call centres’. (Tees
Valley Unlimited, 2014)
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Over-supply of graduates…
 = declining labour market value of degree (and when compared
with rising costs)
 = increased ‘need’ for degree (to compete in saturated labour
market), even for non-graduate jobs
 = increasing demand for degree (including from ‘non-traditional’/
working-class students)
 = increasing over-supply, declining value of degree, etc.
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= Fierce market competition between universities/ courses (on
graduate destination/ ‘employability’/ ‘good degree’ metrics)
 ^ pressure on staff (e.g. to give higher grades)?
 Complicity of staff in industrial-scale ‘miss-selling’ of Higher Education?
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There is an institutional crisis in the ‘fit’ between (higher)
education, economy & society:
 a ‘political economy’ frame helps us understand this, as do global
comparisons
 fundamental to this is the over-supply of graduates to the UK labour
market (and elsewhere)
Youth in Transition (Ken Roberts, 2009): research over decades,
multiple methods, east and west Europe
 Trends in E Europe (and MENA countries?) indicate UK direction of
travel: ‘Young people today are excessively ambitious relative to
the jobs that the economy offers. There is … an overall shortage of
jobs, not least good jobs... underemployment is the new global
normality for youth’ (Roberts, 2009)
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Are young people now best understood as a generation
that shares a wide, common experience of precarity?
Or with this institutional crisis do we see the meeting of
old inequalities with new ones?
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This institutional crisis is masked by ideology
(the ‘voodoo sociology’ of the policy
orthodoxy):
 …that blames ‘failure’ on the lacks of young
people (aspiration, skill, social capital, ‘grit’, ‘polish’
etc.)
 …shifts the financial & emotional costs of
this institutional crisis onto individual
students (and their families)
 …works in the material interests of
businesses, finance companies, private
training agencies, corporate HE, etc. (fees,
profits from debts, free interns, ‘flexible’ labour, etc.)