My father’s story is the exact opposite of the stories in “No Degree, and No Way Back to the Middle”, by Timothy Egan.
My grandfather worked in the steel mills in Granite City, Illinois his entire life. My father followed him there. After high school, my father said he couldn’t work in the mills his whole life, so he went to college and he stayed in college. He was still in school when I was born, shortly after his 36th birthday.
I think it is safe to say that my father is much better off now than he would have been had he stayed in the steel mills. Now he’s pushed me to go to college and now graduate school, even with the economy as awful as it is. But I am a little apprehensive about the whole process though. My father made the jump in class, from the lower-middle to the upper-middle class, and the New York Times article, “Shadowy Lines That Still Divide”, states that social mobility still happens, just not as rapidly as it once did.
Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
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I agree that education is important. And as we are seeing, it is becoming more and more important, with the amount of people getting degrees. So in regards to social mobility, what will happen? Will it be easier to get into the next class, or will the class find some other way to keep them out. I think that stratification within occupations will begin as they have in the surgeon world. Being a surgeon is seen as a highly respectable career. But as we read in the the female surgeon article, breast surgeons are seen as less prestigious, because it is female dominated, and less challenging. I think this type of continued stratification will be the answer to highly educated population. Making continuous education even that more important.
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