Author: Joyce Liao

The alumni we interviewed, Jake, had a path from education to the workforce that was not one set in stone. In fact, one of the biggest challenges for him was overcoming his uncertainties about his career. Despite these obstacles, it was clear that Jake’s education choices stemmed from a place of socialization, selection and legitimization. His education environment, as well as self-motivated attitude equipped him with the necessary hard skills and soft skills for a smooth transition into the workforce.

 

Jake’s education before post-secondary was private, providing Jake with access to an abundance of resources, which could be have contributed to his success in the education system and would have been an example of differential preparation. Jake mentioned, however, that despite the prestigious education he received, that his personal ownership of learning is what equipped him with different skills and experience, social skills being one of his most valuable take-aways from university.

 

He expressed that first year navigation from dependence to independence can be eased by integrating oneself into extra-curricular activities as it can provide a sense of belonging and direction. As a proactive member of the student body, Jake volunteered for a variety of organizations and participated in recreational sports. This contributed to his informal learning, where he has the opportunity to learn from his peers. A political club in particular gave him opportunities to put theoretical concepts taught in the classroom into practice by participating in local, student politics.

 

His interest in politics continued into his decision to pursue law, which was also instigated by family expectations to build his credentials. He prioritized the legitimacy of his credentials, where school prestige played a large role in the institutions he attended. All the while, he contemplated pursuing other disciplines such as medicine and outdoor recreation. His final choice of a tertiary (service) occupation aligned with social expectations. In Jake’s case, his law degree provided him with the certifications to obtain a job in law. Due to the desperate call for lawyers at the time of his graduation, he was able to find work instantly. Whereas today, more and more credentials are necessary to obtain the same job that only required a bachelor’s degree in the past.

 

While Jake practiced law for a short time, it was not the right path for him and he decided to continue his education by enrolling in a business management program at Harvard Business School. Jake’s exploration of multiple academic paths exemplifies the sociological phenomenon where people now explore multiple career paths before deciding what to do. This occupational fluidity is now the norm. Finding a career in today’s society depends largely on the credentials that an individual holds. This overall increase of accredited individuals has resulted in the filtering of qualifications, and spurred on an overall more competitive work market. Jake reflects this general trend of moving towards a knowledge society, where economic growth positively correlates with labour productivity.

 

Jake now runs a conglomerate, where his roles vary every week. This month alone he negotiated a trademark agreement abroad, discussed financial strategies with a commercial bank, supported a film company owned by his group, and made time for a family vacation. While Jake admits that aspects of his career path made him put his social life on hold,  he is now happily married with kids. Being a parent he sees the importance of providing his children with quality educators.

 

Jake’s philosophy on education it is preparatory for one to start a career, but that there is also an element of “fake it ‘til you make it.”  An emphasis was placed on the importance of being a well-rounded degree individual, with an academic and work portfolio that showcases diversity. Jake. encourages students to test their boundaries and pay more attention to opportunities than just their grades alone. He challenges the societal norms of intelligence and sees the institution of schools as a place not only to growing in terms of gaining knowledge, but as a place of creating experiences and developing key social connections.

 

Jakes human capital grew by engaging and interacting with people involved in a variety of interests. Jake accredits his success now to the hard skills he gained in the rigorous academic setting, but mainly to the soft skills he obtained participating in extracurriculars. These two kinds of skills, along with an ideal job market for his field of study made the school-to-work transition a relatively smooth one for him.

 

The Universal Design Concept (UDC) is design framework that aims to be accessible and accepting to the widest range of people. My peers and I examined the Collegia Advisor webpage through a transgender lens to evaluate its inclusivity. Unlike other groups where the physical design layout of the page had a large impact in its accessibility (i.e. disabled individuals), our my group focused more on the acceptability component. We found it rather difficult to put ourselves into the shoes of transgender individuals where social considerations were much more of a factor versus physical constraints.

 

Our general findings were that the page’s design conformed largely to the ideas of the UDC. The colours and font used were neutral in their styling and did not convey a preference for any specific demographic. The text also did not imply any partiality for certain groups, with its use of gender neutral pronouns. Any aspects of the page that did exclude had to do with the job description, but referred to skills and experiences required for the position and did not discriminate towards transgender peoples. One particular concern that my group members and I did have pertained to the main photo on the web page, whose caption when lingered on with a cursor revealed “man and woman conversation”. We concluded that the designers found an apparent need to identity the gender of the individuals in the picture. Scrolling through other pages on the “Campus Life” domain, we didn’t find any other photo captions where gender was mentioned.

 

While this one case on the Collegia web page can be read into as being discriminatory, my personal opinion is that the web designer wished to implement the values of UDC by incorporating different genders. The gender binaries of “man” and “woman” used does not stipulate transgender discrimination. Rather, it is possible that the individuals in the photo are transgender. How does one even tell if an individual is transgender, or for that matter, a part of any defined social group (i.e. Aboriginal, disabled) solely based on physical appearance? By judging individuals based on physical appearances to be categorized into different groups is partisan. Stereotypes of these groups have all been socially constructed and by continuing to use them to as indicators to distinguish members of society from one another, are we not guilty of propriety?

 

This is what brought my group to conclude that even attempting to “walk in someone else’s shoes” is an inherently flawed concept. It assumes two things, both which are dangerous if taken to an extreme. Firstly, as my group members and I do not identify as transgender, our knowledge of transgender people was very much restricted to our stereotyped ideas of what we thought they would feel. Our analysis was therefore largely subjective and speculative, with possibilities for inaccuracies and misrepresentation. Secondly, by framing transgender people as a separate group we automatically assumed binaries. We fabricated a dichotomy of an “us” and a “them”, (similar to how the designers created gender binaries of man and women) which is unnecessary if not discriminatory. So perhaps the most puzzling and paradoxical part the UDC is that in order to be inclusive and we first have be exclusive.

Geography and proximity play significant roles in the networks we have. Discussing with my peers, I discovered that many of them grew up in the city of Vancouver or nearby. This meant that their personal networks included interactions established well before the university context, with people such as work colleagues, high school friends, and sports teammates.

Myself, having moved from Calgary to Vancouver for university meant that I had to create a network from scratch. After arriving in the city, I began investing in a strong community on campus and formed a tightly knitted core group of friends. My high network cohesion became apparent when doing the mapping exercise, where I noticed that my personal network appeared very dense. Most of the individuals in my network had close ties with one another, with weak ties existing between the majority of them. This made sense when looking back at attributes that I used to for categorization. The individuals in my network operate within a very specific geography of the university context.

While the network map provided a visual insight, the E-I index was a qualitative method that I used to calculate homophily. All of the attributes I used to measure this index showed high homophily (i.e. education, occupation, age, religion) except for one, race. I identify myself as Taiwanese-Canadian. My roommates come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. I share a roof with a Swiss-born German, an American with mixed European roots and a Zambian-born, Tswana (person from Botswana) born to Indian parents. In the multicultural context of Canada and to a more local extent, the city of Vancouver, this example of hyper-globalisation has become the norm.

World Society Theory is a theory of globalisation that states that there is increasing homogenization of individuals due to an idea of world culture (Meyer 144). Reinvestigating the attributes where homophily existed in my personal network, I see values embedded within this “world culture” framework. A framework of social constructs indicating that if one is in their late-teens (age), and falls into a certain income bracket (class), that the formal institution of university (education) is the appropriate option. These global set of values and beliefs have defined my history and will continue define my future. Geographical distance no longer acts a barrier, but rather as evidence for this increasingly integrate, interrelated network.

The scales of global to local can be understood through the concept of sociological imagination proposed by C. W. Mills (1959). My roommates often share personal narratives about the societal problems faced by their respective countries by presenting them at a relatable, micro scale of the individual, and then extrapolating them to macro, societal issues. As insightful as these experiences are, every individual has a bias in their perceptions and the enlightening inferences one makes about society as a larger whole can be equally ignorant to the parts unseen.

So while the multiethnic house I live in is an example of how a global society and its “world culture” has affected individuals such as my roommates and myself, the homophilies present in this network provide a narrow scope of society. It is a biased concentration of commonalities in a hyperlocal space despite our personal hyperglobal geographies.

 

Literature Cited:

Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas and Francisco O. Ramirez. 1997. “World Society and the Nation-State.” American Journal of Sociology 103:144-181

Mills, C. Wright. 1959/2000. The Sociological Imagination. New York. Oxford University Press.