Keynote: The Educated Underclass
Start Date
16-3-2024 2:00 PM
End Date
16-3-2024 3:00 PM
Description
Popular understandings of the working class typically lag the re-composition of social classes within an ever-dynamic capitalist system. Today, a major portion of the working class in the United States is college educated, yet media and academic analysts continue to use education as a means to differentiate the working from the middle class. Two-thirds of high school graduates attend some amount of college. One-third of college graduates from 4-year schools wind up in jobs that do not require a college degree. Employment no longer matches educational expectations, a disappointment that has helped fuel recent social movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the rise in union organizing. As many union members today hold a 4-year college degree as those with only a high school diploma. Workers and professionals, working class and middle class, all describe overlapping, when not identical, groups of people.
Sponsored by the BGSU English Department.
Keynote: The Educated Underclass
Popular understandings of the working class typically lag the re-composition of social classes within an ever-dynamic capitalist system. Today, a major portion of the working class in the United States is college educated, yet media and academic analysts continue to use education as a means to differentiate the working from the middle class. Two-thirds of high school graduates attend some amount of college. One-third of college graduates from 4-year schools wind up in jobs that do not require a college degree. Employment no longer matches educational expectations, a disappointment that has helped fuel recent social movements such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the rise in union organizing. As many union members today hold a 4-year college degree as those with only a high school diploma. Workers and professionals, working class and middle class, all describe overlapping, when not identical, groups of people.
Sponsored by the BGSU English Department.