Globalisation, Higher Education, the Labour Market and Inequality

Antonia Kupfer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317978251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Globalisation, Higher Education, the Labour Market and Inequality addresses the global transformation of higher education in relation to changes in the labour market. It focuses on the relative impact of elements of globalisation on social inequality, and provides insights into the ways in which these general forces of change are transformed into specific policies shaped by global forces and the various national values, institutional structures and politics of the specified societies. The book begins with a theoretical conceptualization for a comparative understanding of globalization, higher education, labour markets and inequality. This is followed by a range of mainstream accounts from an international selection of contributors of the ways in which national systems have responded to the forces of globalisation and the increasing demand for higher education graduates – in Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and the UK. Finally, contributors explore more specific concerns such as the transition from higher education to the labour market in China and Sweden, the division of the 'knowledge' workers into traditional social groups in the US, and the role and salience of Doctoral programmes in South Africa in developing a knowledge economy.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

Towards a theoretical framework for the comparative understanding of globalisation, higher education, the labour market and inequality

Antonia Kupfer

Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge Street, Cambridge, USA

This paper is a theoretical examination of three major empirical trends that affect many people: globalisation, increasingly close relations between higher education (HE) and labour markets, and increasing social inequality. Its aim is to identify key theoretical resources and their contribution to the development of a comparative theoretical framework for understanding countries’ responses to globalisation with respect to HE and the labour market, and the significance of such responses for social inequality. The method consists in developing a theoretical reading of Bourdieu’s and Brown’s theoretical concepts of social inequality in the interrelation of HE and labour market. As a result this paper presents preliminary ideas for the theoretical comparison of current societies’ HE systems and labour markets with regard to social inequality in the age of globalisation. It concludes by illustrating the need for further comparative research in this area.

1. Introduction

We begin with three empirical observations: the first refers to what is often called globalisation, with its increasingly international division of labour which puts people in north-western countries under increasing pressure. The second observation refers to the higher education (HE) and labour markets, which seem to be linked together in an increasingly close relationship. The third observation refers to social class inequalities, which seem to increase as well, at least in north-western countries. These observations are admittedly very general.

Economic globalisation has the effect of compressing time and space (Held and McGrew 2000). For example, if we consider changes in the global division of labour (Brown, Lauder, and Ashton 2011) then a key element in these changes is that electronic media enable jobs to be offshored to other countries. However, we should also note that globalisation as a term does not apply to all countries. One example might be Bolivia, which, under the Morales administration, is trying to take an alternative route to familiar capitalist and socialist patterns, one which consists mainly in the indigenous construction and control of the new plurinational state. Not only are some states non-participants or unaffected by globalisation, but we also observe that nations participate in and are affected by what we call globalisation (which from my perspective mainly consists in the increasingly international division of labour, paid and non-paid) in very different ways: that is, there is no single impact or single cluster of factors that is crucial for all countries. Examples might be the offshoring of qualified work from north-western countries to mainly East Asian countries, and the high proportion of East Asian students in HE in north-western countries.

The relation between HE and the labour market is not clearly defined either. We might have a strong feeling and intuition that a relation at least exists, but the moment we start to make assertions about the content and the characteristics of this relation, we struggle to get it right. For example, the widespread belief that people with an HE degree earn more money because they are more productive has been refuted by various studies (see e.g. Mishel, Berstein, and Allegreto [2006] 2007). The relationship between HE and the labour market seems to have become even stronger in recent years, and again we – especially those of us working in HE – have the feeling that our working conditions have deteriorated while others, especially young mobile people from East Asia, see HE as an opportunity their parents could not dream of.

Finally, the increasing gap between upper and lower incomes, the stagnant and even decreasing incomes of the middle classes in north-western societies are issues that have influenced the lives of millions of people for years, yet have not been closely investigated. It is only recently that research has begun to focus on this development.

It is obvious that each of the developments just mentioned is highly complex in itself, and that these three mentioned developments are interrelated to each other. It is therefore impossible to investigate one of these areas without referring to the others as well. Nevertheless, the exact ways and forms of their mutual interrelation, and the dynamics that caused and perpetuate and change these relationships, are not at all clear. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the key theoretical resources and their potential contributions to the development of a comparative theoretical framework for understanding countries’ responses to globalisation with regard to HE and the labour market, and the significance of such responses for social inequality. To be more exact, this paper does not aim to achieve that purpose, but to present first thoughts as an invitation for further discussion and elaboration.

Bourdieu provides a valuable theory on the interrelation of HE, the labour market and social inequality in the national context of France, mainly in the 1960s and 1980s. But he does not provide a theory which takes globalisation into account as one of the dimensions which affects our lives and which interacts with HE, labour markets and social inequality. For our present purposes, we therefore seek to use his theory as a base, a starting point for the development of a theoretical framework for the comparative analysis of the mechanisms producing social inequalities in particular countries. Comparison then aims at understanding the similarities and differences between the causal mechanisms.

Bourdieu’s work has been widely received, and we select here one principal theoretical development out of his work in order to outline its potential to lead to the envisaged comparative framework. Out of Bourdieu’s approach to rules and resources, Brown (2000) has developed two theoretical categories – rigging and ranking – which seem promising for a comparison of the current developments in various countries. Both Bourdieu’s basic approach (with an added focus on HE and the labour market) and Brown’s concepts of rigging and ranking will be outlined in the second section below. The third section applies the theoretical framework developed so far in comparing two countries, Germany and Britain. Recent changes in the form of globalisation play a crucial role here and will be included in the analysis. The final section, ‘Conclusion’, illustrates the need for further research in the comparative analysis of globalisation, the organisation of HE and labour markets with respect to their impact on social inequalities.

2. Bourdieu’s theoretical conception of inequalities in HE and labour markets

One of Bourdieu’s most prominent assertions could be summarised as follows: the educational system reproduces the class system. This claim does not seem to be new, if we recall Durkheim for example, but Bourdieu’s analysis goes far beyond an assertion of a linear correlation between social background and educational achievement. Bourdieu conceptualises the relation of social class and gender to education as a process, and thus as a variable force. He is interested in relations between the educational system and the system of class relations, and hence he deals with highly complex relations.

According to Bourdieu, a person’s social position consists mainly in the economic, cultural and social capital the person has acquired. These different sorts of capital always develop their influence in social spaces. Social spaces include both the different social positions and the space of habitus, and are therefore composed of both the volume of capital and the structure of the capital. The structure refers to the respective proportions of the different kinds of capital. Social spaces are always hierarchical spaces in which the occupants have different positions. Specific sections of social spaces can be examined as fields. In the following sections I will expand on Bourdieu’s theoretical concept of the field with regard to HE first and then to labour markets.

2.1. The national HE system as a field

Bourdieu and Passeron (1971) and later Bourdieu alone ([1984] 1998) purposely selected the HE system because, in their view, the participants in education systems are at the same time products of those systems: students’ behaviour and qualifications are largely formed by their prior experiences. While Bourdieu and Passeron focus in the earlier work on different facets of social inequality in HE, such as the low proportion of students from socioeconomically lower families, the limited choice of subjects studied by such students, and the hierarchy of reputation among higher education institutions (HEIs), Bourdieu concentrates in the later work on the analysis of the university as a field in which professors occupy different positions depending on the types and amounts of capital they possess, and on the structure of the field.

Naidoo (2004) summarises his theory as follows:

Capital may be viewed as the specific cultural or social (rather than economic) assets that are invested with value in the field which, when possessed, enables membership to the field. The type of capital operating in the field of university education is an institutionalized form of cultural capital that has generally been termed ‘academic capital.’ In some instances (see Homo Academicus; Bourdieu, 1998), Bourdieu distinguishes between two forms of capital: ‘academic capital,’ which is linked to power over the instruments of reproduction of the university body; and ‘intellectual’ or ‘scientific capital,’ which is linked to scientific authority or intellectual renown. In other instances, however (for example, in The State Nobility; Bourdieu, 1996), the two definitions appear to merge and ‘academic capital’ is defined as an institutionalized form of cultural capital based on properties of educational achievement, a ‘disposition’ to be academic (seen, for example, in manner of speech and writing), and specially designated competencies. (458)

In this field, institutions adopt strategies derived from an institutionalised form of habitus to maintain their advantage or, as Bourdieu (1993) puts it, to maximise their symbolic gain. The outward appearance of these strategies is what he terms ‘taking positions’, and is a consequence of the interests of academic institutions and individuals. For Bourdieu (1993), interest is understood as the ‘specific investment in the stakes’ (76) over which academics struggle. Interestingly, he defines this investment as both the condition and the product of the field. And from this position he is able to articulate a much more refined concept of interest than that described by neo-classical economics, for example. The latter see interest in much narrower terms as related only to income and wealth, while Bourdieu extends the concept to the identity of both institutions and individuals. The stakes in this sense are high indeed. On the other hand, a further consequence of this view of fields and interests is that institutions are seen to have a degree of autonomy within the field.

From a comparative perspective, Bourdieu’s characterisation of the HE field enables us to pose a number of questions. These include the following: How is a given national field constructed in regard to the power relations between institutions? What do these power relations consist in: do they involve economic, academic or intellectual capital? How is the habitus constructed at both the institutional and the personal levels? How are interests and reputations defined within the field: are certain types of capital seen as more important than others in some HE fields? And are some types of capital seen as more important in some HE fields than in others? This question leads in turn to the crucial questions: What is the system of cultural meanings that gives significance to these properties of fields in any given national context, and how are they similar to or different from other national fields?

In the light of recent changes, these questions have taken on greater significance. With the rise of mass HE systems in many countries, new institutions have entered the field. The issue that arises here is: How are the new institutions positioned in the field, and why?

While it is acknowledged that the concepts of social, cultural and personal capital are important in understanding the ways in which inequalities are reproduced, it can be argued that those concepts are not sufficient for a comparative understanding of the relationship between HE and the labour market, and the ways in which education and labour may be changed by processes of economic globalisation. A major reason why this is likely to be the case is that these forms of capital are embedded in particular national contexts, and those contexts hence frame the understanding of concepts such as cultural or social capital. For this reason, it is important to be able to develop a theoretical framework in which the different processes of inequality in national HE systems and global labour markets can be understood.

However, more recent research has analysed on the HE–labour market relationship in regard to social class inequality using the concepts of cultural capital and personal capital (see for example Brown and Hesketh 2004).

Strathdee (2008, 2009), using the concepts of cultural and social capital to theorise the links between HE and the labour market, raises another interesting question about how universities are understood and judged by employers when recruiting. He argues that we should see universities, not as unitary institutions upon which reputation is conferred, but rather as networked institutions in which links are established between particular departments or sub-units of the university and companies. Companies are seen as having links or partnerships with universities in order to promote innovation, and their recruitment from partner universities is based on such innovatory strategies. Inequality in recruitment is structured through these social capital networks.

One promising approach that may widen Bourdieu’s theoretical concept to permit comparative analysis is presented by Brown (2000). He takes up Bourdieu’s ideas on rules and resources and develops them into what he calls rigging and ranking, which are two mechanisms of creating and maintaining class inequalities. An explanation of Brown’s theoretical concepts follows, and we will return to them in Section 2.5 to see how they could lead to a theoretical framework for the comparative analysis of social inequality in the interrelation of HE and labour markets in the age of globalisation.

2.2. From rules and resources to rigging and ranking

Integral to the concept of fields are the rules and resources by which fields are structured. However, if we are to understand the impact of policies that purport to be a response to globalisation in the HE field, then we must identify the key properties of the field that are susceptible to policy leverage. The concepts of rules and resources are useful here because they are susceptible to manipulation, particularly through funding, by policy-makers. Rules are constitutive of fields in the sense that they define the stakes over which conflicts of interests take place, including elements of symbolic violence. However, rules can also govern access to resources. Resources are critical to who wins and loses in any given HE field. One reason for this is that, as HE has been linked with a country’s global competitiveness, the importance of innovative research has been elevated to a position of prominence. But such research requires heavy investment in researchers and technology.

In Britain, the rules governing the research assessment exercise (RAE) have been intimately related to questions of resources, with the most successful universities winning increased funding through success in research assessments. Under the new conditions governing research appraisal, the Research Excellence Framework, the income a university receives is directly related to the grade awarded to a publication. Now what is significant about this relationship between rules and resources is that the government has the power to change the terms of competition within the field and, as we shall see, it has justified this change in the rules as a response to economic globalisation. It is worth noting that these changes cause considerable conflict between field participants and government, because the changes affect academic institutions’ and individuals’ interests, in the Bourdieuian sense: for example, these changes force academics, who may otherwise consider disinterested enquiry to be their prime concern regardless of long it takes, to publish within a limited time.

However, in a class society we might expect these rather neutral terms of rules and resources to translate into what Brown (2000) has called the ‘rigging’ of rules to enhance the prospects of the professional middle class, and ‘ranking’, which is closely related to the allocation of resources to classed institutions like universities. In the case of HE, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Towards a theoretical framework for the comparative understanding of globalisation, higher education, the labour market and inequality
• 2. Trajectories of higher education system differentiation: structural policy-making and the impact of tuition fees in England and Australia
• 3. Educational reform, inequality and the structure of higher education in New Zealand
• 4. Why are higher education participation rates in Germany so low? Institutional barriers to higher education expansion
• 5. Credential inflation and employment in ‘universal’ higher education: enrolment, expansion and (in)equity via privatisation in Japan
• 6. Humboldt goes to the labour market: how academic higher education fuels labour market success in the Czech Republic
• 7. Young people’s management of the transition from education to employment in the knowledge-based sector in Shanghai
• 8. The structure and silence of the cognotariat
• 9. Gender equality policies and higher education careers
• 10. Elusive equity in doctoral education in South Africa
• Index