Higher education and desirable work: Open admissions and ethnic and gender differences in job quality.
Item
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Title
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Higher education and desirable work: Open admissions and ethnic and gender differences in job quality.
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Identifier
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AAI9218238
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identifier
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9218238
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Creator
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Hyllegard, David.
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Contributor
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Adviser: David E. Lavin
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Education, Sociology of | Education, Higher | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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While there has been much research on the effect of educational attainment on occupational status and earnings, relatively little is known about its impact on other dimensions of work, such as job authority and work complexity. This dissertation examines the influence of higher educational credentials on these two work qualities, and asks whether education provides white and minority men and women comparable access to jobs involving such work. To do so it uses longitudinal data on blacks, Hispanics, and whites who attended the City University of New York after it initiated its landmark open-admissions policy in 1970. That policy created educational opportunity for disadvantaged minority students who otherwise would have had no chance to attend college. Its ultimate aim was to enhance chances for desirable jobs and thereby narrow inequalities separating blacks and Hispanics from whites.;Analyses reveal that open admissions increased access to jobs involving complex work and authority among individuals who would not have gone to college in the absence of the policy. Nonetheless, the burden of past educational and economic disadvantages with which minorities entered college diminished educational attainments which, in turn, hurt chances to compete for good jobs. Moreover, labor market conditions favoring whites over minorities with similar education and work experience imposed an additional constraint on access to desirable work. Yet, especially for the large number of blacks and Hispanics who earned bachelor's and postgraduate degrees, the quality of work life is well ahead of where it would have been without the opportunity created by the policy. Gender disparities in work complexity and authority favoring males stem from the relationship between sex-typed college majors and employment in sex-segregated occupations, and from the way these occupations are distributed over the public and private employment sectors. Policies such as open admissions add to opportunity in the labor market, but effects are limited by wider institutional conditions.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
