SOC

1) I see higher education as a means towards social mobility. Higher education allows people to earn a degree in a specific job field, which helps them stand out from those without a college degree when applying for jobs. I feel that earning a degree will increase my chances of having a stable career, which would help me be financially stable so that I can have a healthy balance between my job and my personal life. While I do believe that earning a degree is required for me to live the life that I want to live, I also believe that people can be successful without going to college. There are well-paying jobs that do not require their workers to have a college degree. These jobs can sometimes be hard to find, and they usually require many years of experience. 

I believe that this question also comes down to what someone wants to do in life. For example, it is my dream to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner. In order to become this, a college degree is required. Because a degree is required to live my dream, I am okay with spending many years in school. However, if someone wishes to go for a different career path that does not require a college degree, I feel they can still be successful. 

2) Do I see higher education as a means toward my own social mobility? Yes I do. 

The quality of my education varies depending on the social class (middle class) that I am categorized in. The higher the family income, the better opportunites an indiividual is given to obtain a good education. The inequality in education makes it more difficult for low-income families to achieve social mobility. However, I was born into a household that fell towards the  bottom of the income distribution, I refuse to settle at that level. I am slowly moving towards upward mobility as I persue my college education, which my parents did not obtain in their life time. 

I believe the higher up on the educational ladder one can climb, the more networking opportunities will become available. College offers a level playing field for people with various backgrounds, allowing a mixture of a traditional working class backgrounds with those of a middle or upper class background. Higher levels of education often go neck and neck with an enhanced occupational status. An individual who has pursed a higher level of education posesses a position that is considered the highest in societal standings,such as, a doctor, lawyer, etc. Occupation is one of the deciding factors to a social status. It would be extremely difficult to place a doctor into a social tier below middle class. My goal is to obtain a higher education degree and join the same social status as a "professional."

3) I do believe that education gives a person more social mobility and particularly an ability to move up the social ladder in what’s called upward mobility. The more educated a person is the more valuable they are to others. In fact, this seems to be what Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore were getting at when they developed their Davis-Moore thesis. Our book states, “The cashier position does not require the same skill and training level as firefighting. Without the incentive of higher pay and better benefits, why would someone be willing to rush into burning buildings? If pay levels were the same, the firefighter might as well work as a grocery store cashier. Davis and Moore believed that rewarding more important work with higher levels of income, prestige, and power encourages people to work harder and longer.” Therefore, a similar thing would be true if someone were to be more educated on a specific topic. A company would be more likely to higher and then advance someone through the ranks if they knew more about the specific task they were being hired to perform. This is one of the reasons that companies will actually pay workers to go back to school and receive a certain degree. However, being more educated doesn’t always help your social mobility. In fact, a large number of degrees exist that have very few if any jobs available. This means that if someone were to study and receive this degree, they would actually be constricting their social mobility, not increasing it. In conclusion, I think it is reasonable to say that if you are getting a practical degree (a degree that has lots of jobs available for it) then it will increase your social mobility in an upward direction.