The conflict perspective of education focuses on ways different social groups use education as a means of getting or keeping power, wealth, and prestige. The United States can very well be described as a society which places an overwhelming amount of importance on credentials, primarily on an array of educational qualifications. After World War II, degrees began being attained at a rapid pace. This included high school diplomas, bachelor’s and masters’ degrees, even doctorates. The question is why has this happened?
The conflict perspective in contemporary sociology is heavily inspired by the work of Karl Marx, who saw the struggle between social classes as the fuel that powers history and the key source of change. The conflict tradition assumes that societies are in a perpetual state of change, in which conflict is an indelible feature. The conflict tradition believes those who gain control of resources associated with power are able to protect their own interests at the expense of others.
The conflict perspective, then, focuses on whose interests are involved and who benefits or suffers from existing arrangements. In examining social inequality, conflict theorists argue that it does not exist because it is functional for society as a whole, but because some people have been able to achieve political and economic power and have succeeded in passing on such advantages to their children. As mentioned in the article Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality written by Andrew Delbanco, college cannot level the playing field. Often, those who have fewer resources do not experience mobility after attaining a degree and are hit with an unrealistic debt to pay, but their affluent peers typically thrive in ways they cannot after graduation.
The functionalist response to degrees being attained at an astonishing rate would be that new and more challenging jobs have higher levels of skill, and that schools have helped to keep the social system in balance by producing the necessary training for individuals to become workers. For a fair amount of time, the common-sense explanation from the functionalists went almost unquestioned. The evidence provided, however, gives it little support. Some new jobs that require advanced knowledge and skills have of course appeared (for example, the atomic physicist). But the content of most jobs has not changed very during this century. The level of skills required of positions such as cashiers, lawyers, teachers, receptionists, sales representatives, or bus drivers is generally little different than it was decades ago. Yet, the competition in most career fields have become very aggressive and the same kind of jobs now demand more advanced qualifications.
The competition for credentials, combined with a slowdown in economic growth has left American society with more graduates than there are jobs that require a college degree. The consumers of education are well aware that education is the key to social mobility, but to put a student through college is an expensive responsibility, particularly when indirect fees, such as the loss of the student’s prospective income, are taken into account. The wealthier a family is, the more able it is to bear such costs.
A crucial insight of the conflict perspective is that people do not have equal opportunity to achieve educational success. In practice, their odds are greatly influenced by the social class of the family into which they were born. Social stratification distributes education opportunities as unequally as it distributes resources of power. By strengthening the advantages that some people already have over others as a result of a chance of birth, the schools maintain the social inequalities that already exist.
It is obvious that educational achievement is related to income, but it is not always so obvious that social class affects educational attainment. The fact is, however, that the average higher-status child stays in school longer and achieves better results while there than the average lower-status child. The superior educational achievement of the upper-status person is then translated into further social and economic advantages.
Possibly the most obvious feature of college, or school in general, is that it is a formal, bureaucratic institution. The educational process has been rationalized in the interest of efficiency. Procedures are kept as uniform as possible so that the school can be run in an orderly and predictable way. A result of bureaucratization is that the school atmosphere is necessarily repressive to some extent. The college atmosphere is relatively permissive, but no student who has been through the veritable circus of registration can doubt the basically bureaucratic nature of the institution of college. Of course, college flourishes as a bureaucracy because it fits individuals to its administrative needs, rather than fit its procedures to the needs of individuals.
As we can see in Andrew Hacker’s article, The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent, science and technology are not simply the work of isolated individuals. The selection of research problems and the rate and direction of innovation are strongly influenced by social forces. So, it comes to no surprise why the United States is fretting over STEM research and the educational tools provided to conduct such research. It is true, as a nation, American cannot stand falling behind in the ranks of developed nations.
It follows that science and technology cannot be seen as somehow independent of society. Every product created are controlled by individuals. The difficulty is that this control is haphazard. The United States have created a complex institution to guarantee the expansion of science and technology, but we have created little means of monitoring and controlling their effects, despite the impact these effects can possibly have on the social order. The lack of systematic social control over scientific and technological innovation presents a crucial issue – a highly technological society poses a possible threat to society. Public contribution in the decision making process may become challenging because the relevant facts about several important issues, such as the wisdom of building military products, may be beyond the understanding of both the voter and their elected representatives.
With that said, there are many dangers of technocracy, or rule by experts. In modern corporations and government departments, the real decisions are often made behind the scenes by experts whose specialized knowledge and recommendations are relied upon by those who are officially responsible for the decisions.
Any attempt to apply a more systematic form of social control over science and technology would probably run into severe problems. One such problem involves a conflict of values. The object of science is the pursuit of knowledge, and ideally this activity should take place in an atmosphere of complete intellectual freedom. There are enough unhappy examples in the past of nonscientists attempting to dictate to scientists what they should and should not investigate for us to be wary of doing the same.
An important question is to be asked – should we impose restrictions on research, and if so, what restrictions? A similar conflict of values might arise if society attempted to shift priorities in applied research from the manufacture of trivial commercial products to other social goods. Radical changes in these priorities would inevitably interfere with the working of the capitalist system that most Americans value so highly.
The issues posed by science and technology are an example of culture lag. Science and technology have developed far faster than social mechanisms to control them and today, they offer the prospect of social upheaval and even the destruction of human life, or the potential for unprecedented social benefits and new levels of civilized existence. Innovation may have undesirable social consequences that were not anticipated. The development of suitable methods of control poses a major challenge for the future.
In the articles Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality and The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent, it is evident that the larger and more complex the institutions of college and science becomes, the greater is the need for a chain of command to coordinate the activities of its members. This need is fulfilled by a bureaucracy, a hierarchical authority structure that operates under explicit rules and procedures.
The coercive nature of capitalism is reflective in the institution that subjects the student and professor to untold ritualistic torture by the administration. This process individualizes the roles each plays within the institution itself. This is not an anomaly, but indicative of the anti-humanistic nature of capitalism. If the student and professor are to free themselves from the repressive organism that is the university, they must work together in order to break the chains that stifles their academic autonomy.