Friday, October 17, 2014

Educational Attainment and Employment Opportunity




In the academic world, the last decade has heard the term “a professional degree is the new undergraduate degree.” This may reign true in a struggling economy with job opportunities becoming both more specialized and scarce by the year. However, this term is implied for the white population. The article “A Black College Student Has the Same Chances as a White High School Dropout, “A recent study done by Young Invincible, a national non-profit aimed at empowering young Americans, revealed a painful reminder of white superiority in the United States. The study, focusing primarily on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as the U.S. Census revealed that African Americans need an extra two years of higher education to reach the same occupational opportunities as their white counterparts.
            The study worked to isolate the effects of race and ethnicity on the probability of obtaining similar jobs. What it revealed was that an African American who has obtained an Associate’s Degree, which requires completion of college courses, will have the same probability of getting a job as a less qualified white person who has a high school diploma. This reveals an unfortunate achievement gap tilted in the white populations favor.
closing education gap 1
  The numbers in the graph above reveal the inequality between whites and blacks in the hiring process in regards to education attainment. Where the gap is most dramatic is in those with not high school diploma. Blacks with no high school diploma are nearly 15% less likely to receive employment than whites. The graph however reveals a trend. Possibly of obtaining a job seems to become more equal with the higher amount of education received. Blacks with a high school diploma are about 12% less likely to have a job than whites, while having some college lessens the gap to about 10%, associates about 6%, while bachelors lessens the achievement gap to less than 5%. With the highest professional degree, there is a very small gap at about 2%, showing that in today’s society, the way to lessen inequality in the hiring process for blacks and whites is to stay in school and earn advanced degrees, which is more attainable for whites for a number of different reasons including high school quality, connections, etc…
            Naturally, with employment opportunities being more prevalent for whites, unemployment has a more significant impact on the black population. A study done by the Young Invincible group looked at blacks and whites ages 18-34 during the great recession of 2008, and what they found was revealing of racial inequality. Not taking education into account this time, blacks were 16.6% likely to be unemployed, while whites were less than half that number, falling at a 7.1% unemployment rate.
            The graph below reveals that after the peak of the recession, from November of 2007 to May of 2014, though the numbers seemed to move in tandem with one another, whites maintained a higher percentage of employment,  at times as much as 10%, further showing the favoring of the white population in the achievement gap, even during times of economic failure. 
 closing education gap 2

1 comment:

  1. In today's world where everyone says a college degree is key to success, it blows my mind to hear that even with a college degree, black graduates have the same chances as white high school dropouts. I like how figure 1 was included because it really helped visualize that employment gap narrowing as the number of educational degrees increased. The disparities of education and resulting employment opportunities parallels with the achievement gap in Academic Profiling between students in IB and College Prep. While this post deals more with black and whites specifically, those gaps are still present because IB students have more resources to fuel a stronger education and therefore more future opportunities to excel in the employment field. However, the students of the College Prep courses have few resources and opportunities that would later help them find employment. Even with a higher education, according to the figures presented above, blacks still struggle to fulfill the gap between races and perceived ability.

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