Job Prestige Without Romanticism
Once I asked my small son what he wanted to be. The answer was a fireman. My son explained his choice by his desire to save people. Time passed, and job preferences changed among his friends and in society. When thirteen, he wanted to become a writer, a biologist at fifteen. Finally, at twenty-four he is a programmer with a university degree. But while working, he continues his studies, pursuing new career goals.
In my school days students were often stimulated into hitting the books more by such phrases like, “If you don’t study you’ll be a janitor or a common laborer carrying bricks at the construction site.” In those days everyone wanted to be an astronaut, teacher, or doctor. With blue-collar occupations in short supply, we were urged [by Soviet propaganda] to work for some time before enrolling in colleges and universities. What we have today is just the reverse: with many on the dole, any job not requiring special skills is a job hunter’s dream, but in competition for such jobs yesterday’s schoolchildren lose out to their seniors who have been unemployed for several years. This is where the system of higher education comes in: four of five years of guaranteed occupation in universities puts off job hunting for some time. Accordingly, given the increased value of higher education, the state is interested in creating favorable conditions for the young to acquire it, providing incentives for commercial colleges and making more prestigious specialties available to students in state-run universities on a commercial basis [for quite sizable tuition fees]. The versatility of career training provided by institutions of higher education have resulted in the emergence on job markets of universal specialists with several professions at their fingertips. After a brief period of work after their first higher education, almost half of my younger acquaintances are now studying for their second degree. For example, following two years of work in school, a mathematics teacher has signed up for a course in economics, while an expert in space instruments is learning journalism. Quite recently, I met an eleventh grader at an exhibition of Ukraine’s colleges and universities who, in order to become a farmer, set the goal of acquiring two degrees, in agriculture and law.
One can judge the prestige of specialties by the list of courses offered by universities on a commercial basis: law, economics, foreign languages, and administration. The occupational preferences of contemporary young people cause mixed feelings. Unlike during the Soviet period, they care little about the public profile of their professions and their choices are not afflicted by romantic considerations at all. According to the statistics of the Ukrainian Institute For Social Research, 97% of young people are guided in the selection of their professions by pay, followed by job conditions, comfort, chances of professional growth, and for promotion, something no less important from the youngsters’ point of view.
The high level of lifestyle and living standards results in a tug- of-war for the young between the desire to follow one’s professional calling and the rate of remuneration, with no knowledge which wins. But hard decisions will have to be made later. Meanwhile, on the way to my office I encounter a stream of students going to the Institute of Linguistics and Law, crossing the other stream of students of the European University as I approach the subway station. I return from work surrounded by students from the Kyiv Polytechnic. They are all involved in lively discussions of their problems. The thorny decisions related to their careers still lie ahead.
