Study Guide: Work & Education

Readings:

An Essay on Higher Education

An Essay on the Working Class

Glossary:
Look these words up in the Glossary of Social Science; study them and be ready for fill-ins on the next exam:

Rationalization	appropriate technology	genetic engineering
Underclass	Bureaucracy	Science
split labor market	Bioethics	structural unemployment
Luddites	Alienation	Modernization
created environment	cultural lag	social mobility
division of labor	Intensification	Class
postindustrial	futurists	class consciousness
Mechanization	Automation	Stratification
Technology	Industrialization

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Essays:

On your next exam you will be asked to demonstrate that you have read and mastered the course material.  You should take the time now to answer the following essay questions to create your study guide for that exam. Address the questions fully and completely in your own words and voice. Prepare your answers now.

1. Characterize the growth of the working class from 1900 to 1970.

2. How are universities rationalizing their educational programs to become more efficient?

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Short Answers:

The following short answer questions are from your readings and may well appear on your next exam. Each can be answered with a short paragraph of three or four sentences; please use your own words and voice. You are encouraged to answer these questions now to create your study guide for that exam.

1. How is higher education related to employment and income in America?

2. Who is Oedipus?

3. What is the "credentialization process"?

4. What are the functions of higher education today?

5. How are old line oligopolies rationalizing to meet the challenges of globalization?

6. What steps are corporations taking to downsize their workforce?

7. What is the driving force behind this downsizing?

8. What is the human relations school of management?

9. What is capital flight?

10. According to your instructor, why are the traditional liberal arts in decline at American universities?

11. Who is Harry Braverman?

12. According to Braverman, what are the contradictions in the literature on work?

13. What is the core principle in organizing work in a capitalist society?

14. How does the detailed division of labor control costs for the corporation?

15. How does the detailed division of labor affect the worker?

16. How does Braverman define the working class?

17. How do the middle levels of management and professionals differ from the middle class of an earlier capitalist era?

18. How has the structure of the American workforce change since 1970?

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Demonstrations, Illustrations, & Examples:

A Vision of Students Today:

 

Colberto and Lou Dobbs discuss immigration and class warfare:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lou Dobbs
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

 

George Carlin on education:

 

 

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Names to Know:

Karl Marx

Harry Braverman

Max Weber

George Ritzer

Practice Quiz

Bibliography:

Ellul, Jacques 1970 [1964] The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

Fayol, H.  1949.  General and Industrial Management.  London: Pitman. 

Gayer, F. and Schveitzer, D. (eds) 1981.  Aliention: Problems of Meaning, Theory and Method. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 

Howard, Robert.  1985.  Brave New Workplace.  New York: Viking. 

Huxley, Aldous.  1959.  Brave New World Revisited.  New York: Bantam. 

Israel, J.  1971.  Alienation: From Marx to Modern Sociology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 

Menosky, Joseph A. 1984.  "Computer Worship," Science 84 (May): 40-46. 

Naisbitt, John.  1982.  Megatrends.  New York: Warner. 

Toeffler, Alvin.  1981.  The Third Wave. New York: Bantam. 

Winner, Langdon.  1984.  "Mythinformation in the High-Tech Era,"  IEEE Spectrum (June): 90-96.