Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Post-grad­u­a­tion is a tricky time for many ex-stu­dents. The struc­ture and rou­tine of uni­ver­si­ty life is no longer there. The di­rec­tion of a syl­labus, the guid­ance of teach­ers and the 24-7 ca­ma­raderie of class­mates van­ish to be re­placed by en­try in­to the "re­al world."

For some the change leads to new and stim­u­lat­ing pas­tures, for oth­ers the tran­si­tion can be more bumpy and frus­trat­ing. Many stu­dents dis­cov­er that the path to their dream job is long and lit­tered by many less­er jobs to do first. And the hard work has just be­gun rather than just end­ed.

Some un­for­tu­nate ones nev­er see a path and can get stuck with an en­try-lev­el job that has lit­tle to do with the skill set of their de­gree. With­out per­son­al re­silience and sup­port from oth­ers this sit­u­a­tion can be a tough one to change. As a con­se­quence some new grad­u­ates be­come un­hap­py and lose di­rec­tion, not know­ing what or how to solve their dead end.

The so­lu­tion to this isn't sim­ply one of "work hard and even­tu­al­ly you'll be re­ward­ed." The world doesn't work like that for every­one equal­ly, no mat­ter how many times we tell each oth­er it does. Rather, a per­son's so­cial class is of­ten im­por­tant in find­ing and se­cur­ing jobs. The French so­ci­ol­o­gist Pierre Bour­dieu used to talk about "so­cial" and "cul­tur­al cap­i­tal." They are con­cepts sim­i­lar to the idea of eco­nom­ic cap­i­tal-mon­ey-the pos­ses­sion of which pro­vides pow­er.

As we all know, if you have eco­nom­ic cap­i­tal you can make things hap­pen for your­self, fam­i­ly and friends a lot eas­i­er than some­one who doesn't. Bour­dieu point­ed out that get­ting ahead in life wasn't just about eco­nom­ic cap­i­tal it is al­so about how much so­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal a per­son has.

"So­cial cap­i­tal" de­scribes the ac­cess peo­ple have to so­cial net­works, con­tacts and sup­port – ad­van­tages gained from who you know and how they might help you. "Cul­tur­al cap­i­tal" de­scribes forms of knowl­edge, the abil­i­ty to speak the right lan­guages, and un­der­stand the rules of the game. It gives a per­son in­sight in­to what it takes to suc­ceed.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, thanks to GATE, there has been an in­crease in peo­ple get­ting de­grees over the last decade. Many of these stu­dents are first-gen­er­a­tion de­gree-hold­ers.

An un­in­tend­ed con­se­quence of GATE for first-gen­er­a­tion de­gree-hold­ers-no mat­ter that their de­gree is sup­pos­ed­ly an in­di­ca­tor of their fu­ture class group and po­ten­tial for so­cial mo­bil­i­ty-is they do not have the re­quired so­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to gain the type of em­ploy­ment they want as eas­i­ly as oth­ers with that type of cap­i­tal.

For ex­am­ple, the par­ents of first-gen­er­a­tion de­gree-hold­ers might not know how to help and ad­vise them to find jobs, write let­ters, sup­port them through the process of how to do an in­ter­view, ap­proach some­one with a re­sume, han­dle knock­backs and more. Tak­en to­geth­er, a lack of this type of cul­tur­al cap­i­tal can kill a per­son's re­silience.

This sug­gests there is a seg­ment of lo­cal grad­u­ates-first-gen­er­a­tion de­gree-hold­ers-who don't have the cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to fos­ter re­silience. They don't know how to make what they have work for them. And their par­ents can strug­gle to guide them be­cause their par­ents nev­er made it through or fur­ther than sec­ondary school.

In so­ci­o­log­i­cal terms, this can be de­scribed as the work­ing class not know­ing how to use their ac­cess to state ap­pa­ra­tus­es for their ben­e­fit. Or to put in more fa­mil­iar terms, it's not what you know, but who you know.

Of course, oth­er fac­tors are in­volved in find­ing the right job too, such as syn­er­gy be­tween de­grees and the jobs avail­able in the mar­ket­place, the qual­i­ty of the de­gree, and the sig­nif­i­cance of low­er­ing uni­ver­si­ty en­trance re­quire­ments to ac­cess more gov­ern­ment funds.

That said, over­look­ing the re­al­i­ty that a stu­dent's so­cial class af­fects his/her abil­i­ty to se­cure jobs makes it ap­pear that the so­lu­tion to our so­ci­ety's ills is sim­ply ed­u­ca­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, ed­u­ca­tion and noth­ing to do with shift­ing the his­tor­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion of pow­er in so­ci­ety.

In a world where free ed­u­ca­tion is be­com­ing rar­er, GATE is a won­der­ful idea. It is a sol­id gift to the na­tion built on the idea that ed­u­ca­tion is the key to so­cial mo­bil­i­ty. In this sense, the pur­pose of GATE is so­cial jus­tice and re­dis­trib­u­tive in­vest­ments. How­ev­er, if you ed­u­cate peo­ple and those bright, en­er­getic first-timers find them­selves in dead-end, low-pay­ing, and en­try-lev­el jobs, then on some lev­el we can say that the idea is not work­ing as in­tend­ed.

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine