Need to Get Somewhere Fast: A critical examination of the transition from post-secondary education to work

By Meaghan Dougherty

Need to Get Somewhere Fast critically explores the transition from post-secondary education to work - it seeks to complexify the dominant view of the transition from post-secondary education to work as a linear, distinct event that can be assessed through primarily financial indicators. Complexifying our understanding of trans

• Language: English
• Publisher: DIO Press Inc
• Release date: Jul 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645042587

Meaghan Dougherty

Meaghan Dougherty, EdD, is faculty at Douglas College in the Department of Child and Youth Care. Her research interests include educational leadership, the complex relationship between education and the labour market, relational practice, imagination, criticality, and teaching and learning encounters.

Book preview

There is a widely-held belief in North America about the relationship between school and work.  It takes various forms but generally goes something like this—young people need to work hard and achieve good grades in secondary school to be accepted into a ‘good’ college or university.  Once in post-secondary, students need to work even harder to differentiate themselves from the masses to obtain a ‘good’ job.  Achieving a ‘good’ job depends on one’s effort and work ethic and is necessary for living a ‘good’ life.  Being successful means navigating the pathway from school to work appropriately and, ultimately, obtaining a job that financially supports the desired lifestyle.  In this story, consistent with our hypercapitalist society, success is synonymous with financial wealth.      

In this narrative about the relationship between school, work, and ultimately, living a good life, education is portrayed as a ladder of opportunity.  Through their own hard work and dedication, people navigating oppression, poverty, racism, trauma, and other systemic barriers can improve their social standing.  Education allows for social mobility; inequity can be addressed through intergenerational improvements in one’s social class, such that one’s class origin no longer predicts their destination (Brown, 2013).  This story is known as the American Dream, although its reach extends far beyond the borders of the United States.  This story is riveting, appealing to our sense of autonomy and self-empowerment and while it is not entirely false, it is not the whole story.  The relationship between school, work, and living a good life is nuanced and complex. The complexity of this relationship remains largely unexamined by the general public, and this lack of critical examination impacts students, workers, education, perspectives on work, and understandings of what it means to live a good life.  This book aims to begin to examine some of the assumptions embedded in the story of education as a pathway to success, critically explore the relationship between school and work, and imagine what might change if the transition was understood differently.    

In order to understand the transition from school to work differently, we first need to examine how it is currently conceptualized.  In this chapter, I explain how education, specifically post-secondary education, is increasingly viewed as an arm of industry; vocationalized education tailors learning to specific jobs or careers to improve the employability of students (Grubb & Lazerson, 2004). Education is the pathway to employment. The transition from post-secondary education to work is significant for the individual and society. Due to the significance of this transition, educational institutions attempt to increase successful transition for the good of the student and society more broadly. However, deficit-focused interventions reproduce inequity by placing responsibility for transition on the student without critically examining the structural constraints of the labour market.

Simply put, interventions focus on the supply-side of the transition, socializing students to be more employable without recognizing job market realities that limit employability. This provides the foundation for questioning the dominant story of education, work, and success. I introduce that the transition experience of social service workers—a liminal group that engages in front-line work with marginalized people—helps demonstrate the complexity of transition and offers new imaginings for critical practitioner-scholars in social service work and education.      

Education has become increasingly vocationalized, such that all levels of education serve to prepare students for work in a specific occupation or career (Grubb & Lazerson, 2004).  As education becomes increasingly vocationalized, occupations become increasingly professionalized, such that unique specializations emerge (e.g., paraprofessional positions like paralegal, dental assistant, imagining technician, human resources), and specific credentials are required for positions that did not previously require an education (e.g., warehouse technician, medical office assistant). In this cycle, education and work reinforce one another and justify the growth and necessity of the other.  As discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, the purpose of education becomes entangled with employment, and students attempt to navigate their education to obtain the credential that will enable their desired career.   

This dominant understanding of schooling, work, and ‘success’, implicitly accepted by the general public, is also the foundation for much of the educational research on transition. In this literature, transition is touted as a critical point for the individual and for society.  Transition is a distinct phase between education and work that can be assessed as successful or unsuccessful using pre-determined outcomes like employment and/or income. Transition may be deemed successful, within this perspective, when a student completes a credential and transitions into employment that is commensurate with that credential. Although school-to-work transitions can happen at any point—including from secondary school, trade schools, vocational training, or other job training programs—the focus of this book is the transition from post-secondary education to work. Post-secondary education is portrayed as the pathway to a highly skilled and globally competitive workforce and as the pathway to individual financial success. Note how, for example, post-secondary education is promoted as the best route to a quality job in this Statistics Canada report on the labour market outcomes of graduates in Canada:  

Knowledge and skills are increasingly important to innovation, productivity, economic growth and competitiveness. For Canada, a better-educated population and a highly skilled workforce are vital to ensure successes in the face of growing global competition. Higher education can provide individuals with knowledge and skills needed to participate in a changing economy and society. As jobs become increasingly knowledge-intensive, having a postsecondary credential is the best route to a well-paying, quality job in Canada. (Ferguson & Wang, 2014, p.