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Chapter 11. Theoretical Implications: Using Institutional Linkages to Signal and Enhance Youths’ Capabilities
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241 Chapter 11 Theoretical Implications: Using Institutional Linkages to Signal and Enhance Youths’ Capabilities A ll societies initiate young people into adulthood (Parsons 1959). They provide ways for youths to attain adult status and recognition of their productive value, and they give employers ways to know which individuals are ready to be productive. In simpler societies, youths are awarded adult status through initiation ceremonies that signal to all members of the society that they can meet tests of their survival skills and self-sufficiency. In modern societies, such signals usually come through schools. Although policymakers recognize the need for schools to provide students with training in the competencies demanded to be productive in society, they rarely consider the need for schools to provide signals. Schools do not give students clear signals of employers’ needs or of the payoffs for achievement. Nor do schools provide employers with clear signals about students’ capacity to be productive adults in society . In our interviews, employers complained that a high school diploma does not ensure basic literacy, and their complaints are confirmed by examinations (NAEP 1990). As detailed in chapter 6, teachers give students vague statements about employers’ needs (which students dismiss as self-serving platitudes), but no one provides students with authoritative information that grades will increase their earnings. Indeed, employers are not even aware of the relationship between grades and earnings. This signaling function often occurs informally when youths manage to get signals from informal sources, such as neighbors, friends, and relatives. However, if youths want jobs in fields different from 242 Beyond College for All those in which their friends and relatives work, or if their friends and relatives are unemployed or lack influential contacts, schools may be their only source of signals. This signaling function can be clearly seen in other nations. In Japan and Germany, work-bound students see that their school achievement is rewarded in the labor market, and employers see students’ value through school-provided evaluations. These processes work in Japan and Germany because these nations have infrastructures that clearly communicate information about employers’ hiring criteria to students and information about students’ school achievements to employers . These infrastructures persuade employers to trust and value school information in their hiring decisions. The United States lacks an infrastructure for giving employers dependable information about new high school graduates, and students believe (mostly correctly) that their school achievements are not known or valued by employers. As economic theory posits, American employers and students get information through ordinary market processes, but they are not certain whether the information is relevant or trustworthy. Employers do not trust the signals they get about students ’ value, and students do not trust the information they get about schools’ relevance to future careers. This lack of trusted information discourages employers from hiring students and discourages students from exerting effort in school. However, we discovered that some teachers create informal linkages that help employers get trusted information and help students see school’s relevance, and that these informal linkages are maintained through processes that resemble the formal infrastructures in other nations. These findings raise new issues that are often ignored by customary theories about the youth labor market. Neoclassical economic theory warns that structures may hurt efficiency by limiting competition, but our findings suggest that linkage structures increase efficiency by providing better-quality information, even if they limit competition. Signaling theory says that employers and students need more information , but our research indicates that what they need is the right kind of information. Network theory focuses on the benefits of weak ties, but our research indicates that the youth labor market is helped by strong ties that ensure the dependability of information. This chapter asks what kinds of information are needed to improve the youth labor market, and what kinds of social contacts provide the information that effectively signals students’ value to employers and employers’ needs to students. Selective colleges communicate clear incentives to students, but the communication of incentives and signals between employers and high school students is poor, according [107.23.157.16] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:07 GMT) Theoretical Implications 243 to our findings. We present a linkage model that describes how information may be effectively communicated between institutions. Just as James Coleman (1988) showed that individuals have greater capabilities in the context of preexisting ethnic ties, the linkage model indicates that strong ties can be created that lead to similar outcomes. Even if students have the same human capital, being in a...