A series on how the great sociological thinkers from the past can help us understand the struggle of today’s students as they explore and discern their vocations.
Students often ask us: What kind of job will I be able to get with my degree? This occupational focus can be frustrating for those of us in higher education who want students to think more holistically about their vocations and explore questions like: How can I contribute to the common good? What do I want to accomplish with my life? What would be a fulfilling way to spend my time?
As a sociologist, I am inclined to reframe these questions through the lens of my discipline. When students struggle with the job question, I can’t help but think about the social and economic forces that control the kinds of positions that are available to them. Who or what creates the job market they will encounter? What forces shape how they will spend their time and energy? What structures the possible goals they will devote their lives to accomplishing?
One of the founding fathers of sociology, Karl Marx, can help us think through these questions. He famously—and harshly—critiqued capitalism, calling attention to how it concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, which leads to poverty and hardship for workers. Marx was and is a controversial figure because he called for a revolution to transform our economy and society. Why did he believe that such extreme measures were necessary?
Marx believed that work was one of the most important and meaningful parts of human life, and he observed that capitalism made work unpleasant and unfulfilling. Over the course of Marx’s life, the industrial division of labor increased. Factory owners found it more efficient—and thus more profitable—for workers to only complete a small part of the production process. In practice, such efficiencies required factory workers to repeat the same actions over and over again.
Marx coined the term alienation to describe how workers in capitalist economies do not control their own labor or what they produce. The system incentivizes capitalists to suppress workers’ wages to maximize profit, which can result in workers not being able to afford the products they produce. Alienation also means that workers cannot freely decide what they will do or how they will act, as their actions are controlled by the capitalists who own the means of production. These bosses dictate to workers what they must work towards and how they spend their time and energy. Because, as Marx argues, workers in capitalist societies do not freely decide what is produced or how they work, they are alienated from their own labor.
The impact of this alienation is profound. A survey of British workers found that 37% of them do not think their job makes a meaningful contribution to the world. In his essay “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs,” anthropologist David Graeber argues that an economy that creates this situation does “profound psychological violence” to people. It is not as though there is a lack of meaningful work to go around. But a capitalist economy deprioritizes activities that are not directed toward increasing profit. Ultimately, to maximize profit, many workers spend their lives doing jobs that they see as meaningless or even harmful. This is alienation in the twenty-first century.
I want to help my students avoid this sense of alienation—of being in a position where they would answer no on a survey that asks them, “Is your job making a meaningful contribution to the world?” However, extreme inequality means that our students face increased economic pressures. As the difference between the haves and the have nots increases, so, too, do the economic stakes for students’ career choices. The anxiety about getting one of the increasingly rare “good jobs” with security and benefits tends to drown out questions about purpose, the common good, accomplishment, and fulfillment. Marx points out that capitalism guarantees there will be winners and losers; unfortunately, we cannot control where our students will end up in an increasingly difficult and competitive economy.
Without sustained collective action to improve working conditions and wages, this situation is not likely to change. What role can teachers and advisors play in supporting students given these realities?
Counterintuitively, we might need to prepare students for the reality that they might not find their primary purpose through their jobs. Their life outside of formal employment might end up being where their true vocation lies. These callings could come from their devotion to family, faith, volunteer work, or political activism. It could comprise all of these things. In an ideal world, we would all find jobs that allow us to live out our deeper purpose and contribute meaningfully to society, but that is not the reality of the world as it is.
Because of this reality, those of us working in higher education need to provide spaces where economic considerations are not the top priority, where students can set aside their anxieties and focus on the difficult and crucial tasks of learning about themselves and the world. We need to resist the pressure to focus our curricula primarily on providing a good return on investment to students through career preparation and building transferrable skills. Of course, these concerns are important, especially in our current economy, but we should remember to stay grounded in the intrinsic value of the knowledge we share and the experiences we create for students. Most of us in academia are here because our disciplines moved us in some way, whether we were driven by the excitement of scientific discovery, the desire to improve the world, or the joy of creative expression. We need to put these motivations at the center of how we teach and inspire students. We need to connect to students as human beings, not just human capital.
Because of this reality, those of us working in higher education need to provide spaces where economic considerations are not the top priority, where students can set aside their anxieties and focus on the difficult and crucial tasks of learning about themselves and the world.
Marx believed that work was an important part of being human—of actualizing one’s “self” and living a meaningful life. As he writes, “The productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, is contained in the character of its life activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species-character.” Our very essence as human beings, our “species character” (or “species being”) is to be creative and express ourselves through our work.
As much as possible, we should create spaces where students engage in “free conscious activity,” spaces in which they participate not merely to get points to pass a class, to get a degree, to get a job—but because they desire to learn and discover, to be creative and grow in skill, to produce good works and help others, and to express themselves. We should help students experience work that they find intrinsically satisfying, even if it does not increase their capacity to generate profit for employers. Our classes and assignments could spark students to generate products that are not “busy work,” but rather products that reflect and externalize the student’s emerging self, whether that self is an artist, a scientist, or even an agent of change in the world.
Michelle Oyakawa is an assistant professor of sociology at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. She is coauthor of Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty First Century America with Hahrie Han and Liz McKenna and Smart Suits, Tattered Boots: Black Ministers Mobilizing the Black Church in the Twenty First Century with Korie Edwards. For more posts by Michelle, click here.