Abstract
Education is considered to be the most effective tool that people can use to lift themselves out of poor socioeconomic backgrounds and lead to professional success, which in turn improves society. Since an education system often supports individuals with a higher socioeconomic status (SES), it may not resolve the issue of socioeconomic background impacting on career outcomes. Given the nature of the research questions, an individualistic approach is used for selecting tools. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, we argue that graduates studying an 8-year engineering program fail to succeed compared to counterparts who studied a 4-year engineering program. Findings suggest that engineering graduates’ socioeconomic backgrounds help them with their career advancement. A policy intervention may help to address the influence of SES on engineering education and professional employment.
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Notes
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Scaling Procedures and Construct Validation of Context Questionnaire Data. Ch. 16 (OECD Publishing, 2017).
In this case, we mainly focus on the existing teaching and logistic infrastructure of the education institutions.
For employer perspectives on graduates’ employability skills (Bell, 2010), we mainly conducted semi-structured interviews with personnel from two multinational corporations and government institutions.
These were from both universities.
Both at pre-engineering programs and engineering program.
The income categories are defined by following the government’s segmentation as prescribed by BBS (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics).
After completing the JSC exam, some students can enrol in a 2-year SSC-Vocational (SSC-VOC) program, which is equivalent to the SSC.
SSC graduates can go either into a HSC or DE program while SSC-VOC can enrol only in the DE program. Therefore, DE graduates from SSC-VOC have at least 6 years of vocational and engineering education.
DUET graduates originally from SSC-VOC have at least 10 years of technical and engineering education while BUET students have a 4-year engineering education.
MBA of Dhaka University (specifically offered by the Institute of Business Administration) is considered the most elite program in the country. Many engineers want to study this program to sharpen their managerial skills.
We believe that both theories are in some contexts very similar and it is not necessarily a case of ‘either-or’.
It could refer to various kinds of abilities such as innate attributes.
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Acknowledgements
We greatly acknowledge the comments made by the reviewers and Professor Simon Marginson (Editor-Higher Education). Without their thorough input, the manuscript would not have reached its enriched version. We would also like to express our gratitude to Professor Christine Ennew Provost, University of Warwick and Professor Charlie Russo, University of Dayton for their kind insights with innovative ways to deal with the reviewers’ comments. Especial thanks to Mr. Md. Moniruzzaman, Deputy Registrar, DUET who died from being infected by COVID-19 and Ms. Morsheda Parvin who provided a unique support for data collection.
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Alam, G.M., Forhad, M.A.R. What makes a difference for further advancement of engineers: socioeconomic background or education programs?. High Educ 83, 1259–1278 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00741-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00741-4