Our immediate social environment, our family, influences what kind of educational path we’re to follow. A new study titled, “The Educational Strategies of Danish University Students from Professional and Working-Class Backgrounds” has looked into how the Danish make their choices in college.
- Choosing A Career Path Is Bound By Your Immediate Culture (photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net, by MR LIGHTMAN)
The study confirmed that our social background; our immediate culture and our parents’ professional identity influence our decision about which profession to choose.
For instance, working class students were more likely to go for no-risk degrees that would get them a regular 9 to 5 job. On the contrary, those students whose parents had a strong affiliation with their professional identity, that is they were doctors, lawyers, architects or academics, were more likely to choose a similar no time-restricted profession.
The students with parents in prestigious professions, were more likely to express their own liking of professions that are strongly high-status and it was shown it has been easier for them to identify with the university culture, as they have been in a similar such culture most of their lives due to their social environment.
This study comes to strengthen the claims of how nurture, our social environment greatly affects our behaviors, strategies and life-changing decisions. It also manifest a tendency of working class people who although do have the ability to study medicine or another science do not attempt to because they don’t believe in their abilities or suitability for such a profession.
This behavioral pattern of lower-class students becomes problematic when these students despite being financially and intellectually capable they choose a low-risk career path, believing it’s a culture more suited to their sensibilities.
The truth is, society to move forward needs to encourage lower-class young students to engage with sciences, even if these are perceived to be beyond their reach.
How important do you think social background is when choosing a career path? Is it about networking or is it about a misleading sense of belonging?
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