With more individuals obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees and the job market still recovering from the 2008 recession, the instances of college graduate underemployment (CGU) have increased throughout the United States. College graduate underemployment is an employment condition that is characterized by subjective and objective factors, most prominent of which is an incongruence between one’s education and one’s current job. The intriguing nature of CGU is how both employment and education merge together to influence the individual’s perception of their employment prospects, their educational experiences, and their identity. This study employs a dialogical qualitative analysis to examine CGU in order to ascertain how underemployed college graduates construct narratives of their experiences and define the value of their education. Twenty in-depth interviews of underemployed college graduates from different academic disciplines are analyzed with a dialogical genre analysis developed by Paul Sullivan. Two genre pairs—epic/romance and tragedy/black comedy—are employed to illustrate the correlating modes of experience for these participants, creating new narratives that problematize the dominant education-to-employment progression.
When considering Karl Marx's conception of praxis, numerous relations between it and action research come to the surface. These relations are not only important for understanding the roots of action research, but also future directions of the methodology. Marx's short, but important text, the Theses on Feuerbach, not only constructs the foundation for Marxian praxis, but also can be read as an action research text, for it stands as an example of how to transform knowledge generation into a practical and active process. Moreover, praxis functions as a mode of epistemology and a revolutionary system that espouses human agency. One can further draw connections between Marxian praxis and action research in terms of how praxis requires researchers to be critical of dominant ideologies and methodologies. Therefore, revisiting Marxist theory, particularly its specific conception of praxis, is a crucial exercise for action researchers, particularly in a context where problems associated with the capitalist political economy continue to profoundly affect people's lives.
Leading Frankfurt School theorist, Herbert Marcuse, possessed an intricate relationship with higher education. As a professor, Marcuse participated in the 1960s student movements, believing that college students had potential as revolutionary subjects. Additionally, Marcuse advocated for a college education empowered by a form of praxis that extended education outside the university into realms of critical thought and action. However, the more pessimistic facet of his theory, best represented in the canonical One Dimensional Man, now seems to be the dominant ideology in the contemporary college experience. With the rise of the corporate university, knowledge is commodified and praxis is supplanted by rampant consumerism. Once a haven for critical theory, the college experience has been overtaken by capitalism, substantially limiting the revolutionary potential for college students in favour of an institutionalised, one dimensional university. HERBERT MARCUSE AND THE LEVELING OF THE COLLEGE LANDSCAPEHerbert Marcuse had a profound faith in the power of student populations. In the 1960s, students carried well-thumbed copies of his most notable work, One Dimensional Man, to demonstrations and protests, reciprocally elevating Marcuse to an esteemed position among theorists during that time. Marcuse, himself, participated in these movements and served as a key speaker in lectures celebrating the critical, the radical, and the avantgarde. Though a keen critic of capitalism's subtle deprivations and a theorist openly pessimistic about the expanding intrusiveness of the technological society, there is an underlying hopefulness pulsing through Marcuse's work. Like any true Marxist-inspired theorist, Marcuse envisioned a better future, one ushered not necessarily by the proletariat, but rather by the hundreds of thousands of college students spread across the United States.Marcuse's faith in college students stemmed from multiple originsidealistic and pragmatic. Those enrolled in universities held the most bs_bs_banner
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