Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129 -203 ISSN 2307-7999 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 e-ISSN 2310-4635 ReseaRch aRticle Graduates of New University Careers: Unequal Competition on the Labour Market Egresados de nuevas carreras universitarias: Competir desigualmente en el mercado de trabajo Javier Damián Simón Universidad del Papaloapan, Oaxaca, México. Received on: 14-10-16 Approved on: 29-03-17 Corresponding author How to cite: Email: [email protected] Simón J. (2017). Graduates of New University Careers: Unequal Competition on the Labour Market. Propósitos y Representaciones, 5(1), 129 - 203. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017. v5n1.146 © Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Desarrollo, 2017. This article is distributed under license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Internacional (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Graduates of New uNiversity Careers: uNequal CompetitioN oN the labour market Summary The purpose of the study is to describe the process of job insertion in a context of the local labour market of the graduates to identify traits of discrimination originated by their hybrid professional profile1. A case study and a qualitative approach were used to investigate the graduates of the first two generations of the Business Sciences Degree of a small Mexican public university. The results contradict the advantages attributed to hybrid university careers, far from facilitating the incorporation to the work, it found that hybrid graduates compete of unequal way for job offers due to two situations: lack of social knowledge of their profession by all employers that originates the absence of demand of these professionals, and lack of professional identity of graduates that causes they are unable to justify and defend the usefulness of their hybrid training. Keywords: Higher education, university, graduates, employment, education, job insertion. Resumen El objetivo del trabajo es describir el proceso de inserción laboral en un contexto de mercado de trabajo local de los egresados para identificar rasgos de discriminación originados por su perfil profesional híbrido2; mediante un estudio de caso y un enfoque cualitativo se investigó a los egresados de las dos primeras generaciones de la Licenciatura en Ciencias Empresariales de una pequeña universidad pública mexicana. Los resultados contradicen las ventajas atribuidas a las carreras universitarias híbridas, pues lejos de facilitar la incorporación al trabajo se encontró que los egresados híbridos compiten de manera desigual por las ofertas de trabajo debido a dos situaciones: la falta de conocimiento social de su profesión por el conjunto de empleadores que origina la ausencia de demanda de dichos profesionistas y, la falta de 1 In Mexican higher education there are tendencies of transversal specialties that allude to polyfunctionality and multidisciplinarity, they have given rise to a supply of “new” university careers. In this study, according to specialists and without any desire to give it a pejorative meaning, they are called hybrid careers. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 168 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 Javier Damián Simón identidad profesional de los egresados que ocasiona que no sean capaces de justificar y defender la utilidad de su formación híbrida. Palabras clave: Educación superior, universidad, egresados, educación y empleo, inserción laboral. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 169 Graduates of New uNiversity Careers: uNequal CompetitioN oN the labour market Introduction Contextualization and problematization of the theme. According to diagnoses made by international organizations that allude to new demands of the labour market and the recommendations of those responsible for national educational planning, the Mexican higher education system has undertaken actions such as revising university curriculum, adaptation of professional profiles, creation and offer of university careers that mix two or more traditional disciplines resulting in hybrid careers (DGEST, 2009; CUP, 2009; Barrón & Gómez, 2004). For example, from the year 2009 the subsystem of the National Technological of Mexico offers “Engineering Business Management”, technological universities offer “Engineering on Development and Business Innovation” and “Engineering Administration”, while Polytechnic universities offer “Financial Engineering and Project Management”. In these three cases, the new educational options replace the traditional and well-known Degree in Business Administration. The justification is that hybrid professional training re-funtions professions into more flexible schemes and allows graduates to join to job with greater advantages and facilities because this responds to the demands of the current labour market characterized by being multipurpose, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary (Dahrendorf, 1986; Psacharopoulos, 2005). The few studies carried out in Mexico on hybrid university graduates have found two problems: the low social recognition3 of the profession originated by the ignorance of the profile of hybrid graduate and the absence of professional identity among the individuals who hold that career (Jiménez, 2009; Damián, 2015). This problem represents an emerging field in educational research because this career is little known and therefore it opens great possibilities to generate knowledge that respond to new questions on professional development processes, as well as social and labour situations 3 The literature refers to the category “social recognition” of the profession, for obtaining this category it requires to elapse some time after job insertion and to be able to evaluate the grade of contribution of the profession to the needs of society. In this study, due to the period of time that has elapsed is very short, the term “social knowledge” of the profession is used throughout the text. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 170 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 Javier Damián Simón that live this type of graduates when entering the labour market and in this case it is necessary to point out or show the follies of offering this type of professions. From the previous situations, it was necessary to carry out a study on the conditions in which the graduate with hybrid training of the Business Science Degree (BSD) has to compete for his job insertion, in front of the graduates of administrative careers well known by the set of employers, because from his experience the graduate faces a discriminatory labour market and with disadvantages compared to the graduates of traditional careers. In order for the reader to be placed in the context of the problem studied, the situation is described a little more. The BSD started activities in October 2005 and for the 2016 school year has received eleven generations of which have already graduated the first seven. According to informal talks with some graduates, they mentioned that, in their job search, the companies or the employers do not have information on the labour field of the profession and they do not know the figure of the BSD, situation that from their own imaginary causes that they have to compete for jobs of unequal way with the professionals of related areas such as administrators and accountants, because these traditional careers enjoy social recognition from employers. In other words, they are facing a discriminatory labour market by competing unequally in the professional area. Studying this emerging research is important because it will contribute to the generation of information bases on an empirical research to know the situation of discrimination that graduates with hybrid university education face during the process of job insertion in a poorly industrialized region of the state of Oaxaca. Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have two objectives to offer hybrid educational programs: 1) respond to the current demands of the labour market by forming flexible and multipurpose professionals, and 2) increase job opportunities for hybrid graduates in contrast to those coming from traditional careers (Damián, 2015a). For that reason, there is an interest to carry out a study that allows to evaluate in the BSD these basic objectives and the congruence between the hybrid university curriculum and Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 171 Graduates of New uNiversity Careers: uNequal CompetitioN oN the labour market the new demands of the labour market (Barrón & Gómez, 2004). For all that, the principal purpose of the research was to describe the process of job insertion in a local labour market context of the BSD graduates, with the aim of identifying features of discrimination originated by their hybrid professional profile. Theoretical and conceptual framework. Background to the hybrid university professions. It is necessary to restructure the offer of higher education for three reasons: 1) greater flexibility, adaptability and relevance of professional training to respond to the current occupational context characterized by rapid changes in job qualification requirements; 2) unpredictability, indeterminacy, adaptability, learning ability and continuous training are characteristics of the world of work and which education must respond (Muñoz & Rodríguez 2004; Barrón 2005) and; 3) the emergence of new forms and tendencies of organization, differentiation, identity and delimitation of generation and appropriation of knowledge. Many traditional professions have clear definitions, limitations and identities of their area are also subject to tensions and questions arising from the emergence of new hybrid or transdisciplinary fields that offer new compositions, demarcations, limits and identities between diverse knowledge, fertile field for the offer of hybrid university careers which -in theory- form the human resources that respond to the demands of the new organization of work (Universia, 2009; DGEST, 2009; CUP, 2009). Hybrid university professions: purposes and characteristics. Occupations are classified into three major groups: 1) new occupations, which did not exist some years ago, 2) occupations in transformation that although they maintain their traditional name have been transformed and incorporated new contents and functions and, 3) emerging occupations that represent responses to the emerging needs of individuals and enterprises. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 172 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 Javier Damián Simón Occupations in transformation include hybrid professional that they have a background in two or more fields of knowledge and use it to exercise an occupation that takes place on the border between two or more disciplines (Damián, 2014). According to Jiménez (2009a), a hybrid profession is characterized by its “curriculum was designed from the convergence of two recognized disciplines”, it is understood that each disciplines, that are mixed to give way to hybridization, have a clear and specific delimitation of their field of action; in addition the term of interdisciplinary profession is used to explain that it is a profession in which the “concepts and methods of two disciplines are articulated and subsumed in a common object and in a determined problematic” (p.59). Holguín (2011) mentions that the hybrid university formation breaks the paradigm of specialization and at the same time provides a double opportunity to the graduate because in case of being employed in a company, by its hybrid formation can work in more than two areas, in other words, graduate can compete for various job options. Nevertheless, Paéz (2009) points out that hybrid university graduates are in an area of p rofessional ambiguity because they move between the frontiers of the disciplines that they articulate without a marked limitation of their professional performance. In relation to the above, Damián (2015) found that these professionals generally tend to “invade” the field of action of traditional professionals or they become the “wild card” of companies, in other words, they have to do activities of an administrative nature that do not require specialized knowledge. Sáez (2007) mentions three characteristics of the hybrid professional: 1) his field of professional performance is more difficult than that of the professional specialist because in his beginnings the professional does not know what knowledge or works he covers or with what intensity; 2) the specialist professional chooses a field of knowledge and is limited to the technical complexity, but hybrid professional has a broader mission because his involvement will be for the solution of major problems requiring more complex and multidisciplinary approaches; and 3) the hybrid professional does not stop being a specialist Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 173 Graduates of New uNiversity Careers: uNequal CompetitioN oN the labour market in something, but he has to be less specialist than the many specialists, although enough to have a fluid and operative dialogue with the specialists. For the hybrid professional, there is no point between much of nothing or little of much, in other words, he does not have a clear delimitation of his professional performance4 (Jiménez, 2009b; Paéz, 2009). Professional identity and social recognition in hybrid professionals. According to an individual form and a subjective understanding of the professional career, it is important to ask how individuals give meaning to their careers, personal histories, abilities, attitudes and beliefs they have acquired (Arnold & Jackson, 1997; as quoted in Jenschke, 2004). The above matters because one of the factors that contribute to the diligence in the search for the first job is when the graduate is fully aware of the role that will play in the framework of the professional field. Therefore some approaches suggest that, during their professional training, individuals do not only have to worry about acquiring their own university career skills, but also building a career identity (Miejers, 1998), moreover the individual base models (cognitive- transactional theory, cognitive-behavioral theory and dissonance theory) and the integral models (Vitamin Model) mention that when analyzing the job insertion of an individual are related individual and contextual aspects that play a crucial role in that process. According to Ávila & Cortés (2007, p.54), the professional identity is “that representation that is created around a specific field of work which is recognized in society and among a group of individuals who identify themselves as members of the same field, whose characteristic is to share this social representation of the profession and its sense of belonging”. Hatum & Rivarola (2007, p.27) define professional identity as the “set of habits that a person has developed in the scope of his work and potential projection of others to cultivate in the future”. Having a professional identity 4 Colloquially and as a joke some graduates, according to their experience in the development of their work activities, call themselves “hybrid transformer” or “thousand uses”. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 174 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 Javier Damián Simón implies belonging to a certain group, identifying yourself as a professional in a specific field of action, with a high level of professional qualification and with institutional support and recognition; and this supposes the existence of social recognition in the collective imagination, existing a clear and defined idea of what it implies to belong to that profession. Currently, in the forms of work organization based on individualism, the central thing is personal fulfillment, in a context of strong competition there is a situation of permanent identity crisis (Dubar, 2000). For all that, is understood the reason why the hybrid professions lack of a referent in the social imaginary, which it means a lack of clarity about the field of work performance and lack of definition in the profile of the subject as a professional, this contributes to hinder the formation of their professional identity. Individuals that study hybrid professions have great difficulties in forming their professional identity, according to three reasons (Meijers 1998; Dubar 2000; Jenschke 2004): a. There is no representation in the social imaginary (employers/society) of the work of the hybrid professional. There is no frame of reference and this causes the graduate assimilates some model of profession that preceded to its hybrid formation, linking its professional practice to a traditional career and distorting the objective of the hybrid formation. b. Due to there is no practical reference framework, professional preparation is mostly theoretical, based on the needs and demands that those responsible for national educational planning “claim” to have detected according to the diagnoses of labour markets, without this means the actual existence of such needs. c. Teachers have traditional careers, causing a bias in the training process and making an indecisive interpretation of the professional field, in other words, students who have a hybrid profession lack an external reference of the professional in the discipline to which they are going to dedicate, a serious situation if one takes into account that the professional identity begins to be generated from the university classrooms. In the case of the educational program analyzed, there are no teachers with the BSD that serve as an external reference of the work practice for the students. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146 175 Graduates of New uNiversity Careers: uNequal CompetitioN oN the labour market Another variable that influences in the job insertion of graduates is the social recognition of the profession, referred to as “the valuation of certain professions according to different socioeconomic strata. This includes the social assessment of the professional’s word (recognition of professional and/or intellectual authority) and acceptance of certain professions in certain social circles” (Bobadilla & Torres, 2002:98). Thus the recognition, by the community, of the importance of the service provided by professionals is constituted in its main source of prestige, it is also associated fundamentally both to the social utility of the profession and to the impossibility of being exercised by persons not qualified for it (Caso & Calonge, 2001). Juárez (1993) mentions that for a profession to be officially recognized and accepted must meet at least three conditions: have an official recognition of the field of their knowledge that can be transmitted and certified, have an area of activity defined and legitimized by the scientific community, and have an ethical code that regulates the exercise of the profession. Regarding the problem of the low social recognition of the hybrid professions, De Ibarrola (2007) affirms that the school system has oriented young people to new types of professions, however, this intention of change has not been the result of a harmonious development between the education system and the productive system, but rather of political decisions derived from recommendations of international organisms to overcome the arrears of our country. This shows a marked contradiction between international and national context, between globalization and local development situation of our country. However, in our country it continue to design and offer hybrid university careers without taking into account the very particular needs of each region in which universities are inserted (Planas, 2014). These three large subsystems mentioned at the beginning offer in all their campuses no matter they are located in urban and industrialized areas or in rural areas with an incipient or null development of the business fabric. Propósitos y Representaciones Ene. - Jun. 2017, Vol. 5, Nº 1: pp. 129-203 176 http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2017.v5n1.146