Labour Market Characteristics of Helping Professionals

Abstract

In Hungary, considerable efforts have been made in recent years to analyse the career paths of higher educational graduates, which have highlighted the need for field-specific and training-specific analysis. In this context, our research concentrates on a special training segment, focusing on the position of young professionals working in occupations helping the function of the society. Previous research focused only on the professionalization of the different occupations and the recruitment was examined from institutional and regional aspects. However, during the statistical analysis we examined the social recruitment base and the labour market situation of social pedagogy graduates in the Graduates 2012 (Frissdiplomások 2012) national database. The novelty of our work lies in the comparison of those who graduated in social work, pedagogy and andragogy in full-time programs. The most important result of our quantitative analysis is the statement that the differences in the composition of the group are strongly explained by the regional location of the institutions providing the training. In terms of horizontal and vertical congruence, the values of the humanities group are the most unfavourable.

Ambivalence of Professional Socialization in Social and Educational Professions

“…However, during the survey of their academic history, former students also reflected upon their professional training, so experiences during formal education were not left out either. When analyzing the quantitative official longitudinal career data, it became clear to us that several elements of the professional socialization process were not examined in this type of research (Csók 2020). That is why we conducted the research based on a qualitative paradigm.…”

“…A study of the career paths of young helping professionals in the fields of social work and education concluded that, whereas education graduates took a longer time to find a job and not all of them were able to find one matching their qualifications, social workers were less likely to leave their professions. Although education graduates had less favorable results regarding horizontal and vertical congruence (Csók 2020), social workers were also affected by income disadvantages (Benkő 2009;Csók 2020).…”

“…According to statistics, the majority of professionals work in the public sector (e.g., schools, child protection, and social welfare). According to official data on the professional careers of university graduates, statistics do not count social and educational professionals as working in their own profession when they start working as self-employed individuals (Csók 2020). Between 2000 and 2015, the number of people employed in health and social care increased by 42% in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.…”

Stratified Student Society in Higher Education Fields. Impact of Expected Earning on Students' Career

“…As an explanation, families who are higher up the income and hierarchy ladder want their children to be able to reproduce at least their social status. Consequently, careers offering lower-income and prestige are less attractive to children of more highly qualified parents (Benkő, 2009;Csók, 2020). Data on parents' educational attainment suggest a more open nature of the fields of education in the lower tercile (e.g.…”

“…After two decades, the impact of location in the vertical hierarchy of society on schooling and degree attainment remains at the forefront of research (Pusztai, 2015a). Students are not a homogeneous group at entry (Csók et al, 2019;Kovács et al, 2019), which is based on the fact that they start their tertiary education under unequal conditions. The family and secondary school pathways of disadvantaged students are in many ways inferior to those of their peers in higher status (e.g.…”