Evolution of the university graduates’ social status: prospects for precariousness

Abstract

Background. Modern processes of social stratification in Russian society are an urgent problem in Russian sociology. There are significant changes in the social structure. There are social groups forming new, future social strata, in which signs of social statuses acquire qualitative differences. Among such layers, a relatively new one is the precariat, the question of which is also relevant because for university graduates and people with higher education there is a fairly high probability of falling into this social stratum. The purpose of the work is to analyze the possibilities of the emergence of a new layer – the precariat, and to make qualitative predictions about the probability of future replenishment of the precari-at by university graduates. Materials and methods. The research methodology is presented by a systematic approach and the sociological concept of social stratification. The research methods are a questionnaire survey of university teachers about the conditions and pro-spects of their work (n = 850), conducted on the initiative of the Ulyanovsk State Technical University with the participation of the authors, and a secondary analysis of the research results of other Russian sociologists. Results. The factors influencing the employment of university graduates and the probability of their entering the ranks of the precariat are clas-sified: geopolitical, educational, socio-institutional, socio-value. Based on the results of a survey of teachers of higher educational institutions, it was revealed that the introduction of distance learning creates opportunities for changing ideas about the organization of work and affects the motivation of students’ work. Conclusions. Changes are taking place in the higher education system that affect the social mobility of graduates of higher educational institutions and their acquisition of social status. Higher education acquires the content of a kind of terminal for individuals, who are then more likely to enter the precariat groups rather than work in their specialty. Variants of forecasts of the appearance of the precariat are derived, taking into account regional peculiarities.

Keywords

• social stratification
• precariat
• university teachers
• social stratum
• social chan-ges
• social status
• social mobility