John Porter

The future of upward mobility.

Perhaps the most important manpower problem for post-modern industrial societies is the recruitment of highly qualified professional, managerial and scientific workers. The evidence of shortages of workers in these fields is examined for the United States particularly but elsewhere as well. Industrial societies were able to meet their higher-level manpower needs by educating the middle and upper classes. In the future, despite the impediments of their subculture, larger numbers of working-class children will have to acquire the educational and mobility values of the middle class. Some doubt is cast on the ubiquity of mobility values in American society in particular, and in industrial societies in general. The importance of egalitarianism in education is stressed, and also the need to change the emphasis in curriculum from humanities to science and mathematics, if the occupational structure of the future is to be maintained.