Table of Contents

List of Tables and Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Mapping the Forest of Underemployment

Introduction to the 1999 Edition: Reversing the Education-Jobs Gap

1. The Knowledge Society: Pyramids and Icebergs of Learning

• Introduction

• The General Expansion of Learning Activities

• The Continuing Growth of Schooling

• The Adult Education Boom

• Adult Job Training Programs

• Icebergs of Formal Learning

• Illiteracy Panics and Really Useful Knowledge

• Concluding Remarks

2. The Many Faces of Underemployment

• Introduction

• The Concepts of Underemployment and Subemployment

• The Talent Use Gap

• Structural Unemployment

• Involuntary Reduced Employment

• The Credential Gap

• The Performance Gap

• Subjective Underemployment

• Interrelations of the Dimensions of Underemployment

• Concluding Remarks

3. Voices from the Gap: Underemployment and Lifelong Learning

• Introduction

• Living the Education-Jobs Gap

• Inside Views of the Education-Jobs Gap

• Underemployment and Lifelong Learning

• Concluding Remarks

4. Debunking the "Knowledge Economy": The Limits of Human Capital Theory

• Introduction

• The Evolutionary Progress Paradigm: "Post-Industrial/Knowledge Economy" Theories

• The Limits of Human Capital Theory

• Concluding Remarks

5. Explaining the Gap: Social Struggles Over Knowledge and Work

• Introduction

• Conflict Theories of Knowledge and Work

• Capitalist Production Dynamics

• Neo-Marxist Theories on Education and Work: The Limits of the Correspondence Thesis

• An Emergent Theory on the Education-Jobs Gap

• Concluding Remarks

6. Bridging the Gap: Prospects for Work Reorganization in Advanced Capitalism

• Introduction

• Past and Future Work

• Bridging the Education-Jobs Gap

• Economic Alternatives: Shareholder Capitalism, Stakeholder Capitalism or Economic Democracy

• Popular Support for Economic Solutions to the Education-Jobs Gap

• Concluding Remarks

Endnotes

Glossary of Acronyms

Bibliography

Index

Promotional Information

A rigorous, beautifully crafted, and stunningly successful shredding of the human capital enterprise. This splendidly executed investigation offers us a timely picture of 'human capital theory' as the social sciences' own Titanic. -- Ivar Berg, University of Pennsylvania D.W. Livingstone has written a superb book notable for its effective synthesis of quantitative, qualitative, historical, and theoretical approaches. He explores an issue of vital importance: the growing disjunction between education and paid work in advanced industrial economies, and shows how beneath the rhetoric of a 'healthy economy' lies a much more complex reality of underemployment and wasted talent. His book deserves a wide audience among social scientists interested in education, work, or economic policy. -- Beverley H. Burris, University of New Mexico

About the Author

D.W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work at the University of Toronto, Head of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work at OISE/UT, and Director of the SSHRC national research network on "The Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning."

Reviews

'A rigorous, beautifully crafted, and stunningly successful shredding of the human capital enterprise. This splendidly executed investigation offers us a timely picture of human capital theory as the social sciences own Titanic.' (Ivar Berg, University of Pennsylvania)

'One of the most important books of the decade. This book breathes new life into the much overlooked relationship between education and economic reform.' (Henry A. Giroux, Pennsylvania State University)

'Livingstone's book is an incisive critique of economic and educational orthodoxy, and a powerful new analysis of the connections among school, learning, and work. An important new study by one of the best educational sociologists in the world.' (R. W. Connell, University of Sydney)

'In contrast to the dismal future of continuing and growing underemployment promised by the dominant social policy elite, the author offers a refreshing alternative of economic democracy that is economically viable, socially just, and politically worth struggling for.' (Raj Pannu, University of Alberta)

'A superb book notable for its effective synthesis of quantitative, qualitative, historical, and theoretical approaches. Livingstone explores an issue of vital importance: the growing disjunction between education and paid work in advanced industrial economies.' (Beverley H. Burris, University of New Mexico)