"The waste of human capacity Roth describes is phenomenal. But his major point is that it is not new. The millennials are feeling the worst of it, perhaps, but only the worst so far."—Inside High Ed
 
The dream of social mobility is dying. Where previous generations routinely expected to surpass their parents' level of economic success, prospects for today's young people are increasingly bleak.  What role does higher education play in the process? An essential and frightening one, according to author Gary Roth.           
 
The Educated Underclass reveals the structural problems that are helping to create this problem. Gary Roth shows how universities—touted as the best way up the economic ladder for young people—actually reproduce traditional class hierarchies. And as more graduates emerge every year into economies that are no longer creating a steady stream of stable jobs, the odds of landing one decrease—and over-educated people end up scrapping for poorly compensated positions for which they're overqualified. Chapters include:
 
*Higher education and class
*The overproduction of intelligence
*Class in transition: historical background
*Underemployment through the decades
*Class status and economic instability
*And more!
 
Roth writes in his Introduction, “Education has become an intermediary institution between a social system that habitually sputters and declines while ever-greater amounts of consumer products are dangled in front of the system’s workforce. The result: a dynamic fraught with all sort of negative possibilities, both socially and psychotically.” 
 
A broadside against the failures of our education system and our economy, Gary Roth’s The Educated Underclass aims to startle us out of our complacency and wake us up to action.  
 

Over the last twenty years, business responses to progressive reform in Latin America have shifted dramatically.  Until the 1990s, progressive movements in Latin America suffered violent repression sanctioned by the private sector and other socio-political elites.  The powerful case studies in this volume show how business responses to reform have become more open–ended as Latin America’s democracies have deepened, with repression tempered by the economic uncertainties of globalization, the political and legal constraints of democracy, and shifting cultural understandings of poverty and race.

Enduring Reform presents five case studies from Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina in which marginalized groups have successfully forged new cultural and economic spaces and won greater autonomy and political voice.  Bringing together NGO’s, local institutions, social movements, and governments, these initiatives have developed new mechanisms to work ‘within the system,’ while also challenging the system’s logic and constraints.

 Through firsthand interviews, the contributors capture local businesspeople’s understandings of these progressive initiatives and record how they grapple with changes they may not always welcome, but must endure. Among their criteria, the contributors evaluate the degree to which businesspeople recognize and engage with reform movements and how they frame electoral counterproposals to reformist demands. The results show an uneven response to reform, dependent on cultural as much or more than economic factors, as businesses move to decipher, modify, collaborate with, outmaneuver, or limit progressive innovations.

From the rise of worker-owned factories in Buenos Aires, to the collective marketing initiatives of impoverished Mayans in San Cristóbal de las Casas, the success of democracy in Latin America depends on powerful and cooperative social actions and actors, including the private sector. As the cases in Enduring Reform show, the democratic context of Latin America today presses businesspeople to endure, accept, and at times promote progressive change in unprecedented ways, even as they act to limit and constrain it.

An insightful examination of why we compare ourselves to those above and below us. The United States was founded on the principle of equal opportunity for all, and this ethos continues to inform the nation's collective identity. In reality, however, absolute equality is elusive. The gap between rich and poor has widened in recent decades, and the United States has the highest level of economic inequality of any developed country. Social class and other differences in status reverberate throughout American life, and prejudice based on another's perceived status persists among individuals and groups. In Envy Up, Scorn Down, noted social psychologist Susan Fiske examines the psychological underpinnings of interpersonal and intergroup comparisons, exploring why we compare ourselves to those both above and below us and analyzing the social consequences of such comparisons in day-to-day life. What motivates individuals, groups, and cultures to envy the status of some and scorn the status of others? Who experiences envy and scorn most? Envy Up, Scorn Down marshals a wealth of recent psychological studies as well as findings based on years of Fiske's own research to address such questions. She shows that both envy and scorn have distinctive biological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics. And though we are all "wired" for comparison, some individuals are more vulnerable to these motives than others. Dominant personalities, for example, express envy toward high-status groups such as the wealthy and well-educated, and insecurity can lead others to scorn those perceived to have lower status, such as women, minorities, or the disabled. Fiske shows that one's race or ethnicity, gender, and education all correlate with perceived status. Regardless of whether one is accorded higher or lower status, however, all groups rank their members, and all societies rank the various groups within them. We rate each group as either friend or foe, able or unable, and accordingly assign them the traits of warmth or competence. The majority of groups in the United States are ranked either warm or competent but not both, with extreme exceptions: the homeless or the very poor are considered neither warm nor competent. Societies across the globe view older people as warm but incompetent. Conversely, the very rich are generally considered cold but highly competent. Envy Up, Scorn Down explores the nuances of status hierarchies and their consequences and shows that such prejudice in its most virulent form dehumanizes and can lead to devastating outcomes—from the scornful neglect of the homeless to the envious anger historically directed at Tutsis in Rwanda or Jews in Europe. Individuals, groups, and even cultures will always make comparisons between and among themselves. Envy Up, Scorn Down is an accessible and insightful examination of drives we all share and the prejudice that can accompany comparison. The book deftly shows that understanding envy and scorn—and seeking to mitigate their effects—can prove invaluable to our lives, our relationships, and our society.