EDUCATIONAL AND OCCUPATIONAL SELECTION IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA: A SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL ACCOUNT

How does a socialist society solve the problem of occupational succession? In contemporary Romania, the occupational positions that young people will eventually attain are primarily determined by the outcome of three educational-occupational transitions encountered in adolescence. After completion of the eighth and final year of elementary education, young people 13 and 14 years of age, must choose, and possibly compete for entry into, occupationally oriented high school programs. After completion of the 10th grade, young people 15 and 16 years of age have three basic options: to take the examinations for a high school continuation program (that is, to complete the 11th and 12th grades), to enter a production-oriented vocational training program, or to begin full-time employment. The third transition involves only those young people who continue on in high school. High school graduates 17 and 18 years of age have two basic options: to take the examinations for entrance into higher education or to begin full-time employment. Fundamentally, it is through these three "sortings" that the distribution of young people into the hundreds of occupational roles in Romanian society occurs. The three transitions were studied during the 1977-78 school year using Fredrik Barth's social interaction approach as a general theoretical framework. A preliminary discussion focuses on aspects of national decision making and planning that were relevant to the occupational distribution process. Two premises are found to be particularly influential: that in a socialist society there must be work for all and all must work, and that educational programs must be organized so that the anticipated labor force needs of each region and the country as a whole will be met. The three transitions are then presented as they occurred in one Romanian county (Cluj County) and as they occurred in the lives of selected groups of young people chosen to represent different social contexts and different types of high school programs. Observed regularities are analyzed using two explanatory models: a conformative model that focuses on the general way each transition was shaped or formed, and a comparative model that addresses the differences in attainment achieved by the studied groups. It is noted that both through the use of legal requirements to compel school attendance and employment, and examinations to limit entry into popular educational programs and occupations, the national decision makers were able to determine the overall distribution of young people among occupations, though at times national and local plans were modified to accord with the expressed desires and choices of young people. In the area of intergenerational occupational succession, three trends are evidenced: (1) almost all young people at the termination of formal schooling were better educated and more highly trained than their parents; (2) because professional parents were able to utilize both their own resources and the informal and formal differences between educational programs, the overwhelming majority of their children entered higher education, while only a small minority of the children of other parents were able to do so; (3) the majority of pupils in higher education programs were not children of professionals. The simultaneous occurrence of all three trends was possible because of the small number of professional families with adolescent children in 1977 and because of the expansion of educational and occupational opportunities that occurred between 1947 and 1978.