Interesting Findings of Makmuri Sukarno's Thesis

The thesis written by Makmuri Sukarno was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Demography Program, Division of Demography and Sociology, Research School of Social Science the Australian National University on May 1998.

The title of the thesis is 'The Transition from School to Work and Job-Seeking Behavior Among Youth in Three Cities of Java'. What he meant by three cities were Jakarta, Semarang and Surabaya.

The interesting findings are:
(1) "If parental education indicates the cultural resource of parents and parental occupation indicates economic resource of parents, this study confirms that the process of stratification in educational attainment in the area shows a stronger tendency to 'cultural reproduction' than to 'economic reproduction'. Cultural capital theory (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1997) emphasizes the rile of cultural capital as a socialization force which determines educational achievement" (p. 74)

(2) "Sex, age, marital status, and place of birth and ethnicity also have significant effects on the educational attainment of children. ... regardless of parental background, different social role expectations resulting from those factors have determined the demand and chance for children of different sex, marital status, place of birth and ethnic background to obtain education" (p. 75)

(3) "Young people who already have high educational qualification are more likely to have non-formal education than those who are less educated. So there is a tendency for a cumulative acquisition of human capital"

(4) "According to Blake (1989) - Judith Blake, Family Size and Achievement:
     (a) the number of siblings within a family usually reflects the 'socio-economic status' and  
          orientation of the family. If parents prefer a big family, this implies that parents prefer quantity
          to quality.
     (b) the number of siblings reflects the distribution of supports which each child can receive and the
          socialization process among siblings within the family.
     (c) Sibling size has effects through birth order resource allocation.


Page 269
"Children of parents with high educational and occupational background, who were males, single, born in urban areas, and ethnically Javanese were most likely to obtain higher education, and thus benefited greatly from the provision of higher education"

PARENTS EDUCATION WAS THE MOST POWERFUL PREDICTOR OF CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT