ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that conflict theories generally offer better insights into both workplace change and differences in people's development and uses of workplace-related knowledge and skill. It critically reviews contemporary Marxist and Weberian theories of education-work relations, most notably correspondence thesis, as well as Carnoy and Levin's contradictory demands thesis and Randall Collins' contradictory demands thesis and Randall credential society thesis. The chapter then draws on some of these perspectives to propose a more specific conflict theory of the education-jobs gap. This theory focuses primarily on class-based conflicts among employers, professional-managerial salaried employees, wageworkers and the unemployed over knowledge and work requirements in advanced capitalist societies. The chapter also argues that class distinctions are intimately related to different degrees of correspondence between education and work. The education-jobs gap is primarily related not to educational deficiencies but to "job churning".
