Documents higher education 194 results

"Using two periods' panel data from the Swiss Graduate Survey, this study examines the incidence, persistence and wage effects of overeducation. An alternative measure of overeducation that accounts for graduate heterogeneity in perceived skills mismatch is used. This analysis differs from previous panel data studies in that two estimation methods are applied to control for unobserved ability. Results indicate that graduates who are overeducated and mismatched in skills are the most penalized in terms of earnings. This evidence is still valid when unobserved ability is accounted for, whereas the pay penalty is no more significant for graduates who are overeducated but matched in skills. This result is robust to different definitions of perceived skills mismatch and is consistent with the notion that apparent overeducation reflects a lack of unobserved attributes, such as ability."

"The Nordic welfare states are facing new challenges in an increasingly globalised world. Fiercer competition has underlined the need for the Nordics to enhance competitiveness – and to support and nurse growth in industry and businesses.

This report presents the key findings and policy recommendations of the project “Nordic Growth Sectors.” Having identified growth companies in the Nordics, the project analyses growth drivers, the match between supply and demand of labour, the work environment in the companies, and growth and other companies' perceptions of existing framework conditions and improvement needs.



Based on the analyses and on a Nordic Policy Forum held in Copenhagen with participation of policymakers from the central administrations, labour market organisations, universities and growth companies, a set of policy reccommendations are developed, the most important of which are to:



Introduce more flexible retirement schemes

Deminish international recruitment red tape

Prepare graduates better for employment

Create national work environment “barometers”

Introduce more flexible child care facilities

Carry out cost-benefit analysis of complex regulation"

"Nearly 80 per cent of all professors in the Nordic region are men. Gender balance in academia is therefore an important research policy issue. Hitherto it has been scarcely debated on a joint Nordic level. This report shows the status and the development in the field. The report gives examples of successful practices and highlights research policy challenges that are important to analyse in a gender and equality perspective.

Given the lack of comparative investigations and research on the gender balance in academia in the Nordic region, there is a need to develop Nordic cooperation in this field. The report concludes with a number of recommendations in order to consolidate the issue of gender balance in academia as a joint policy- and research field in the Nordic region."

"College graduates tend to earn more than non-graduates but it is difficult to ascertain how much of this empirical association between wages and college degree is due to the causal effect of a college degree and how much is due to unobserved factors that influence both wages and education (e.g. ability). In this paper, I use the 1970 British Cohort Study to examine the college premium for people who have a similar ability level by using a restricted sample of people who are all college eligible but some never attend. Compared with using the full sample, restricting the sample to college-eligible reduces the return to college significantly using both regression and propensity score matching estimates. The finding suggests the importance of comparing individuals of similar ability levels when estimating the return to college."

"In many countries, student grants, tuition fees, and subsidized loans depend on parental income. This paper examines the efficiency and distributional effects of such conditioning, and assesses whether it is optimal practice when the government wants to reduce after-tax income inequality in the most efficient manner. Increasing the mean level of education among the work-force compresses wage differentials by level of education and thereby the pre-tax income distribution. Hence, subsidizing education may be part of an optimal redistribution policy. However, education subsidies mainly benefit high-ability students, limiting their redistributive virtues. Conditioning education subsidies on parental income may enable the government to reduce inframarginal subsidies, mainly benefiting high-ability students, while preserving the marginal subsidy, and thus the favourable effect on the mean education level which leads to wage compression."

"The expansion of higher education throughout the OECD—and beyond—is both necessary and desirable. But it is costly, and faces competing imperatives for public spending. Higher education finance is therefore salient to an extent that is not yet fully appreciated in all countries, and is also immensely sensitive politically. This paper sets out the core lessons for financing higher education deriving from economic theory and puts them alongside lessons from country experience. The UK reforms announced in 2004 are assessed against the backdrop of those two elements. A concluding section briefly maps out unfinished business."