Almost in a blink of the eye the policy focus on the 'knowledge' economy, with mass ranks of high skilled workers, has given way to claims of widespread 'technological unemployment'. This Working Paper will examine competing claims on the relationship between automation, skills and the future of work. It examines the research evidence on the scale…

Exploiting information on foreign qualifications for the first time, we estimate the returns to obtaining UK higher degrees for foreign graduates who migrated to the UK in their 20s. Accounting for direct measures of foreign and UK qualifications and country-of-origin fixed effects, we find substantial returns to obtaining UK (higher) degrees on…

This study explores how Further Education (FE) lecturers are perceived in secondary school settings and their professional prospects in the context of the UK parity status Act of 2012. Designed as a mixed method research, it sought the views of FE-trained teachers on their experience of working in secondary schools, the perceptions of recruitment…

This study evaluates the impact of an intervention on business school graduates' employability comprising of a curriculum-based career management skills (CMS) module and an industrial placement year. The study uses data from the destinations of leavers of higher education survey to examine the employability of different groups within the cohort…

Using the 1991 to 2007 waves of the UK British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the authors estimate a fixed effects specification that has as outcomes (i) earnings and (ii) an indicator of social position measured using the CAMSIS scale. Adopting a fixed effects specification enables them to isolate the role of lifelong learning on these two…

We examined the prospective associations between family socio-economic background, childhood intelligence ("g") at age 11, educational and occupational attainment, and social attitudes at age 33 in a large (N = 8804), representative sample of the British population born in 1958. Structural equation Modeling identified a latent trait of…

Students in many countries face increased costs of education in the form of direct payments and future tax liabilities and, as a consequence, their education decisions have taken on a greater financial dimension. This has refocused attention on obtaining meaningful estimates of the return to education. Routinely these returns are estimated as the…

Compares the extent to which two types of advanced level qualifications, General Certificate of Education (GCE) A-levels and General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) advanced science, meet the needs of employers and tutors of science courses in higher education. (Author/CCM)

This report summarises the main findings of research based on the National Child Development Study which has followed a group born in a single week in 1958. It examines their literacy and numeracy skills at the age of 37 and gives evidence on the relationship between poor basic skills and qualifications, unemployment, type of job, amount of…

A study examined the attitudes and career expectations of a random sample of catering and hospitality industry employees in the United Kingdom. The survey focused on the following: aspiration and career intentions, factors causing job satisfaction/dissatisfaction, employment patterns in the industry, satisfaction with/access to…

The question of whether the term "intermediate skills" has a distinctive meaning across business and industry in the United Kingdom and in its major competitors was examined. The study focused on the following sectors: housing construction; broadcasting; the care sector; the exercise, health, and fitness sector; and engineering (high…

The question of whether inequality in skills explains inequality of earnings across advanced countries was examined through a review of data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), which examined the prose, document, and quantitative literacy skills of adults in 12 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and…

According to reliable statistical information from a wide variety of sources, the hospitality industry in the United Kingdom is a significant growth industry that employed more than 2 million people (7% of the country's work force) in 1994. Of those individuals, 685,000 were employed in catering services sectors (with hospitals, retirement/nursing…

Data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) were analyzed to compare the incidence and volume of continuing education (CE) and training among adults in the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The following were among the…

The rhetoric surrounding career education programs was examined by exploring two questions. The first question was which employment sectors anticipate significant job growth and what skill levels and academic competencies were required to work within those sectors. The second question was whether increasing the level of student knowledge and skill…