Since the 1980s, research on employment conditions in post-secondary institutions has focused on the growth of contingent academic workers, or what the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) has labelled "non-full- time instructors" (Field, Jones, Stephenson, & Khoyetsyan, 2014). Very little attention, however, has been…

Many community college students start college in developmental education and leave before enrolling in college-level coursework or making much progress toward a degree; thus, developmental education courses represent the primary education these students receive. Using student-unit record data from two large community college systems linked to wage…

American students graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, leading to substantial repayment burdens and potentially inefficient shifts in spending patterns and career choices. A political trend towards austerity coupled with the rising student debt make the effective allocation of federal higher education resources and…

Policy makers expect increasing numbers of PhDs to find employment in the private sector. However, the incentive structure for completing a PhD and subsequently seeking private sector employment has not been adequately assessed in the literature. This paper investigates the financial incentives for this career choice of recent Danish PhD…

This article tests effectively maintained inequality theory against the case of China. Employing Chinese College Student Survey data from 2012, the study elaborates on the rationale and causes behind the expansion of higher education over the last two decades and the impact this has had on the system. Rather than empowering disadvantaged students,…

Despite a recent increase in women and racial/ethnic minorities in U.S. postsecondary education, doctoral recipients from these groups report lower salaries than male and majority peers. With a longitudinal sample of approximately 10,000 respondents from the "Survey of Doctorate Recipients," this study adds to the limited literature…

Increasingly, scholars in academia as well as journalists are noting vast pay discrepancies among professorial ranks. This study is an attempt to examine how gender, rank, and scholarly output influence faculty members' income from their institutions. Using equity theory as a conceptual framework, the 2004 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty…

This paper quantifies the extent to which unified teacher pay scales and differential alternatives produce opportunity costs that are asymmetric in math and verbal skills. Data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond 1997 and 2003 follow-ups are used to estimate a fully parametric, selection-corrected wage equation for nonteachers, which is then used to…

There is well-established evidence that the quality of early childhood education workforce impacts upon children's learning. Attracting qualified teacher graduates to work in early childhood centres is an essential component towards the provision of quality care. Significant investment by the Australian Government has been made to prepare early…

This paper examines the effects of grades from higher education on labour market outcomes. Economic theory predicts that grades are rewarded in the labour market because employers regard them as an expression of valuable skills or a signal of other sought after attributes. Social closure, however, may give reason to expect no effects. Whether good…

This paper analyzes the impact of university quality, family background and mismatch on the wages of young Italian graduates. An empirical analysis is undertaken using a representative sample of graduates merged with a dataset containing information on the characteristics of universities. By utilizing quantile regression techniques, some evidence…

This paper investigates empirically the role of research publications in an academic reward structure in Korea. Our sample includes 145 universities and colleges in Korea. Publication data for the academic year of 2012 show that top-tier research schools published more in international journals, while domestic journal publications were dominated…

This study analyzed university and college graduates' income gap in South Korea to investigate factors influencing such disparities. Specifically, this study focused on types of higher education institutions and academic disciplines among the many factors affecting post-graduation income differences, using a hierarchical linear model. According to…

This article explains why the massification of higher education in Hong Kong has, contrary to the predictions of received wisdom, failed to enhance the upward social mobility of the youth in the city. Building upon recent literature in political science, it argues that massification can take different forms, which in turn determine the effects of…

Researchers in behavioral ethics seek to understand how individuals respond to the ethical dilemmas in their lives. In any given situation, multiple social and psychological variables interact to influence ethical decision making. The purpose of this article is to explore how one such variable, empathy, affects the ethical decision-making process…