Purpose: The job satisfaction of university graduates can serve as an indicator of success in their professional development. At the same time, it can be a measure of higher education systems' effectiveness. The purpose is to assess the relationship of university graduates' socio-demographic characteristics, aspects of their degree program,…

Analysing wage differentials due to educational investments within occupations can explain the persistent wage inequality in western industrialised countries, such as Germany. This article contributes to the discussion by examining occupation-specific variance in wage returns for men working full-time in Western Germany between 1976 and 2010. We…

The science and engineering (S&E) labor force helps to create and advance our scientific and technological knowledge, transform these advances into goods and services, and fuel America's economy, security, and quality of life. This report details several aspects of the U.S. S&E workforce, including growth, demographic makeup, earnings, and…

The COVID-19 pandemic, a non-economic event, has accelerated trends already emerging throughout the workplace, specifically remote work, technological job displacement, and growing disparity between those with a college degree (post-K12) and those without. In planning for this year's Recruiting Trends project, it was decided to keep the survey…

Positional competition in the labour market entails graduate opportunities that depend not only on graduates' skills, experience and abilities, but also on how their educational credentials compare to those of others. In this study, we examined the positional competition in the Finnish labour market and compared the influence of different 'degree…

This article looks at the labour market outcomes of 2015 postsecondary graduates three years after graduation. Specifically, it examines their employment status, job permanency, relatedness of their job or business to their 2015 educational program, the degree to which graduates feel qualified for their job, their employment income and their job…

This study examines how the "college earnings premium" (CEP)--the difference in average earnings between workers with and without college education--varies across the United States. Specifically, it compares across cities, states, and rural areas the mean earnings of workers with bachelor's degrees to those with associate degrees, with…

2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University and the 50th edition of the annual Trends in Campus Recruiting Survey. More than 3000 attempted the survey with 2408 providing information that could be used in preparing this report. Due to the high level of economic uncertainty, only 1036…

We quantify the returns to higher education for degree disciplines, namely 'professional' degrees, Medicine/Dentistry, Law, Accountancy and Psychology, within the UK from 2007 to 2015. We estimate the returns to education in the form of employment and wage premia associated with each subject. Our analysis contributes to the existing literature on…

The 49th annual Recruiting Trends report is based on a survey convenience sample of employers currently seeking college talent through their interactions with college and university career services offices. This year we shortened the survey by half to encourage participants to provide complete information. 2,800 employers, representing a rich…

Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less-lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which increasingly enforce GPA restriction policies that…

Postsecondary education delivers many benefits to students who attend America's colleges and universities and to society in general. But when students are asked about what they want from college, the most frequent responses focus on labor market outcomes, especially good careers and high earnings. However, as more and more students borrow more and…

Stackable credentials--sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path--have been suggested as a way to enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. Yet, thus far, little evidence has been provided on the economic value of these credentials. Here, we report a series of estimates on the association…

The main objective of this study is to empirically test a number of theory-based models (i.e., fixed effects [FE], random effects [RE], and aggregated residuals [AR]) to measure the generic knowledge as well as the degree attainment rates and early labor outcomes gained by students in different programs and institutions in higher education. Our…

In this paper, the authors examine the relative labor market gains for first-time college students who enrolled in the North Carolina Community College System in 2002-03. The medium-term returns to diplomas, certificates, and degrees are compared with returns for students who accumulated college credits but did not graduate. The authors also…