This dissertation studies the effect of higher education costs on students' outcomes in the labor market, particularly when credit constraints are absent. It utilizes the UK's institutional setting to identify such an effect. The key findings are as follows. (i) Increasing tuition fees does not have adverse effects on students as long as credit…

Research on higher education institution (HEI) employees neglects an essential group--non-instructional staff. Literature on HEI workers and their salaries focuses primarily on faculty and administrators. Furthermore, the literature that does focus on staff salaries neglects variation within this group as well as the role of institutional and…

One method for evaluating higher education performance is to conceptualize it as a production function represented as an input/output process. This paper proposes a performance evaluation of higher education institutions from the perspective of recent graduates taking as inputs students' cognitive abilities and tuition, and as outputs three we…

This paper compares the employment outcomes of liberal arts graduates from Dutch university colleges with those of their peers who pursued conventional, subject-specific bachelor's degrees. Using data from the Dutch National Alumni Survey, the analysis includes 14,933 respondents who completed a master's programme at a research university, with…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show the effects of the six competence areas of Garcia-Aracil and Van der Velden (2007) on new graduates' labor market success measured by salary. Design/methodology/approach: The paper starts with a literature review about the role of competencies in higher education. Then the Graduate Career Tracking…

This dissertation presents three separate essays. The first two essays explore the gender wage gap and its dynamics in urban China from 1995 to 2018. The first chapter decomposes the gender wage gap based on the observed wage for workers with a precise measure of the hourly wages. The first chapter examines the observed average gender wage gap in…

"Education at a Glance" is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD countries and a number of accession and partner countries. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication -- as well as links to…

In the last decade the number of new higher education enrollments per year faced a 66% increase, from 2.2 million enrollments in 2010 compared to 3.6 million enrollments in 2019. This growth is concentrated in the distance learning courses, which boomed 379% in the period and is expected to maintain this trend until become the main higher…

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…

The increased use of quantitative education data is often regarded by scholars as evidence of the emergence of 'governing by numbers'. These scholars ascribe major stakeholders such as the OECD and nation states agency as they produce, distribute and consume data, and respond to these with policy and management initiatives. This paper argues that…

Latinos have become the largest minority group in American postsecondary education, a majority of whom attend two- or four-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). However, little is known about labor market outcomes as result of attending these institutions. Using a unique student-level administrative database in Texas, and accounting for…

The population of the United States is getting older. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), older workers -- which the BLS defines as those who are 55 and older -- made up 22% of the U.S. workforce in 2016, nearly double the 12% recorded in 1995. This increase is largely "fueled by the aging baby-boom generation, a large…

All students deserve to attend programs and institutions that meet high quality standards. But different program goals, investments of time, and eligibility criteria make it difficult to set specific standards that will apply equally well to all types of programs and institutions. This report sets out principles for developing an accountability…

Few empirical studies have analyzed the return to distance higher education in different academic disciplines. This study used quantitative methods, data from a nationwide survey, and Mincerian earnings function to analyze the return to distance higher education among different disciplines in China's labor market. Results were compared with the…

This paper assesses the impact of the mismatch between a college major and job on college graduates' early career earnings using a sample from China. On average, a major-job mismatched college graduate is found to suffer from an income loss that is much lower than the penalty documented in previous studies. The income losses are also found to be…