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…

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,…

Many undergraduate students report a lack of concern about facing labor market discrimination throughout their careers. However, there is ample evidence that discrimination based on race, gender, and age still persists within the labor market. The author outlines a classroom experiment demonstrating the existence of discrimination, even when the…

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 article investigates the relation between the second chance of increase in formal education amongst low-educated adults in Sweden and long-term wage development. Despite the awareness of the role of education for employability and individuals' overall life chances, surprisingly few studies have investigated the wage effects of Second-Chance…

Individuals with low incomes often struggle to advance in the labor market, yet at the same time, some employers report difficulty finding workers with the necessary skills. WorkAdvance is a workforce development model that seeks to address the needs of both of these groups through its "dual customer" approach. The model offers training…

Using data on German university graduates, this paper analyzes wage differentials by field of study at labor market entry and five to six years later. At both points of time, graduates from arts/humanities have lower average monthly wages compared to other fields. Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions show that these wage differentials can be explained…

This report examines how technology and automation are changing the job market -- and what states can do to prepare adults for the new workplace. It analyzes shifts from low- to middle-skills jobs, details current education levels, and offers recommendations for retooling adult education programs.

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…

From 1973 to 2007, private sector union membership in the United States declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women. During this period, inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent. We report a decomposition, relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution's shrinking weight. We argue that unions…

The present study examined the extent to which the U.S. STEM labor market is stratified in terms of quality of employment. Through a series of cluster analyses and Chi-square tests on data drawn from the 2008 Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP), the study found evidence of segmentation in the highly-skilled STEM and non-STEM samples,…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

The evolution of community colleges from their origins as junior colleges to institutions with dual missions to provide both academic and workforce preparation raises questions about the impact of a college's mission focus on their students' labor market success. We examine this question using the 58 colleges in the North Carolina Community…

This paper looks at the importance of mechanisms that give formal recognition to vocational skills acquired through work-based learning and how such mechanisms might be developed. It describes how skill recognition can benefit individuals, employers and society as a whole, and identifies in which contexts skill recognition has the highest…

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…