This dissertation consists of three essays on adolescents' post secondary education choices and labor market returns. The first chapter analyzes returns to selectivity of four-year colleges by different post-bachelor's degree schooling paths. The second chapter documents the role of family income in college application and enrollment…

How pronounced is income inequality around the world--and how can education help reduce it? This paper reports the following: (1) Across OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, the average income of the richest 10% of the population was about nine times that of the poorest 10% before the onset of the global economic…

This paper provides an overview of vocational education and training (VET) system in India, and discusses various challenges and difficulties in the Indian VET system. The paper also examines labour market outcomes of vocational graduates and compares these with those of general secondary graduates using a large-scale nationally representative…

The effects of reliance on part-time faculty in higher education have been much discussed of late. Most observers now agree that the increasing reliance on contingent academic labor has worrisome consequences for both students and faculty. The authors recently attempted to provide needed analysis of what drives the current reliance on part-time…

This article proposes an explanation of sex-differences in job-allocation and pay in different institutional contexts. Job-allocation calculations are considered to be related to (1) the distribution of housework and (2) the skill-specialization requirements of jobs. In a context of uncertainty and imperfect information, housework and…

The University of Houston-Victoria's (UHV) approach to addressing salary equity, which has been successfully implemented for a decade, employs a methodology that derives salary targets by field, rank, and seniority from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) national salary survey. Based primarily on a…

This dissertation examines two related questions. First, it estimates the effect of growth in the demand for skilled and unskilled labor on rural household incomes and the rural wage structure. Second, it examines the effect of growth in household incomes and in labor market returns to education on household educational investment. The…

Reform advocates and policymakers concerned about the quality and distribution of teachers support proposals of alternative compensation for teachers in hard-to-hire subject areas, hard-to-staff schools, and with special knowledge and skills. The successful implementation of such proposals depends in large part on teacher attitudes. The current…

During the 1980s and 1990s, industrial restructuring led to a marked increase in wage inequality. Women, however, were not as negatively affected by declining manufacturing employment because their pay was relatively low within the industry, and their already high representation in the service sector provided access to newly created opportunities.…

Based in Conservation of Resources (COR; Hobfoll, 1989) and self-verification (Swann, 1987) theories, we argue that when workers experience conflict between the work and family domains, this should have implications for evaluations of their work performance and ultimately affect more "objective" career outcomes such as salary and hierarchical…

Using data from the Current Population Survey and the New Immigrant Survey, this paper examines the common perception that immigrants are concentrated in high-risk jobs for which they receive little wage compensation. Compared to native U.S. workers, non-Mexican immigrants are not at higher risk and have substantial values of statistical life.…

The Fordham Institute's "Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction" is an advocacy document outlining a vision for how technology might transform the teaching profession. The report's rationale is based on claims that the current education system lacks the capacity to support the revolutionary changes needed to unleash the technological…

Certificates are recognition of completion of a course of study based on a specific field, usually associated with a limited set of occupations. Certificates differ from other kinds of labor market credentials such as industry-based certifications and licenses, which typically involve passing an examination to prove a specific competency,…

This report provides information on fields of bachelor's degrees in the United States using data from the 2009 American Community Survey (ACS). It includes estimates of fields of bachelor's degree by demographic characteristics including age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, nativity, and educational attainment. This report also looks at geographic and…

Improving principal quality in Arkansas may be a partial solution to the public policy problem of low performing public schools. Just as policymakers in other states are beginning to explore incentive-based compensation policies to improve principal quality, education policymakers in Arkansas should look to these policies as a way to align goals…