Education and job match: The relatedness of college major and work

Robst, John

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2006.08.003

“…As such, we also extend the existing labor economics literature analyzing the match between an individual's education and job (see, e.g., Hersch, 1991;Robst, 2007), which has largely ignored how local labor market conditions influence the job matching process. Our first measure, which we refer to as a College Degree Match, determines whether a college graduate is working in an occupation that requires a college degree.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Agglomeration and job matching among college graduates

Abel

¹

,

Deitz

²

2015

Regional Science and Urban Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe study one potential source of urban agglomeration economies: better job matching.Focusing on college graduates, we construct two direct measures of job matching based on how well an individual's job corresponds to his or her college education. Consistent with matching-based theories of urban agglomeration, we find evidence that larger and thicker local labor markets help college graduates find better jobs by increasing both the likelihood and quality of a match. We then assess the extent to which better job matching of college-educated workers increases individual-level wages and thereby contributes to the urban wage premium. While we find that college graduates with better job matches do indeed earn higher wages on average, the contribution of such job matching to aggregate urban productivity appears to be relatively modest.

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“…The existing literature on the issues of both human capital development and labour market transitions is extremely thin, in relation to the type of human capital accumulated. Robst (2007) distinguishes between specific and general degree programmes finding that the former including medicine, engineering and law are less likely to be mismatched than the latter which include arts-based degrees, but the consequences in the terms of reduced earnings from mismatch are greater than for the former. Mavromaras & McGuinness (2012) find that over-skilled workers with a higher academic degree tend to have the highest persistence of mismatch, while workers with vocational education tend to exit mismatch rather quickly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There a Role for Higher Education Institutions in Improving the Quality of First Employment?

McGuinness

¹

,

Whelan

²

,

Bergin

³

2016

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis &Amp; Policy

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S Is There a Role for Higher Education Institutions inIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper examines the potential role of higher education institutions in reducing labour market mismatch amongst new graduates. The research suggests that increasing the practical aspects of degree programmes, irrespective of the field of study, will reduce the incidence of initial mismatch. In terms of routes into the labour market, higher education work placements with the potential to develop into permanent posts and the provision of higher education job placement assistance were found to have substantial impacts in reducing the incidence of graduate mismatch. The use of private employment agencies was found to significantly heighten the risk of subsequent mismatch.JEL Classification: J24, J31

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“…Other studies use surveys that ask respondents directly whether their job requires a college degree, such as Sicherman (1991). Robst (2007) actually addresses the question of 23 whether an individual's work is related to their field of study. Most of these studies document the fact that: (1) Many college graduates apparently work in occupations that either do not require a college degree, or that use skills unrelated to the degree earned by an individual, and (2) Those who labor under such mismatch earn less money.…”

Section: The Increasing Occupational Variety By Majormentioning

confidence: 99%

The Changing Occupational Distribution by College Major

Ransom¹,

Phipps²

2017

Research in Labor Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In this paper we examine the occupational distribution of individuals who hold bachelor degrees in particular fields in the United States using data from the various waves of the National Survey of College Graduates. We propose and calculate indexes that describe two related aspects of the occupational distribution by major field of study: distinctiveness (how dissimilar are the occupations of a particular major when compared with all other majors) and variety (how varied are the occupations among those who hold that particular major). We discuss theoretical properties of these indices and statistical properties of their estimates. We show that the occupational variety has increased since 1993 for most major fields of study, particularly between the 1993 and 2003 waves of the survey. We explore reasons for this broadening of the occupation distribution. We find that this has not led to an increase in reported mismatch between degree and occupation.JEL Classification: I23, J24

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Education and job match: The relatedness of college major and work

Cited by 418 publications

References 22 publications

Agglomeration and job matching among college graduates

Agglomeration and job matching among college graduates

Is There a Role for Higher Education Institutions in Improving the Quality of First Employment?

The Changing Occupational Distribution by College Major

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