After centuries of inequality in UK higher education benefiting men, there has been a reversal over the past three decades. A lower proportion of entrants to UK higher education institutions are male than ever before and they make up less than one-half of the total. Other developed countries have undergone a similar shift.

• Male underachievement is not seen only in the figures for entry but also in non-continuation (drop-out) rates and degree performance statistics.

• Men still outperform women in some of the most prestigious areas – such as entry to the highest-tari institutions, to Science and Engineering courses and to research degrees. Moreover, on some indicators, men have better employment outcomes. Six months after leaving higher education, women are more likely to be in work but men are more likely to be in professional occupations. Among those with jobs, men also earn higher incomes on average.

• But the overall picture suggests young men are not performing as well in higher education as young women. This is storing up problems for the future. Recognising the challenge does not excuse the past under-representation of women. Nor does it excuse the challenges posed today to female students by ‘lad culture’ and to female sta by obstacle-laden promotion routes.

• Addressing the underachievement of young men is not a distraction from other inequalities. The weak performance of people from disadvantaged backgrounds or certain ethnic groups can only be fully addressed by dealing with the differences in male and female achievement. For example, while men underperform overall, poor white men have the worst record of all. So tackling the underperformance of young men is essential if we are to tackle other dismal higher education performance indicators.

• The greater appetite for higher education among women is rational in financial terms because the financial returns from higher education have been larger for women than for men. But this gap is not due to female graduates earning more: in fact, they earn less on average. It is due to non-graduate women typically earning significantly less than non-graduate men.

• Received wisdom identifies the transition from O-Levels to GCSEs as a key factor in the improved educational performance of young women. The evidence is not compelling. Women had nearly caught men up for entry to higher education before the first GCSE students entered higher education in 1990. At best, GCSEs were part of a trend that started long before and continued long afterwards.

• Skilled careers traditionally chosen by women, such as nursing and teaching, did not demand full degrees in the past. When this changed, the number of women in higher education increased dramatically. Discounting students taking Subjects Allied to Medicine and Education reduces the disparity in the total number of male and female higher education students from around 281,000 to just 34,000.

• There is debate among academics and policymakers over whether and how to address the underperformance of young men. Arguably, this is evident in the current Government. The Department for Education says it no longer focuses specifically on boys’ underachievement. Meanwhile, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has instructed higher education institutions to focus on the under-representation of young men, particularly white working-class boys.

• Even among those who accept there is a problem, there has been a shortage of ideas for tackling it. Moreover, given the centuries of male dominance in higher education, there are few precedents from which to learn.

• It is often said more male school teachers would help raise the achievement of boys by providing positive role models. Yet the evidence suggests this has limited, if any, potential in tackling the educational achievement gap between males and females. Other policies could do more to help young men enter and succeed in higher education.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Boys to men: the underachievement of young men in higher education, and how to start tackling it

• OECD countries differ significantly in the way spending on tertiary education is shared between public and private sources of funding, and in the financial support they provide to students.

• Countries with high tuition fees tend to also be those where private entities other than households make a more significant contribution to funding tertiary institutions. By contrast, in countries with more progressive tax regimes, students often pay low or no tuition fees and have access to generous public subsidies for tertiary education, but then face high income tax rates.

• An increasing number of OECD countries charge higher tuition fees for international students than for national students, and many also differentiate tuition fees by eld of education, largely because of the divergent returns on wages.

• In countries with high tuition fees, student financial support systems that offer all students loans with income-contingent repayments combined with means-tested grants can be an effective way to promote access and equity while sharing the costs of tertiary education between taxpayers and students.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  How much do tertiary students pay and what public support do they receive?

Almost two-thirds of students who enter community colleges every year are judged to be academically not ready to engage in college-level coursework. In order to enroll, these students typically must take one or more “remedial” or “developmental” math or English courses that will not count toward their college degree. The students most likely to be referred to these courses are the low-income and minority students for whom a college degree could change the trajectory of their lives, and address the nation’s appalling disparities in educational attainment by income and race.

The bulk of the evidence, however, suggests that the $4 billion annual investment in services to help underprepared students is having little positive impact on the success of those students in community colleges. In this report, we review that research, describe findings from studies on four types of reforms under way at various colleges, and conclude with our view that a wholesale redesign of the student experience at community colleges is needed to make a real difference in the outcomes of underprepared students.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  When College Students Start Behind – The Century Foundation

OECD countries spend an average of 5.2% of their GDP on educational institutions from primary to tertiary education, public and private expenditure combined. Around one-third of the total expenditure is devoted to tertiary education, where spending per student is highest. The higher cost of tertiary-level teaching staff and the prevalence of research and development in tertiary education contribute to the high cost.

To ease the strain on already tight public budgets, more countries are shifting the cost of tertiary education from the government to individual households. On average, 30% of the expenditure for tertiary institutions comes from private sources – a much larger share than seen at lower levels of education; and two-thirds of that funding comes from households, often in the form of tuition fees.

Understanding that high fees may prevent eligible students from enrolling in tertiary education, many governments allow for some differentiation in tuition fees. For example, tuition fees may be higher for students attending private institutions or for foreign students, or lower for students in short-cycle tertiary programmes. To support students, many countries also offer scholarships, grants and public or state-guaranteed loans, often with advantageous conditions, to help students cope with the direct and indirect costs of education. Over the past decade, most countries saw an increase in the number of tertiary students taking public or state-guaranteed loans – and graduating with both a diploma and a debt.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  Education at a glance 2016: OECD indicators

Our research indicates that the current approach to higher education financing too often leaves low-income students facing unexpected, and sometimes untenable, expenses…

Financial challenges are a consistent predictor of non-completion in higher education, and they are becoming more severe over time. Unexpected costs, even those that might appear modest in size, can derail students from families lacking financial cushions, and even those with greater family resources. Improving college completion rates requires both lowering the real price of attending college—the student’s remaining total costs, including tuition, books, and living expenses, after financial aid—to better align with students’ and families’ ability to pay, and providing accurate information to help them plan to cover the real price of college.

Many policymakers argue that bringing the personal and public benefits of higher education to an expanded population of Americans is important for the economy and to address inequality. Financial aid policies, they assume, help those with scarce resources to earn their degrees. But these policies often fall short, and when students have difficulty paying for college, they are more likely to focus their energies on working and raising funds rather than studying and attending classes, and are less likely to complete their degrees.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at The Real Price of College

With nearly three-in-five graduates in the UK working in non-graduate jobs, the UK has one of the highest levels of self-reported over-qualification amongst its graduates in Europe. So what skills ‘premium’, if any, do individuals gain from going to university? And with the UK not producing enough of the highly skilled jobs for our graduates – and government figures suggesting 45% of student loans won’t be paid back – is the UK economy actually making a loss by having so many graduates in the labour market?

The CIPD commissioned research to explore various pathways into employment. The report looks at the extent of filtering down for a wide array of occupations and explores the debate surrounding five particular occupations – nurses, accountants, police officers, nursery nurses and teaching assistants. It documents the entry routes into these occupations that university education has replaced and show that entry routes in other European countries are sometimes very different; showing that alternative routes are possible.

Our CIPD report (Over-qualification and Skills Mismatch in the Graduate Labour Market, 2015) published last year attracted great interest and controversy. It documented the vast expansion of the UK’s higher education sector and asked what was happening to its graduates in the labour market. It is clear that graduates are occupying more and more jobs that were once occupied by their non-graduate parents. This raises the question as to what the graduates themselves, and what society at large, gains from their university attendance. The answer critically depends on whether their skills are being used by their employers. Our way of investigating this was to try to assess whether the jobs that had become graduatised had been made more demanding or had been upgraded. We explored this by examining how various dimensions of influence or discretion exercised in the job had altered and how the picture differed between graduates and non-graduates doing the same job. The story that emerged was a mixed one but suggested widespread under-utilisation of graduate skills and capabilities.

This report expands the discussion. It first responds to some of the criticisms made of the original report. Perhaps the most common of these is that graduate skills must be being used because
the graduate wage premium has remained pretty constant. This argument seems to ignore a simple statistical point. Imagine that the wage hierarchy of jobs has remained unchanged over time. Then, as the graduate population expands, graduates filter down this hierarchy, thus driving down the average graduate wage. But non- graduates are also driven down the hierarchy, thus reducing their average wage. The consequence could well be an unchanged graduate premium but the skills of many graduates would still be under-utilised.

The report goes on to document the extent of occupational filtering down since the 1970s. We then concentrate our attention on 29 occupations. These are occupations that have seen a pronounced increase in graduates working in them and they account for nearly 30% of all employment in the UK and for 30% of jobs held by graduates.

Our tentative conclusion is that the growth of graduates in these occupations in the UK has not systematically replaced other post-school formal routes. Rather, it has largely substituted for people leaving school without subsequently acquiring formal vocational education. We compare the routes taken into similar occupations in continental Europe, showing that some countries deploy the non-HE (higher education) route more intensively than we do. Before looking at costs, we discuss the debate surrounding five particular occupations – nurses, accountants, police officers, nursery nurses
and teaching assistants. In the case of nurses we document the controversy as to whether the switch to degree entry has in fact increased demonstrated competencies and capabilities.

Like nursing, accountancy is a profession which moved from non-graduate to graduate entry, but there are now signs of a ‘push- back’ against this. By contrast, there are proposals to make entry into the police graduate- only but, as with nursing, there is controversy about what exactly would be gained. The final two occupations were traditionally very much non-graduate ones but both have increasingly been populated by graduates. Concern has been expressed about how these graduates could progress to better jobs within the sector but it is unclear that their degrees will help them in this endeavour.

In assessing the relative costs of different pathways into occupations, we have used the work of KPMG on university costs and the work of the Institute for Employment Research and IFF on apprenticeship costs. It is apparent that the latter vary considerably by level and by sector. We have categorised school-leavers into several types and deployed the most appropriate apprenticeship cost as a comparator with the university route. In all cases not only is the cost of the non-university route significantly smaller, the individual bears a lower proportion of that cost. Thus, at least on this narrow economic calculus, for the higher cost to be justified, it would need to be shown that universities give people more human capital than the alternative route and that this human capital is used by employers. In the majority of the occupations this study has considered, this cannot be demonstrated.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Alternative Pathways into Labour Market | Reports | CIPD

Partnerships between post-secondary education (PSE) institutions and businesses are crucial to Canada’s competitiveness and prosperity. They help to develop and leverage skills, talent, and research. PSE institutions, businesses, and community stakeholders need better information on how to develop, operate, and maintain successful PSE–business partnerships. This report shows that partnerships are most effective when they are designed and operated ethically, when partners make effective decisions, and when they mutually benefit all partners. The report also provides 12 recommendations to help partnership practitioners and stakeholders develop and operate ethical, effective, and mutually bene cial partnerships.

Recommendations for Partnership Practitioners and Stakeholders : Six Principles for Partnership Success

The following six general principles help educators and businesses develop, operate, and maintain partnerships of all types:

1. ensure that partnership activities create mutual benefits for all partners
2. establish clear goals and objectives
3. communicate with partners on a regular basis
4. evaluate partnership performance regularly
5. adapt to changing circumstances
6. celebrate success

Strategies for All Partners and Stakeholders

• use Ethical Guidelines, Operating Principles, and the Value Assessment Process as the basis for dialogue and action.

Strategies for PSE Institutions

• improve opportunities for collaboration between PSE researchers
  and businesses;
• increase opportunities for work‐integrated learning as part of students’ pSe experience.

Strategies for Businesses

• increase investments in collaboration with PSE researchers;
• increase work‐integrated learning opportunities for PSE students.

Strategies for Governments

• support programs and initiatives that facilitate collaboration between PSE institutions and businesses.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  Bloom, michael, Cameron macLaine, Daniel f. muzyka, and James Stuckey.Partnering for Performance: Enhancing Partnerships Between Post‐Secondary Education and Business. ottawa: the Conference Board of Canada, 2016.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  The skilled labour market: a pictorial overview of trends and shortage 2015-16

Attracting and retaining talent is increasingly critical for the success of city economies as the UK continues to specialise in ever more high-skilled, knowledge- intensive activities. And this is a big challenge for many of our cities. While the UK’s great universities are spread around the country, many graduates head straight for the bright lights of the capital after completing their studies.

London is not only more attractive to new graduates generally; it is especially attractive to high achievers. The capital accounts for around 19 per cent of all jobs. But six months after graduation, of the graduates who moved city, London employed 22 per cent of all working new graduates, and 38 per cent of those working new graduates with a rst or upper second class degree from a Russell Group university.
Yet there is more nuance to this picture than is generally understood. Cities outside London do retain graduates – but they do not retain most of the students that move to their city to study.

Almost half of new graduates are ‘bouncers’, moving to one city to study, then leaving for another city straight after graduation. In Manchester, for example, 67 per cent of the students who went to study in the city left upon graduation. In Birmingham this gure was 76 per cent. And in Southampton it was 86 per cent. It is these people that drive the migration ows to the capital.

Setting the ‘bouncer’ cohort to one side shows that the majority of cities still experience a graduate brain gain. This is for two reasons. First, they attract more graduates to their city – either graduates who came to study and remain in the city for work, or who move in after graduation for work – than they lose when local people leave the city to work elsewhere as graduates.

Second, universities, to a varying degree, play an important role in cities by ‘growing their own’ – educating students who grew up in the city and who then stay in the city after graduation to work.
The patterns of graduate migration appear to be primarily driven by a mix of short- and long-term job opportunities. The fact that there is no relationship between moving graduates and wages suggests that future career opportunities play an important role in in uencing where graduates move to and why.
From a policy perspective, if a city wants to attract and retain a greater number of graduates, then it needs to support economic growth, rather than rely on narrower policies specifically targeted at graduate attraction and retention. Cities should aim to support the creation of more jobs, and particularly high-skilled knowledge jobs. This would mean:

• Boosting educational attainment to improve skills throughout the workforce,
• Putting in place good economic fundamentals that underpin successful city economies – transport, housing and planning,
• Helping to boost demand for high-skilled workers among businesses by concentrating on innovation, inward investment and enterprise policies,
• Making the most of universities as part of a wider economic strategy.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  The great British brain drain: where graduates move and why

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Postsecondary students who completed a credential had higher employment rates than noncompleters, and those who earned a degree had higher employment rates than those who earned a certificate.

Among students who began their postsecondary education in 2003–04 and were not enrolled 6 years later, 84 percent of those who completed a credential were employed in 2009, compared to 75 percent of students who did not complete a credential (figure 1). Employment rates were also higher for completers than for noncompleters at each credential level. For example, 77 percent of certificate completers were employed in 2009, compared to 62 percent of students who intended to complete a certificate, but did not.

Among students who had completed a credential, those who completed a certificate had the lowest employment rate (77 percent), while there was no measureable difference between the employment rates of bachelor’s and associate’s degree completers (87 and 84 percent, respectively).

Compared to students who earned an academic credential, a higher proportion of students who earned an occupational credential were employed in 2009.

Employment rates were also related to whether students earned their credential in an occupational or academic field of study (figure 2). Overall, 86 percent of students with a credential in an occupational field were employed in 2009, compared to 82 percent of students with a credential in an academic field.

Among employed completers, a higher proportion of those with an occupational credential reported working in a job related to their field of study, compared to those with an academic credential.

In 2009, about 74 percent of employed completers with an occupational credential reported that their job was related to their field of study, compared to 53 percent of employed completers ith an academic credential (figure 2).

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor Employment Status of Postsecondary Completers in 2009: Examination of Credential Level and Occupational Credentials

The study examined a cohort of UK domiciled students who completed their full-time undergraduate study in 2011/12 and were aged 18-21 at the outset of their study. The cohort consisted of 7,500 students drawn from 27 institutions. This study combined data from the 6 month Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey with data from a follow up survey conducted two years later. It employed multivariate analysis techniques to understand the relative importance of different behaviours, characteristics and factors in determining graduate outcomes. We considered in turn:

a.) What led graduates to a positive outcome; that is employment or further study rather than unemployment;
b.) What led graduates with a positive outcome to employment, and what to further study;
c.) What led the employed to professional or managerial employment as opposed to non-professional employment;
d.) What led those in professional or managerial employment to full-time as opposed to part-time roles.
The three factors which were most important in guiding graduates to a positive outcome, that is employment or further study rather than unemployment, were:
1.) Undertaking paid work while at university or in the six months immediately after;
2.) Focusing job searches exclusively on graduate level jobs1 and making most
applications while still studying;
3.) Having a career plan upon leaving university.

The type of the institution that they attended was the most influential factor on whether students with a positive outcome ended up in employment as opposed to further study.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at  Planning for success: graduates’ career planning and its effect on graduate outcomes

As the work landscape changes, the educational landscape has to adapt as well. Just in time for graduation (which will likely bring a flood of resumes to recruiters’ inboxes), here are a few majors that probably didn’t exist when you were in college—and why they’re relevant to the growing workforce:

1. Robotics Engineering

What: Bachelor of Science in Robotics Engineering (the first in the country)

Where: Worcester Polytechnic Institute — Worcester, MA

2. Online Journalism

What: Bachelor of Science in Online Journalism

Where: Boston University — Boston, MA

3. Game Design

What: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Entertainment Arts & Engineering Emphasis

Where: The University of Utah — Salt Lake City

4. Cyber Security

What: Bachelor of Business Administration in Cyber Security

Where: University of Texas at San Antonio — San Antonio, TX

5. Human-Computer Interaction

What: Bachelor of Science in Human Centered Design and Engineering

Where: University of Washington — Seattle, WA

6. E-Business/E-Commerce

What: Bachelor of Business Administration in Electronic Business Marketing

Where: Western Michigan University — Kalamazoo, MI

7. Data Science

What: Bachelor of Science in Data Science

Where: University of San Francisco — San Francisco, CA

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 8 College Majors That Didn’t Exist 5 Years Ago

After years of elevated unemployment and depressed wages, young graduates’ economic prospects have finally begun to brighten. Members of the Class of 2017 have better job prospects than their peers who graduated in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Unemployment rates for young high school and young college graduates have returned to within one percentage point of their pre-recession levels and wages are continuing to slowly recover. While young high school graduates on average are still paid less than they were in 2007 (adjusted for inflation), the average wages of young college graduates have finally surpassed the 2007 level.

Yet the economy of 2007 is a low bar for economic opportunity. Relative to the full employment economy of the late 1990s and 2000, the shares of young graduates who are unemployed and underemployed, and generally “idled” by the economy (neither working nor in school), are still quite high. And economic growth has not yet reached all corners of the labor market. Unemployment rates for young black and Hispanic graduates entering the workforce are still substantially higher than that of their white peers. Young female graduates are paid less than their male peers directly out of school, when they have fairly comparable labor market experience. We need the economy to continue toward full employment in order to ensure healthy job prospects and decent wages for all young graduates.

Key findings include:

• The labor market for young graduates remains weaker today than it was in 2000 or 2007. There is nothing unique about the Great Recession and its aftermath that affected young people in particular. Rather, young workers always experience disproportionate increases in unemployment during periods of labor market weakness—and the Great Recession and its aftermath constituted the longest, most severe period of economic weakness in more than seven decades.
• High school graduates matter. Only 36.7 percent of people in their prime working years (age 25 to 54) have a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 36.3 percent have a high school diploma or less. We need an economy that works for everyone not just those with the highest credentials. Access to good jobs for those without a college degree is especially critical, as stable employment allows them to build a career or pay for further schooling.
• Unemployment among young graduates is close to where it was in 2007 but still far higher than in 2000. Unemployment rates among young graduates have nearly returned to where they were before the recession. Yet the unemployment rates for young graduates today remain much higher than unemployment rates for young graduates in the full employment economy of 2000.
  • For young high school graduates, the unemployment rate is 16.9 percent (compared with 15.9 percent in 2007 and 12.1 percent in 2000).
  • Among young high school graduates, the unemployment rate for men has nearly returned to its pre-recession level while the unemployment rate for women is still elevated. Neither men nor women have reached the unemployment rates of the full employment economy of 2000.
  • For young college graduates, the unemployment rate is currently 5.6 percent (compared with 5.5 percent in 2007 and 4.3 percent in 2000).
  • Among young college graduates, women have made a full recovery since the recession and reached the unemployment rate they had in 2000—4.4 percent. Their male peers have made progress at a slower pace. At 7.1 percent, their unemployment rate comes close to their 2007 unemployment rate (6.6 percent) but far from that of 2000 (4.1 percent).
• Underemployment rates among young graduates have improved but remain higher than before the recession began.
  • In addition to the unemployed (jobless workers who report that they are actively seeking work), the underemployment rate also includes those who are “involuntary” part-timers (those who work part time but want full-time work) and “marginally attached” workers (those who want a job and have looked for work in the last year but have given up actively seeking work in the last four weeks).
  • For young high school graduates, the underemployment rate is 30.9 percent (compared with 26.8 percent in 2007 and 20.8 percent in 2000).
  • For young college graduates, the underemployment rate is 11.9 percent (compared with 9.6 percent in 2007 and 7.1 percent in 2000).
  • While unemployment rates for young graduates draw near to pre-recession levels, underemployment rates remain elevated. This suggests that young graduates in the weakened labor market are taking less desirable positions than they used to.
• The share of young graduates who are “idled” by the economy—neither enrolled in further schooling nor employed—remains elevated in the wake of the Great Recession. This indicates that many graduates are unable to take the two main paths—obtaining further education or getting more work experience—that enable future career success.
  • Among young high school graduates, 15.1 percent are neither enrolled nor employed (compared with 13.7 percent in 2007 and 12.1 percent in 2000).
  • Among young college graduates, 9.9 percent are neither enrolled nor employed (compared with 8.4 percent in 2007 and 8.6 percent in 2000).
• The overall unemployment rates and idling rates of young graduates mask substantial racial and ethnic disparities in these measures.
  • The unemployment rates of young black and Hispanic graduates are substantially higher than the unemployment rates of white non-Hispanics, for both young high school graduates and young college graduates.
  • Young black college graduates have an unemployment rate of 8.0 percent—and only recently (in 2016) did their unemployment rate fall below the peak unemployment rate of young white college graduates during the recession (9.0 percent).
  • The shares of young black and Hispanic graduates who are not employed and not enrolled in further schooling are substantially higher than that of white graduates.
• Wages have stagnated—or fallen—for most young graduates since 2000.
  • Young high school graduates are paid less today than they were in 2007 (after adjusting for inflation). Among young high school graduates, real (inflation-adjusted) average wages are $10.89 per hour—4.3 percent lower than in 2000.
  • Young college graduates’ wages have recovered since the recession, but only enough to make up lost ground rather than raise living standards. Among young college graduates, average wages are $19.18 per hour—only 1.4 percent higher than in 2000.
  • Wages of young high school and college graduates follow the same trends as wages of older workers, signaling that the slowdown in young graduates’ wages stems from a wider wage growth problem.
• The wage gap between male and female young high school graduates has narrowed since 2000, while the wage gap between male and female young college graduates has widened.
  • Stark wage disparities between men and women occur even at this early part of their careers, when they have fairly comparable labor market experience.
  • Among young high school graduates, women are currently paid 90 cents for every dollar paid to men (compared with 86 cents in 2000). Among young college graduates, women are paid 86 cents for every dollar paid to men (compared with 92 cents in 2000).
  • Young male college graduates earn 5.4 percent more than young male college graduates in 2000, while young female college graduates earn 2.2 percent less than young female college graduates in 2000. These gender wage discrepancies are primarily driven by faster wage growth for top-earning men than for top-earning women, which drives up the average male wage.

• Young graduates are burdened by substantial student loan balances.Because the cost of higher education has grown far more rapidly than median family income, many students must take out loans that they may find difficult to repay once they graduate.
  • From the 1978–1979 enrollment year to the 2016–2017 enrollment year, the inflation-adjusted cost of a four-year education, including tuition, fees, and room and board, increased 162.0 percent for private school and 151.1 percent for public school (according to the College Board). Median family income increased only 20.2 percent over this 37-year period, leaving families and students increasingly unable to pay for the ticket price for colleges and universities.
  • Between 2004 and 2014, there was a 92 percent increase in the number of student loan borrowers and a 74 percent increase in average student loan balances (according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York).
  • For young college graduates, limited job opportunities, stagnating wages, and the rising cost of higher education make college an increasingly difficult investment.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at The Class of 2017 | Economic Policy Institute

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Information on postsecondary labor market outcomes is becoming increasingly important for students, educators, institution leaders, and policymakers in today’s rapidly changing economy. This paper assesses the current landscape of employment data, proposing technical enhancements to help agencies and institutions more effectively collect and share information. Recommendations on federal and state policies to better inform students and other key stakeholders about labor market outcomes are also provided. The paper is part of a series that also includes research about state data systems, student financial aid information, and privacy and security considerations.

The nation’s students, educators, and policymakers are increasingly calling for better information to demonstrate that postsecondary education provides people from all back- grounds with opportunities to join and remain in the middle class. Labor market outcomes are certainly not the only—or even most important—measure of the value of postsecond- ary education. However, information about postcollege labor market outcomes is critical to help the following:

• Students make wiser choices about their education and careers.
• Postsecondary institutions ensure and demonstrate that their o erings are e ectively preparing students to suc- ceed in the job market.
• Policymakers monitor the results of student aid and education programs.
• Promote socioeconomic equity and battle generational poverty.

Policy Recommendations

Federal Action

1. Institutionalize a process for federal agencies to match student records with employment data and regularly publicize aggregate employment and earnings outcomes by program of study, ideally through legislation.
2.Amend FERPA to include the provisions currently in the federal regulations to allow an “authorized representative” to evaluate education programs, broadly de ned as includ- ing job training. The “authorized representative” clause is critical to allowing education and workforce data linkages at both the state and federal levels.
3. Use WIOA regulations to clarify permissible purposes and parties, including state education agencies and colleges, to access UI wage records. The nal regulations should enable education agencies and institutions to use UI wage records to assess labor market outcomes for a broad range of post- secondary programs.
4. Issue joint Department of Education/Department of Labor guidance to promote data linkages and uses, and clearly explain how state data systems may link education and wage data in compliance with FERPA and UI rules.
5.Congress should support federal funding for states to enhance their data systems, including linkages of education and wage data.

State Action

1. Enact state policies that promote transparency on employ- ment outcomes of postsecondary programs and the data systems required to calculate those outcomes.
2. Amend state laws and restrictive legal opinions that unnec- essarily inhibit wage data access.
3. Improve WRIS, WRIS2, and FEDES data sharing agree- ments to include all states and expand the terms of data usage to facilitate more comprehensive evaluation of post- secondary employment outcomes.
4. Create interagency data governance councils and detailed, transparent data sharing agreements and sta training protocols to build trust, ensure con dentiality and security, and develop a culture of data sharing and use.
5. Allocate state funds to maintain and improve employment data linkages and support the use of linked state data.
6. Pilot e orts to enhance UI wage records, including hours worked and occupational codes, to make the data more valuable for assessing labor market success.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Classroom to career: leveraging employment data to measure labor market outcomes

Earlier this month, New York became the first US state to offer all but its wealthiest residents free tuition not only at its public community colleges, but also at public four-year institutions within the state. The new program, called the Excelsior Scholarship, doesn’t make college completely free, nor is it without significant restrictions. Still, the passage of this legislation demonstrates the growing strength of the free college movement in the United States. This report examines the consequences of ending free college in England and considers what lessons may be drawn for the US policy conversation. The authors investigate the question of whether restructuring of higher education finance over the last 20 years has led the English system backwards or forwards in terms of improving quality, quantity, and equity in higher education.

The English experience suggests that making college free is hardly the only way to increase quantity, quality, and equity in higher education. Indeed, the story we tell here shows how a free system can eventually stand in the way of these goals. Rather than looking to emulate the English model of the 1990s, the U.S. might instead consider emulating some key features of the modern English system that have helped moderate the impact of rising tuition, such as deferring all tuition fees until after graduation, increasing liquidity available to students to cover living expenses, and automatically enrolling all graduates in an income-contingent loan repayment system that minimizes both paperwork hassle and the risk of default.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Lessons from the end of free college in England | Brookings Institution

Economists generally accept that the skills rewarded in the labor market arise from a combination of endowed abilities, economic environments, and endogenous human capital in- vestments. Endowments, environments and investments almost certainly interact in compli- cated ways, transforming the distribution of abilities drawn at birth into a distribution of education, wages, and labor supply outcomes over the life-cycle.

Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a genetic score variable, are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).

Using HRS data, we show that up to 6.6 percent of the variation in educational attainment is explained by the genetic index presented in Okbay et al. (2016).

We demonstrate that the same genetic score that predicts education is also associated with higher wages, but only among individuals with a college education. Moreover, the genetic gradient in wages has grown in more recent birth cohorts, consistent with interactions between technological change and labor market ability. We also show that individuals who grew up in economically disadvantaged households are less likely to go to college when compared to individuals with the same genetic score, but from higher socioeconomic status households. Our findings provide support for the idea that childhood socioeconomic status is an important moderator of the economic returns to genetic endowments. Moreover, the finding that childhood poverty limits the educational attainment of high-ability individuals suggests the existence of unrealized human potential.

A recurring theme in our empirical results is that individuals with similar abilities but born into different socioeconomic circumstances, face diverging economic outcomes. These findings suggest an important role for policies that invest in poor children and, more generally, provide some support that such investments could mitigate inefficiently low investments in human capital (Heckman and Masterov, 2007). Our findings on wasted potential complement mounting evidence from a variety of fields suggesting the misallocation or squandering of human resources. Researchers have reached this conclusion in different ways.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at “Genes, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from the Health ” by Nicholas W. Papageorge and Kevin Thom

Employment outcomes across HEIs and subjects

Figure 5 shows the distribution of each institution’s proportion of graduates in sustained employment, further study or both five years after graduation. While median proportions lie consistently between 75% and 85% across subjects, there is significant variation within subjects. For Subjects Allied to Medicine (excluding Nursing), for example, the difference between the highest and lowest proportion reaches 51 percentage points. The lowest median proportion is for those who studied languages. It is possible, however, that graduates of such courses are more likely to be living (and working) abroad five years after graduation. If so, they would be more likely to appear in the ‘activity not known’ category.

Figure 5: Distribution of proportion in sustained employment, further study or both across HEIs for each subject area five years after graduation (minimum, lower quartile, median, upper quartile, maximum).
Female + male graduates, graduating cohort 2008/09

Recent studies have claimed that as many as 48 percent of college graduates are overqualified for the jobs they have, but this figure seems inconsistent with their comparatively higher earnings relative to earnings of workers without a college degree. To obtain that high mark, those studies classify many occupations that pay well as being a bad job for college graduates.

This report offers a novel approach that involves statistical and earnings tests, which can be applied in different years to identify whether an occupation is a good fit for a college-educated worker based on each year’s conditions. By using this technique, I find a higher percentage of college-educated workers in good-fit jobs than other approaches do.

The alternative of a good-fit job is an occupation in which college-educated workers are overqualified and earn considerably less than their counterparts in good-fit jobs. The earnings penalty for college-educated workers not being in good-fit jobs rose dramatically from 1980 to 2014.

Many non-college-educated workers are employed in good-fit BA jobs (i.e., jobs normally occupied by someone with a bachelor’s degree). Although they make less than workers with more education in those jobs, they make more than similarly educated workers in overqualified BA occupations.

All occupations can be divided into good-fit BA jobs and overqualified BA jobs. In 1980, 39 percent of employment was good-fit, but this figure rose to 45 percent in 2014. Several external factors affected the rising level of education-based earnings inequality during this time. The share was 24 percent in 1980, when many new college-educated baby boomers entered the labor force. After declining to 21 percent at the end of the Clinton boom in 2000, it rose during the economic troubles sparked by the 2008 financial crisis and reached 25 percent in 2015.

The report’s key findings include:

• The advantage of being in good-fit jobs for both college- and non-college-educated workers grew substantially after 1980.
• The share of overqualified college-educated workers varied minimally in 1980, 2000, and 2014.
• The 25 percent figure of college-educated workers being overqualified in their jobs is lower than all other estimates in the literature.
• Younger BA workers consistently had higher overqualified rates in all years, but the gap was greatest during the weak economy in 2014.
• The earnings penalty for college-educated workers in overqualified jobs grew because incomes changed minimally for college-educated workers in jobs for which they were overqualified, while BA workers in good-fit jobs saw a $20,000 increase in earnings.
  Because of the spike in the number of college-educated workers, fewer non-college-educated workers were employed in high-paying, good-fit BA jobs than in the past.
• The pay of non-college-educated workers in good-fit BA jobs increasingly trailed the pay of college-educated workers in these jobs. Although this occurred for both male and female workers, the gap grew more among male workers than among female workers.
• The pay gap between college-educated and non-college-educated workers in BA-overqualified jobs was smaller than the comparable difference in good-fit BA jobs.
• In 2014, the overqualification rate of college-educated African Americans was 7 percentage points higher than the white rate, and the Hispanic rate was 10 percentage points higher than the white rate.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Mismatch: How Many Workers with a Bachelor’s Degree Are Overqualified for Their Jobs? | Urban Institute