Over-Education and the Skills of UK Graduates

Arnaud Chevalier and Joanne Lindley ()

CEE Discussion Papers from Centre for the Economics of Education, LSE

Abstract: During the early Nineties the proportion of UK graduates doubled over a very short period of time. This paper investigates the effect of the expansion on early labour market attainment, focusing on over-education. We define over-education by combining occupation codes and a self-reported measure for the appropriateness of the match between qualification and the job. We therefore define three groups of graduates: matched, apparently over-educated and genuinely over-educated; to compare pre- and post-expansion cohorts of graduates. We find the proportion of over-educated graduates has doubled, even though over-education wage penalties have remained stable. This suggests that the labour market accommodated most of the large expansion of university graduates. Apparently over-educated graduates are mostly undistinguishable from matched graduates, while genuinely over-educated graduates principally lack non-academic skills such as management and leadership. Additionally, genuine over-education increases unemployment by three months but has no impact of the number of jobs held. Individual unobserved heterogeneity differs between the three groups of graduates but controlling for it, does not alter these conclusions.

Keywords: Over-education; Skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Overeducation and the skills of UK graduates (2009)
Working Paper: Over-education and the skills of UK graduates (2007)
Working Paper: Over-Education and the Skills of UK Graduates (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:ceedps:0079

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