The purpose of this study was to investigate the root cause of the increased rate of employee turnover at a higher educational institution and how to retain their current employees. The importance of this study was to help the educational institution reduce their employee turnover so they do not continue to struggle to find new talent to replace…

The U.S. manufacturing industry is experiencing a resurgence and faces a growing need for highly skilled workers. Recent reports project that demand for highly-skilled manufacturing workers will outpace supply in coming years, and this shortage may grow as the U.S. manufacturing industry grows and its labor needs shift. Furthermore, manufacturing…

To deal with the dynamic nature of global and socioeconomic conditions, it is critical to rethink the interplay between the efficiency of the higher education system and the employability outcomes of graduates. The purpose of this study was to investigate trends in undergraduate enrolment, graduation, and employment in Ethiopia. It looked at data…

Short-term certificate (STC) programs at community colleges represent a longstanding policy priority to align accelerated postsecondary credentials with job opportunities in local labor markets. Despite large investments in developing STCs, little evidence exists about where and when STCs are opened and whether community colleges open new programs…

The purpose of this quantitative study is to test the relationship between degree choice and post-graduate outcomes for students in the United States by describing the relationship between a selected major and post-graduate outcomes including employment sector, salary for women and men. As college costs rise, and enrollments fall for the first…

The ongoing staffing challenges facing Wisconsin's schools continue to be rooted in retention. Wisconsin is producing more teachers than are retiring, and data suggests that if Wisconsin could retain its educators, along with more completers of educator preparation programs, this would significantly address the shortages schools are experiencing.…

Rural America has long been perceived as "left behind" by policies that leave it struggling while benefiting bustling urban cities and suburbs. That narrative holds some truth: rural America has a declining population, along with lower educational attainment and lower workforce participation than urban America. But while rural America…

The Council on Postsecondary Education (Council) is charged with guiding the reform efforts envisioned by state policy leaders in the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997 and is Kentucky's statewide postsecondary and adult education coordinating agency. To gain better insight into economic conditions and workforce trends,…

This dissertation studies the effects of China's higher education expansion reform on workers' labor market outcomes. In Chapter 1, I investigate how China's higher education expansion reform affects young workers' labor market outcomes. Using data from the 2005 China Population Survey, I estimate the effects of the reform using a diff-in-diff…

Vietnam's economy and education system have had remarkable success in recent decades, yet there are concerns about the declining returns to higher education since 2008. We document this decline in returns to higher education and propose four hypotheses to explain it. Analysis of the VLSS/VHLSS and LFS data provides little evidence for three of…

Tacit knowledge flows can be facilitated by employment transitions, such as for example the transitions of PhDs from university employment to industry. There are however barriers to transitions into and out of university employment, and as a consequence, such transitions are relatively rare. PhDs can circumvent the barriers to permanent…

Concerns over the supply of highly-skilled (HS) science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) workers are well established and have been a feature of policy discourse in the UK for more than 50 years. Since the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union, these concerns have been exacerbated by uncertainty about the movement of labour…

Previous research in different national contexts has shown that individual preferences for certain job attributes, objective labour market conditions, subjective career prospects, and external encouragement shape doctoral graduates' career decisions. For Germany, where the number of awarded doctoral degrees is highest within the European Union and…

Recent years have seen accelerating interest in measuring the employment outcomes of recent college graduates. New data tools and research, such as the College Scorecard, increasingly sophisticated state-level data systems, and studies investigating students' long-term economic mobility, continue to roll out. While postgraduate wages have been an…

Recent research describes a gap between the workforce skills employers need and the skills college graduates bring to the workforce. Making strides toward closing the workforce skills gap means that institutions, employers, and students must work together to cultivate a shared understanding of how strategic collaboration and communication are…