This study assesses the technical efficiency of higher education institutions in terms of labor market outcomes for recent graduates, employing a comparative analysis of three distinct methodological approaches. Using a sample of recent graduates of Colombian universities who earned their degrees between 2007 and 2011, we estimated the…

Within high-participation systems of higher education such as China, the value of degrees is divided between credentials offering relatively high positional value and those offering less value. With that, institutional hierarchy plays a significant role in shaping graduate employability. This paper illustrates the contrasting experiences of two…

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of family socioeconomic background on university rankings, efforts in VETs, and job satisfaction of university graduates. The family socioeconomic background and mediation potential, which are independent variables, are identified through university rankings to identify mechanisms that affect job…

In the process of higher education choice, the prospective students compare and organise universities into a preference order, which indicates status hierarchies among institutions. In this study, the aim is to investigate how (and based on what) recent business graduates construct institutional hierarchies in the national higher education…

College graduates earn higher wages than noncollege graduates, but questions remain about the degree to which this wage difference is driven by learning in college or by the signal that the degree sends to employers. Based on a review of the literature, I propose that the value of a marketing degree is much less related to learning marketing than…

In this dissertation, I present an examination of the economics of education through three chapters. In the first paper, I study the overrepresentation of elite university graduates in senior positions in public administration. Using rich administrative data from Chile, I employ a stacked fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate the…

Positioning strategy and ranking are critical issues in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape. Unless there is conceptual congruence between positioning strategies and rankings, the signals may become diffused and confusing for prospective students. This paper seeks the congruence between positioning strategies and ranking. Since…

Hundreds of colleges have changed their names to signal higher quality. We estimate how this affects college choice and the labor market performance of college graduates. Administrative data show that name-changing colleges enroll higher-aptitude students, with larger effects for attractive-but-misleading name changes and among students with less…

This article aims to examine the employment prospects of graduates from Sino-foreign cooperative universities (SFCUs) compared with those from local Chinese universities. Drawing on the annual employment quality reports released by six SFCUs, the findings indicated that SFCU graduates had distinct advantages in terms of both further study and…

People attend postsecondary institutions for a variety of reasons and with a variety of expectations. Among the supposed benefits of a college education are greater earning potential and satisfaction with life (SWL). It is also widely assumed that a degree from a highly selective (or prestigious or elite) college is more valuable than one from a…

Using the China Family Panel Studies, we identify the subjects studied by vocational college and university graduates, with the latter group further divided into ordinary and key universities. While the returns are around 8-10% to attending colleges and ordinary universities, there are higher returns of 12-16% per annum to attending the more…

The colleges and universities in Taiwan are confronted with the following two problems: (1) The average youth (aged 15-29) unemployment rate is more than double the overall unemployment rate; and (2) Mainly affected by the low birth rate, the admission and vacancy rates of colleges and universities have increased, and fierce competition exists…

The link between higher education and employment is central to the understanding of social stratification and social mobility. We use three theories to analyse the importance of education and credentials in recruitment decisions in European graduate labour markets: human capital (HC), network capital (NC) and reputational capital (RC) theory.…

This study analyses the effects of institutional stratification in higher education systems on graduates' wages in engineering fields in Germany and Korea. We use survey data from the Korean 2013 Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey (GOMS) and the German 2013 Graduate Survey Cooperation Project (KOAB). For Korea, where the higher education…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine which of the two variables would be a more reliable proxy for quality of university training--graduates' satisfaction with their degree program, or institutional prestige. Design/methodology/approach: Graduates of professional psychology and teaching programs from three Chilean universities…