The contribution of immigration to the Canadian economy and society has been of continued importance in recent decades, due to being the main driver of population growth and their importance on the labour market. Given that Canada and other countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are competing for skilled…

Since 1990, new types of doctoral degrees--most in professions that never had doctorates before--surged into the higher education scene in the United States and elsewhere. In the United States, new "professional practice doctorates" were created in more than a dozen fields, and programs for these doctorates skyrocketed from near 0 in…

Many higher education institutions award credentials below the associate's degree level, yet little is known about the pecuniary returns to sub-baccalaureate awards like diplomas (for the culmination of a program of study lasting one to two years) and certificates (for the successful completion of portions of those programs, often within one or…

Policymakers, educators, and the public agree that postsecondary credentials are crucial for economic success, and high school graduates and displaced workers are increasingly seeking credentials at community colleges. Yet little attention has been paid to understanding how credentials align with employer needs and how community college programs…

It is well established that workers with more years of education earn higher wages. By establishing a reference or "required" level of education for a worker's occupation, it is possible to decompose an individual's actual level of education into years of required education and years of over-education or under-education relative to that…

Educational credentials are clearly linked to economic success, but the reasons for this link are not clear. Common theoretical approaches provide explanations but lack direct employer perspectives on credentials' meaning and the context in which employers make sense of credentials. In this study, I used an alternative perspective based in Meyer's…

This study uses administrative data from Washington State to chart the educational pathways of first-time community college students over seven years, with a focus on young, socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Of particular interest are the rates at which students enter a course of study (by passing multiple college-level courses within a…

This article compares the labour market situation of graduates with different types of international background. The authors look at four groups of graduates: immigrants and ethnic Norwegians graduated in Norway and immigrants and ethnic Norwegians graduated abroad. By employing multinomial logistic regression analyses the authors find that ethnic…

Three recently-released research reports commissioned through Project U-Turn and funded by the William Penn Foundation and the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry offer analyses that shed new light on the relationships between Philadelphians' educational attainment and their earnings, employment and contributions to government and…

A recently begun longitudinal study of a trend toward credentialism or qualifications-orientation among adult students in six countries (India, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and England) is described. The development of measures of student learning orientations for different cultures is discussed. (MSE)

This study examined sources and occupational consequences of utilizing alternative educational patterns in a nationally representative sample (Retrospective Life History Sample) of black and white men. The study explored patterns of educational activities used, the antecedents of the use of alternative normative patterns, and occupational effects…

The extent of cross-border mobility in the tourism sector of the European Union (EU) was examined, along with its relationship to the transparency and recognition of qualifications. The study focused on the current and historical levels of mobility in the tourism industry, policies on transparency and recognition of qualifications, and existing…