The persistent skills gap in Africa poses a significant barrier to both economic growth and individual career advancement. While cognitive skills (CS) are well-recognized for their crucial role in enhancing employability, non-cognitive skills (NCS) have received less attention, especially in African labour markets. This systematic review examines…

The transition from higher education to the labour market is considered an important and uncertain life stage wherein young adults exchange an academic environment for an often-chaotic entry into the labour market. Specifically, for graduates with a lower socioeconomic status (SES), this transition involves several difficulties. Investigating…

While long part of vocational and professional training, forms of practice-based education like Work-integrated learning (WIL) are now spreading to academic disciplines like Political Science. The pedagogical entailed in WIL is that student learning requires the theoretical knowledge and practice of both the classroom and the workplace, and…

We study whether the completion of an optional professional year placement during undergraduate studies enhances job quality, in terms of earnings, job security and career fit, for economics graduates from a UK university. Using linear and discrete choice models, we estimate the effect of doing a professional year placement on four graduate…

When the Obama administration implemented the first gainful employment (GE) rule in 2014 to protect students from education credentials that lead to unaffordable debts, virtually all programs at public institutions passed the test. The Biden administration is developing its own GE rule after the Trump administration repealed the Obama-era rule. A…

Based on a uniquely matched firm-worker panel dataset for 2013 and 2015, this study is the first to consider the effect of education on employee benefits in terms of wages and quality of employment. We find that only college or university education has a positive influence on employee wages when taking into account worker characteristics alone but…

Through analyses of Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data, the following study considers the direct and indirect association between education and workplace task discretion in 30 countries. By focusing on cross-national comparison, it considers the ways in which these findings are dependent on both the…

Although decades of research highlight the impact of schooling on earnings, less evidence exists regarding other employment outcomes. Nonwage labor market returns to education are important in the United States, where health insurance and retirement income are typically tied to employment. Using longitudinal, nationally representative data, we…

Work experience can be beneficial to high school students, especially when the work is regular and less than 20 hours/week. Previous studies have found that school-related work experience provides more learning opportunities with fewer negative consequences than jobs unrelated to school. This study analyzed responses of 22,183 seniors from 868…

The Law School Admission Council recently reported that applications were heading toward a 30-year low, reflecting, as a "New York Times" article put it, "increased concern over soaring tuition, crushing student debt, and diminishing prospects of lucrative employment upon graduation." Since 2004 the number of law-school…

This article examines the precarious transition from school to work, considers its relation to young people's identity formation in late modern Japan, and rethinks the theory of identity formation in late modernity. Although Japan's transition system had been efficient and stable over many years, since the late 1990s this has been replaced by an…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore objective and subjective career success and to identify factors contributing to career success among a sample of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) "late bloomers" working in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: Incorporating a mixed method design, the authors…

Management experts have observed that employment relationship has become contractual, fragile, and short-lived. Downsizings have resulted in some people having far too much work and stress, while increasing numbers have no work at all. As a result, people are taking jobs they do not really want and staying longer in jobs they do not really like.…

Today's young academics need to lower their expectations, especially in light of the country's current economic woes. But judging from the author's experience, that mental adjustment could lead to rich opportunities. In this article, the author relates his struggle to establish a career in philosophy and provides his thoughts on the necessary…

With life expectancy increasing, and changes to public policy aimed at encouraging older workers to stay in the workforce, the conditions under which people decide to retire have changed in recent years. This report describes the characteristics of those who continue to work beyond the age of 65. The findings show that two groups of workers, in…