Education Expansion and High-Skill Job Opportunities for Workers: Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats?

Tobias Schultheiss, Curdin Pfister, Ann-Sophie Gnehm and Uschi Backes-Gellner
Additional contact information
Tobias Schultheiss: University of Zurich
Curdin Pfister: University of Zurich
Ann-Sophie Gnehm: University of Zurich

No 15687, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine how education expansions affect the job opportunities for workers with and without the new education. To identify causal effects, we exploit a quasi-random establishment of Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs), bachelor-granting three-year colleges that teach and conduct applied research. By applying machine-learning methods to job advertisement data, we analyze job content before and after the education expansion. We find that, in regions with the newly established UASs, not only job descriptions of the new UAS graduates but also job descriptions of workers without this degree (i.e., middle-skilled workers with vocational training) contain more high-skill job content. This upskilling in job content is driven by an increase in high-skill R&Drelated tasks and linked to employment and wage gains. The task spillovers likely occur because UAS graduates with applied research skills build a bridge between middle-skilled workers and traditional university graduates, facilitating the integration of the former into R&D-related tasks.

Keywords: educational expansion; worker demand; upskilling; spillover effects; vocational training (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-eur, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Labour Economics , 2023, 82, 102354

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Related works:
Journal Article: Education expansion and high-skill job opportunities for workers: Does a rising tide lift all boats? (2023)
Working Paper: Education expansion and high-skill job opportunities for workers: Does a rising tide lift all boats? (2022)
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