Over-education and the skills of UK graduates

Arnaud Chevalier and Joanne Lindley ()

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: During the early Nineties the proportion of UK graduates doubled over a very short period of time. This paper investigates the effect of the expansion on early labour market attainment, focusing on over-education. We define over-education by combining occupation codes and a self-reported measure for the appropriateness of the match between qualification and the job. We therefore define three groups of graduates: matched, apparently over-educated and genuinely over-educated; to compare pre- and post-expansion cohorts of graduates. We find the proportion of over-educated graduates has doubled, even though over-education wage penalties have remained stable. This suggests that the labour market accommodated most of the large expansion of university graduates. Apparently over-educated graduates are mostly undistinguishable from matched graduates, while genuinely over-educated graduates principally lack non-academic skills such as management and leadership. Additionally, genuine over-education increases unemployment by three months but has no impact of the number of jobs held. Individual unobserved heterogeneity differs between the three groups of graduates but controlling for it, does not alter these conclusions.

Keywords: Over-education; Skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2007-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19397/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Overeducation and the skills of UK graduates (2009)
Working Paper: Over-Education and the Skills of UK Graduates (2007)
Working Paper: Over-Education and the Skills of UK Graduates (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:19397

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