Abstract
The incidence of overeducation in eight European countries is here assessed by means of multiple indicators. With the exception of Spain, the results reveal that overeducation is a minor risk amongst European tertiary graduates. Yet, the contrast between different indicators reveals the existence of an overeducation of a moderate kind in countries with high rates of tertiary attainment (Norway, Finland and Netherlands). Our results also reveal the importance of higher education differentiation for understanding the risk of overeducation. Graduates from humanistic fields, bachelor courses and vocational colleges are more exposed to overeducation, though their disadvantage varies cross-nationally.
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Notes
We refer generically to vocational colleges to indicate: Polytechnics (Finland), Diplomi universitari (Italy), Hogescholen (Netherlands), Fachhochschulen (Germany, Austria). It refers to the situation in the late 90s when the respondents of the REFLEX survey that we use in our analyses attended HE.
Only Isced 5a graduates were sampled. Hence, post-secondary vocational training and similar courses included in category 5B were not included. Data collection was based on telephone or web-interviews. For more information on the methodology of this survey, see (Allen and van der Velden 2010).
By exploring the data of the 2005 EULFS for the same countries, we have checked that the main socio-demographic variables work well in the REFLEX country samples.
Of course, one could wonder whether graduates really possess these skills. However, we are here interested in measuring overeducation rather than over-skill, which refers to the skills actually possessed by respondents.
This result does not change if we use the 75th or the 85th percentile as alternative thresholds.
This is the working paper of this manuscript: its appendix contains the full results and provides more information on variables and modelling issues.
This agreement is confirmed when we compare them by means of contingency tables: individuals classified in the same way by the two indicators are between 85 and 97% of each national sample. Estimates reported in Table 2 are weighted. We have also computed the confidence intervals (adjusted by survey design) to check the statistical significance of the cross-national differences that we comment.
The above-cited working paper of this article reports the detailed results for fields of study with the subjective and the skill-based indicators. We show some revealing differences, particularly for Nordic countries, that go in the direction expected by our arguments on the meaning of different indicators (authors 2010, appendix). However, the incidence of overeducation is between 1.5 and 3.9% in Norway and in the Czech Republic for two out of three indicators of overeducation. Hence, these multivariate results should be taken with caution, just like results for the Isco-based indicator for Austria (1.1% of overeducation). Results concerning Spain are discussed in some more detail in the working paper.
The employment rates of graduates 5 years after graduation are high (above 90%), hence we do not expect that selection into employment creates serious biases. Control analyses based on Heckman selection models confirmed this expectation (results available upon request).
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Acknowledgments
This work has been developed within the EQUALSOC Network of Excellence. The first author has contributed to this work in the context of the project “Social Selectivity in Tertiary Education and Labour Market and Stratification Outcomes”, coordinated by W. Müller (MZES, University of Mannheim).
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Barone, C., Ortiz, L. Overeducation among European University Graduates: a comparative analysis of its incidence and the importance of higher education differentiation. High Educ 61, 325–337 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9380-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9380-0