Credential inflation and employment in ‘universal’ higher education: enrolment, expansion and (in)equity via privatisation in Japan

Abstract

The emergence of a global knowledge‐based economy has given rise to drastic changes in both higher education and employment. On one hand, governments in advanced societies have launched policies to expand higher education to compete internationally in educating and attracting highly skilled workers. At the same time, both global economic competition and governmental policies to cut labour costs and increase labour mobility have led to a workforce increasingly polarised between groups of high‐ and low‐skilled workers, the latter face increasing, often intense, job insecurity. These changes, in turn, combine to produce a serious problem of inflation of education credentials. By focusing on social inequality and access to university in Japan specifically, it becomes possible to not only describe this inflation, but also gain insights into the mechanisms behind a clear acceleration in the pace of this phenomenon in recent decades. How has credential inflation unfolded as higher education has expanded to, now, enjoy a degree of ‘universality’? How is this credential inflation related to the far‐reaching ‘privatisation’ policies that catalysed that expansion? How are changes and divergences in the values of university degrees linked with changes in influences of individuals' familial background? How do these values determine distributions into various strata of employment? By analysing nationally sampled, longitudinal survey data of Japanese youth, this paper seeks to answer these interwoven questions empirically, by focusing on recent developments in Japan, a national case where the relevant issues emerge in stark relief.