Effects of Academic Cliques on the First Job Offers of College Graduates

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the way in which academic cliques affect college graduates’ first job offers, in an effort to understand the influences of the academic clique in Korean society. This study postulated that two perspectives, i.e. the perspective of productivity, represented by the human capital theory, and the perspective of social exclusion are appropriate for analyzing the academic clique in Korea, and tested the hypotheses based on the two perspectives using data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study. The results of the analyses show that graduating from one of the top 10 universities and graduating from one of the 11th-30th universities, both of which were the variables for the perspective of social exclusion, affect the objectivity of job offers, i.e. wage levels and getting a standard job in a large firm whether or not GPA, which was the variable for productivity, was controlled for. They also show that the significant influence of graduating from one of the 11th-30th universities on the subjective aspects of job offers, i.e. getting a desired job, disappears when GPA is controlled for, and that as GPA improves, the probability of getting a desired job increases when graduating from one of the top 10 universities and graduating from one of the 11th-30th universities are controlled for. Therefore, we can conclude that it is appropriate to understand the academic clique from the perspective of social exclusion when we analyze the objective aspects of job offers. It is also partially appropriate to understand the academic clique from the perspective of productivity when we analyze the subjective aspects of job offers.