Higher Education and the Labour Market

Abstract

Today almost 50 per cent of all American youths attend institutions of higher learning, and almost 36 per cent of all Japanese high school graduates proceed to higher education (US Department of Education, 1982; Monbusho, 1982a, 1982b). These two countries along with Canada are among the leading countries in the Western world in terms of the number of students enrolled in institutions of higher learning and the proportion of college-educated population (Monbusho, 1983). With such a large number of the youth population now proceeding to higher education, two important consequences related to the process of socioeconomic attainment can be expected. The first is that the socioeconomic returns to higher education may decline due to a larger supply of the college-educated population. The second is that stratification in higher education may have a significant impact on labour market outcomes.