Expansion Of Tertiary Education Research Articles

Does tertiary education expansion affect the fertility of women past the college-entry age?

This paper investigates the impact of tertiary education expansion on fertility outcomes of women past the usual college-entry age. We show that the tertiary education expansion in Taiwan led to a decrease in fertility for these mature women both with and without tertiary education, suggesting that the effect did not operate through education alone. Our findings also highlight two empirical concerns with previous studies: (i) the mis-classification of women past college-entry age as “unexposed” to the expansion in the difference-in-differences studies, and (ii) the potential violation of exclusion restriction when using the expansion as an instrument for female education in the instrumental variable studies.

The winner’s curse? Temporal and spatial impacts of higher education expansion on graduate employment and social mobility

ABSTRACT The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China’s national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to 2019 and multiple waves of census data to explore the temporal and spatial effects of tertiary education expansion on college graduates’ job sorting. Regression results from the fixed effects model and the two-stage least-squares model indicate that, on the temporal dimension, the higher education expansion has weakened ties between college credentials and quality jobs over the past 20 years. Recent graduates are more likely to work in informal, non-urban, and non-public sectors, and the college earnings premium has also declined. There is a persistent gap in employment outcomes between bachelor’s and associate degree holders. On the spatial dimension, the growing enrolment size leads to skill sorting towards low skilled regions. The study argues that the dynamic effects of college credentials may be explained by labour market flexibility and cohort crowding after higher education expansion. This paper calls for a critical reflection on the merit of further massification of higher education in developing economies, regarding its potential impacts on intergenerational inequality and regional inequality.

Determinants of Labour Force Participation in Nigeria: The Role of Expansion in Tertiary Education and Internet

The aim of this study is to examine the determinants of labour force participation in Nigeria. The Fully Modified OLS was used to investigate the relationship between labour force participation rate and, life expectancy rate, trade openness, education (% secondary), education (% tertiary), labour tax wedge, dummy variable for era of expansion tertiary education in Nigeria, ratio of service to industry, and number of internet users from 1990 to 2021. The series were tested for the stationarity with ADF and the results showed that all the series were stationary at first difference. The Johansen cointegration technique was employed to examine the existence of long run relationship among the series and the result showed the existence of six cointegration equation among the series. The findings of the study showed that life expectancy rate, internet, and the interaction of tertiary education, dummy variable for the expansion of tertiary education in Nigeria and internet contribute significantly to labour force participation in Nigeria. The authors concluded that expansion in tertiary education combined with access to internet is a necessity for labour force participation in Nigeria. The authors therefore recommended that there should be improvement in social infrastructure as to enhance good living conditions among the population; thereby, increase their lifespan. In addition, the recent investment in ICT should be sustained in order to ensure that great numbers of Nigerians, especially students have access to internet. Lastly, the government can liberalise the economy to give room for foreign investors’ involvement in manufacturing of ICT infrastructure and accessories.

HUMAN CAPITAL THEORY – ONE WAY OF EXPLAINING HIGHER EDUCATION MASSIFICATION

The spectacular increases in schooling figures in the first two decades after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 are often discussed from the perspective of ”massification” of higher education. Causal explanations of the expansion of tertiary education as a social phenomenon have been advanced by academics belonging to different schools of thought. In this paper, I will refer to the explanations of the school of human capital, whose main exponent is Gary Becker and how the explanation is built around human capital and technology, two factors that augmentate each other from Becker's perspective. Because investments in education generate skills, and skills generate technological progress, then this progress creates a demand for specialized labor and increases the earnings of those who invest in their education. Therefore, increased earnings are strong incentives to invest in education.

Global expansion of tertiary education and the position of young people in the labour market

Introduction. The explosive growth of tertiary education around the world calls attention to how this affects the employment of young graduates.Aim. The current research paper is aimed to analyse how the growth of young people’s participation in tertiary education is reflected in the change of their employment and economic activity.Methodology and research methods. The comparative and correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between changes in the education attainment of young people and the dynamics of employment and economic activity indicators by levels of education. The article deals with educational statistics data from OECD countries, Russia and some other countries participating in OECD educational research.Results. The results of the analysis presented in the article show that the growth of tertiary education leads to an increase in the unemployment rate among the young population; however, this is true only for the least advanced programmes, while there is an increase in the employment rate for master’s degree graduates. Economic activity among young graduates with a master’s degree grew faster after the 2009 crisis than among graduates of other tertiary education programmes. Master’s degree graduates were in a better position during the crisis of 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific novelty. The authors presented a detailed analysis of the growth in the scale of tertiary education and the changes of status in the labour market indicators of graduates of different tertiary education programmes.Practical significance of the study lies in the development of the information and analytical basis for adjusting further policy in the field of development of tertiary education based on the goal of increasing youth employment.

Tertiary education expansion and regional firm development

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of a tertiary education expansion on regional firm development, as measured by average profits per firm. We exploit the quasi-random establishment of universities of applied sciences (UASs) – bachelor’s degree-granting three-year colleges teaching and conducting applied research – to construct treatment and control groups and to apply both a difference-in-differences model and an event study design. We find that after the establishment of new UASs in Switzerland, average profits per firm in the treated municipalities increase by 19.6% more than in the control group. This increase corresponds roughly to an additional annual growth in average profits per firm in the treatment group of 0.7%. The effects start shortly after the establishment of UASs but also persist over a period of up to 10 years.

4 - Comparing Pedagogy in Kenya’s Public Universities: The Roles of University Managers

Past studies have shown that the increased enrolment of students in public universities has not been matched with supporting human and technical resources. This has affected the quality of teaching and learning. This article examines pedagogical approaches in the context of mass expansion of tertiary education in selected public universities in Kenya. Further, the authors explore how managers within these institutions support academic staff in pedagogical innovations. The results from a survey of selected public universities showed that certain teaching and learning pedagogies have been favoured and used in these institutions to accommodate the increasing number of students. Further, although the study shows that there is an effort on the side of university lecturers and managers to use and/or support pedagogies that favour the large number of students, there are bottlenecks that are currently beyond their control. These include inadequate funding, staffing, and physical facilities, among others. Subsequently, there are calls for the Ministry of Education and Commission for University Education to work hand in hand with universities if significant quality education is to be realised in Kenya’s public universities.

On the Identification of Tertiary Education Expansion Effect on Fertility

On the Identification of Tertiary Education Expansion Effect on Fertility

Tertiary education expansion and access for disadvantaged women in Brazil and Mexico

This paper seeks to identify if women from vulnerable, socioeconomic and ethnic/racially, backgrounds have been benefited from this process through the Maximally Maintained Hypothesis developed by Raftery and Hout (1993), in which vulnerable or less advantageous groups can access education only after the demand of the most advantaged group has been met. Using data from the National Household Surveys from Brazil (PNAD) and Mexico (ENIGH) both countries were studied for the 2004 and 2014 periods in order to observe the changes occurring through time, with a focus on the women population. As a result, this study found two different dynamics of inclusion: while in Brazil higher socioeconomic inclusion has been attained, there is a persistent stratification by race in tertiary education with an underrepresentation of non-white participants. On the other hand, Mexico has advanced in terms of including the population that describes itself as indigenous or understands an indigenous language, nonetheless underrepresentation from those that speak an indigenous language persist and socioeconomic stratification remains a factor of exclusion.

The Effect of Tertiary Education Expansion on Fertility: A Note on Identification

We draw attention to two identification issues with previous studies that utilized tertiary education expansion to estimate the causal effect of education on fertility: (i) the mis-categorization of women past the usual college-entry age as unexposed to the expansion, and (ii) a possible violation of the exclusion restriction when using the expansion as an instrument for female education. We exploit the tertiary education expansion in Taiwan starting in 1996, with a novel focus on women past college-entry age, to document significant negative effects on the fertility of women as old as 30 at the onset of the expansion. We also show that the expansion lowered the fertility of women both with and without tertiary education, suggesting that the effect did not operate through education alone.

Employment of R&D personnel after an educational supply shock: Effects of the introduction of Universities of Applied Sciences in Switzerland

We examine whether firms increase their employment of R&D personnel in response to an expansion of tertiary education institutions, i.e., a supply shock of skilled labor. We use the staggered introduction of Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs) in Switzerland as a quasi-natural experiment to identify causal effects. Firms located near a new UAS campus experience an education-driven labor supply shock in the form of UAS graduates newly entering the local labor market. Using a large representative firm survey and applying a difference-in-differences model, we find that this labor supply shock has positive effects: first, on the percentage of R&D personnel relative to total employment and, second, on the percentage of total wages paid to them. These effects are driven by both very small firms (five to nine employees) and very large ones (5,000 or more). Our findings suggest that a tertiary education expansion can stimulate innovation activities by increasing the personnel resources devoted to R&D.

Educational expansion and overeducation of young graduates: A comparative analysis of 30 European countries

ABSTRACT This study uses quarterly EU Labour Force Survey data for 30 countries over the period 2000 to 2016 to examine the relationship between changes in the composition of educational attainment and overeducation rates among new labour market entrants holding post-secondary and tertiary qualifications. We find that tertiary education expanded rapidly across our sample, while the proportion of young people with lower levels of education fell gradually throughout the period. Despite the significant increases in the percentage of young people educated to tertiary level, overeducation among new tertiary graduates fell. The descriptive evidence also suggests that some of the greatest declines in overeducation of young tertiary graduates occurred in the countries experiencing the most significant expansion in tertiary education. Overeducation rates among young graduates with upper-secondary and post-secondary (non-tertiary) education were lower in magnitude than overeducation of tertiary graduates and declined slightly over the period. Our GMM results confirm the negative relationship between educational expansion and overeducation for both tertiary and post-secondary graduates, and reveal a number of other factors potentially explaining cross-country variation in youth overeducation rates.

More necessary and less sufficient: an age-period-cohort approach to overeducation from a comparative perspective

In many countries, the skilled labor market has lagged educational expansion. As a result of increased competition, younger cohorts of the highly educated face decreasing returns to education or overeducation. Surprisingly, decreasing occupational outcomes do not coincide empirically with the economic returns among those with tertiary education. Regarding the process of changes in economic returns to education based on cohort transformations, we expect that the expansion of tertiary education affects specific cohorts, which find themselves facing more labor market competition. As a result, the economic returns to education should decrease among younger cohorts even when the overall returns to education remain stable over time. To study this process, we model economic returns with a new age-period-cohort-trended lag (APCTLAG) method, which allows us to compare the gap in economic returns between tertiary and less than tertiary education over cohorts. Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we analyze trends over three decades in 12 countries. Our results confirm that educational returns for tertiary education have declined over time, even though the gap between the educated and the less educated has remained similar in most of the countries. For younger cohorts, tertiary education has become more necessary to survive in the competitive labor market, but the actual economic returns have decreased—making tertiary education less sufficient than before.

Online Distance Education and Transition to Parenthood Among Female University Students in Sweden

The expansion of tertiary education is key to understanding postponement of first births. Currently, online distance education is changing the nature of university enrolment. In this study, I suggest that online distance education impacts on fertility by facilitating the transition to parenthood among students. I examine the relationship between online distance education and first births during university enrolment. Using survival analysis of register data for the 1968–1991 female cohorts, I examine the impact of distance and campus education on first-parity transitions during university enrolment between 2004 and 2012 (N = 938,768). Results indicate that the negative association between enrolment and first parity conception differs substantially between campus and distance enrolment. Compared to non-enrolment, the hazard of first parity conception is 70% lower during campus enrolment but 43% lower during distance enrolment. These findings are discussed in relation to educational heterogeneity and fertility postponement and the impact of technological innovation on family dynamics.

Taking Their Place: Educational Expansion and Inequality of Educational Opportunities—A Gendered Perspective

Educational expansion and gender differences in educational attainment have both been studied in various contexts, but their interdependence has rarely been examined, and even then, yielded conflicting results. We focus on the expansion of tertiary education in Israel resulting from several reforms introduced in the mid-1990s and ask two questions: (a) How did educational expansion affect inequality of opportunity (IEO)? (b) Did the effect of educational expansion differ between men and women? Based on the Israeli census, we examine changes in IEO between 1995 and 2008 across all levels of education. We find that women from lower socioeconomic background were the main beneficiaries of the expansion, especially at the MA+ level. Several explanations for these findings are discussed.

Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and Returns to Education in Hong Kong: A Developed Society with High Economic Inequality

The Great Gatsby curve shows societies with higher levels of economic inequality to exhibit lower levels of intergenerational mobility, with such mobility influenced by educational opportunities. Hong Kong features one of the world’s largest degrees of economic inequality, but has also witnessed a substantial expansion in tertiary education in the past two decades. This paper investigates the change in intergenerational earnings mobility and returns to education in Hong Kong over time. Data were drawn from the 1996, 2006 and 2016 Hong Kong Population By-Censuses. Instrumental variables regression was performed to estimate the change in the average level of such mobility, and instrumental variables quantile regression to estimate the change in the non-linear pattern of intergenerational mobility and returns to education. The findings show the average level of intergenerational mobility has been improved, with intergenerational elasticity decreasing from 0.37 in 1996 to 0.26 in 2006 and 0.23 in 2016. However, intergenerational economic transmission among high-earners remains persistently strong. Examination of the non-linear pattern shows that it is the reproduction of wealth rather than the reproduction of poverty that has led to intergenerational persistence in Hong Kong. A similar pattern was observed in 1996, 2006 and 2016. Returns to non-degree tertiary education were similar across the earnings distribution in 1996 and 2016 but more valuable for low-earners in 2006. Degree-level tertiary education is persistently more valuable for high- than low-earners, which exacerbated earnings inequality in 1996, 2006 and 2016.

English-Medium Instruction in Self-Financing Tertiary Institutions in Hong Kong – Views and Practices from the Students

The medium of instruction (MOI) has been a bone of contention in Hong Kong, a former British colony, since its colonial days. Despite the Hong Kong government’s effort to promote the “biliterate and trilingual” language policy, advocating Cantonese, English and Putonghua as the three official spoken languages and emphasizing the importance of literacy in both written Chinese and English, most tertiary institutions today still adopt English as the medium of instruction (EMI). However, with the expansion of tertiary education in the early 1990s and the decline in the general English language proficiency of university students, some university lecturers have found it difficult to teach in English as required. This raises the issue of the practicality of the indiscriminate adoption of the EMI policy at tertiary level, particularly at the self-financing tertiary institutions where students are generally known to have under-performed in the English subject. In order to understand whether or how the EMI policy is upheld in these institutions, focus group interviews were conducted with students from various programmes of five self-financing tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. The findings indicate these students’ strong preference for English-medium instruction with the belief that it can improve their English proficiency, though their actual approaches to coping with the demand on their limited English and how they view and use the three languages in class deserve policy makers’ serious consideration.

Education expansion and decline in cohort quality in Brazil: 1995–2013

ABSTRACTThis letter explores whether the expansion of tertiary education in Brazil has caused any significant decline in the average quality of the recent cohorts with higher share of tertiary education. Using Brazil National Household Survey 1995–2013 data, we find evidence shows that the recent cohorts earn a relatively smaller tertiary premium after controlling everything else that also affect the tertiary premium, which indicates the decline in average quality of the recent college graduates.

Vicious and Virtuous Cycles of Female Labour Force Participation in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe

Female labour force participation (hereinafter FLFP) trends across Eastern Europe, which were very high during communism, started to diverge substantially following its collapse. Women did not appear to benefit from the changing labour market conditions in those transition countries that pursued industrial upgrading as their strategy of economic development. On the other hand, in some small transition economies, most notably the Baltic countries, women benefited substantially from increased employment opportunities in the knowledge-intensive public and private sector services. This article seeks to explain the observed variation in FLFP rates across the region by synthesising insights from macroeconomic and comparative political economy literature. It identifies four key relationships between industrial upgrading, educational expansion and the expansion of knowledge-intensive services and examines how these factors interacted and translated into specific FLFP outcomes. The article suggests that industrial upgrading, driven by foreign direct investment, created a vicious cycle for FLFP. First of all, the upgrading led to a defeminisation of manufacturing because female labour-intensive sec-tors were not upgraded. Furthermore, the upgrading absorbed the budgetary resources that could have been used for educational reform and general skills formation. This lack of educational reform impeded the development of knowledge-intensive services, which would have been more conducive to the generation of female employment. The virtuous cycle of FLFP, on the other hand, occurred in those Eastern European countries that turned to reforming their educational sector towards general skills and expansion of tertiary education, with the aim of transforming themselves into knowledge economies. Such a transformation required an active social investment oriented state and an expansion of knowledge-intensive public and private sector employment. This development path created a positive causal loop for FLFP. I test these propositions quantitatively on a sample of 13 Eastern European countries.

Educational Expansion and Intergenerational Proximity in Sweden

AbstractEducation is one of the most important drivers of regional migration in European countries, and educational expansion has been a major social phenomenon in the last decades. We use decomposition analysis to examine how the expansion of tertiary education has affected intergenerational distance between adult children and their parents in Sweden. We use administrative register data for the complete population of Sweden and examine changes in intergenerational proximity between 1980 and 2010, using couples at the birth of their first child as the study population. An explicit policy goal of tertiary expansion was to widen the geographical access to tertiary education and the enrolment grew at newer regional institutions during this period. We additionally explore if this policy of regional expansion influenced average distance to parents. We find that intergenerational distances increased over the study period and that this was mainly attributed to the increased enrolment at traditional, older, universities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.