Smooth Path or Long and Winding Road? How Institutions Shape the Transition from Higher Education to Work
Smooth Path or Long and Winding Road? How Institutions Shape the Transition from Higher Education to Work
Key takeaways
Bibliography: Leuze, K., 2010. Smooth Path or Long and Winding Road? How Institutions Shape the Transition from Higher Education to Work. Budrich UniPress. https://doi.org/10.3224/94075542
Authors:: Kathrin Leuze
Collections:: UCL BCS Dump
First-page: 33
Comparative research on higher education often lacks context and dynamics. OECD benchmark studies report the proportion of students of a given age cohort, their average competence scores, the distribution across disciplines, the unemployment rate by educational level and age. No efforts are made to trace the career trajectories of students asking e.g. how long it takes to find a job, how much it fits the qualifications obtained, how long people hold a job. Such studies leave us puzzled and ignorant on processes and dynamics of entering the labour market and the first years in employment. Consequently, we have no grasp on the extent to which national institutions and professions matter. We loo
content: "@leuzeSmoothPathLong2010" -file:@leuzeSmoothPathLong2010
Reading notes
Imported on 2024-05-07 21:38
⭐ Important
- & At first sight, labour market entry seems to be merely influenced by a student’s educational attainment, for example the type of degree obtained, the subject studied, or the type of institution attended. These characteristics seem to be essential prerequisites for any form of labour market outcomes, such as type of occupation, unemployment experiences, length of job search, or number of job shifts taking place after graduation. However, it will be argued that these individual transition processes are the result of a country’s institutional framework (p. 33)
- & At the micro level, the general theoretical problem of successfully assigning job seekers to jobs and thus of analysing the transition from higher education to work is often referred to as a matching problem. Economic job-matchin (p. 33)
- & 32 theory (Jovanovic 1979; Sattinger 1993) stresses that a good labour market match is two-sided since it not only results from an employee’s adequate education and experience but also depends on job characteristics and employer preferences. (p. 34)
- & life course approaches stress the importance of social institutions and time for the development of human lives. Life course research analyses the social pathways of human lives in their historical time and place, from childhood to old age, by considering how these pathways are influenced at the micro level by the course of individual action and ageing, and at the macro level by the importance of historical and geographic contexts. In pursuit of models of the life course that reflect historical and biographical time, a number of useful concepts have been developed (see Elder et al. 2003: 8-15). (p. 35)