Suchergebnisse

Abstract
In many countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., there is ongoing concern about the extent to which young people from lower-income backgrounds can acquire a university degree. Recent evidence from the U.K. suggests that for a given level of prior achievement in secondary school a disadvantaged student has as much chance of enrolling in a university as a more advantaged student. However, simply participating in higher education is not sufficient—graduation is important. Therefore, this paper investigates whether students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have a higher rate of university dropout when compared to their wealthier counterparts, allowing for their differential prior achievement. Using a combination of school and university administrative data sets, we show that there is indeed a sizeable and statistically significant gap in the rate of withdrawal after the first year of university between advantaged and disadvantaged English students. This socioeconomic gap in university dropouts remains even after allowing for their personal characteristics, prior achievement in secondary school and university characteristics. In the English context, at least, this implies that retention in university of disadvantaged students is arguably a more important policy issue than barriers to entry for these students.

This paper compares survey based labour earnings data for English graduates, taken from the UK's Labour Force Survey (LFS), with the UK Government administrative sources of official individual level earnings data. This type of administrative data has few sample selection issues, is substantially longitudinal and its large samples mean the earnings of subpopulations can be potentially studied (e.g. those who study a specific subject at a specific university and graduate in a speci?c year). We find that very broadly the LFS and administrative data show a similar distribution of graduates' earnings. However, the administrative data has considerably less gender disparity, higher high quantiles and more time series persistence. We also report on how the distribution of graduate and non-graduate earnings fell during each year of the Great Recession.

AbstractThere is currently debate in policy circles about access to 'the upper echelons of power' (Sir John Major, ex Prime Minister, 2013). This research explores the relationship between family background and early access to top occupations. We find that privately educated graduates are a third more likely to enter into high-status occupations than state educated graduates from similarly affluent families and neighbourhoods, largely due to differences in educational attainment and university selection. We find that although the use of networks cannot account for the private school advantage, they provide an additional advantage and this varies by the type of top occupation that the graduate enters.

The Further Education (FE) sector has been the Cinderella of English education, attracting less research, despite the large number of students who attend FE colleges. We ask whether the post‐16 institution attended by the pupil, i.e. FE college or school‐based provision, influences pupils' final achievement and whether the gain in pupil achievement at A level is greater in FE colleges as compared with school‐based provision. Allowing for the fact that FE colleges admit more disadvantaged pupils, those who attend an FE college do marginally less well at A level. Sixth form colleges have significantly higher value‐added, particularly for higher achieving pupils.

This paper assesses how far the products of education are utilized in the British labour market, and how utilization has recently changed. We distinguish the concepts of 'under–education', 'over–education' and 'qualification inflation'. Using data from four surveys we find that over–education, while substantial, has been stable since the mid–1980s. Although observed over–education is partly associated with low ability compared with one's educational peers, both over–education and skill under–utilization are also associated with mismatch in the labour market, and both involve a loss of wages. We conclude that, in order to inform policy, education and skill utilization should be closely monitored.