Horizontal mismatch and vocational education

ABSTRACT

Recent literature suggests that vocational education and training (VET) provides individuals with smoother transitions into the labour market but lower wages over the lifecycle, compared to general education. A possible mechanism explaining lower wages is horizontal mismatch, defined as a mismatch between the type of qualifications acquired by individuals and those required for their current job. Some studies have found higher mismatch wage penalties when individuals’ education is more specific, suggesting higher penalties for workers with VET. Therefore, we analyse horizontal mismatch in Switzerland, the country with the highest proportion of firm-based VET in the OECD. We use two measures from the Swiss Household Panel that cover different aspects of horizontal mismatch. While we find sizable mismatch wage penalties in OLS estimations, effects are small or insignificant in fixed-effects regressions. This holds for workers with vocational and general education background alike. We conclude that VET is more transferable than often assumed. We finish with recommendations on concept and methods for future analyses of horizontal mismatch.     

Measuring heterogeneity in the returns to education using an education reform

In this paper, we explore the impact of a mandatory education reform as well as pre-reform availability of schools above the mandatory level, on educational attainment and returns to education in Norway. We contribute to the existing literature by focusing on the heterogeneity of the impact of reforms. Our results indicate that increased compulsory education from seven to nine years increased the general level of education beyond the compulsory education. We also find that the effect of family background on educational attainment was weaker after the reform. The average treatment effect on returns to education is surprisingly high for education of intermediate duration. This means that increasing the general level of education potentially generates high returns in the form of wages. We also find that the effect of treatment on the treated on the returns to education is 1-4 percentage points higher than the average treatment effect.     

论高职教育的特色发展

大力推进高职教育的发展,是为了适应我国经济发展形势的需要。由于高职教育与经济发展紧密相连,为了发挥高职教育为经济服务的作用,对高职教育就要有一个明确的认识。对高职教育发展的特色研究,就是为了更好地发挥高职教育在经济建设方面的功能,对我国高职教育的建设和发展大有裨益。     

中国高等教育投资风险和收益的实证研究

With the expanding of higher education in China from 1999, more and more youngsters are able to invest in higher education, resulting a high unemployment rate for higher education graduates and more and more graduates employed in non-graduate position, while the analysis upon risk and return to each level of high education is absent due to the limitation of dataset. The paper employs college students sample survey to research the determinants of all levels of higher education beginning wages, the probability to find an appropriate job in order to conclude the risks and returns to each level of higher education based on the wages growth rate and economic development. The research finds the return to master degree is the highest, but the risk is the lowest in China.      

树立全新教育观念,突出高职办学特色

高职教育的生存和发展贵在坚持质量和特色,而提高质量和办出特色的先导是教育观念的与时俱进。因此,高职院校必须以市场对人才的需求为导向,以教学改革为核心,通过科学的、具有前瞻性的专业设置,合理的、特色鲜明的课程体系改革,适合高职特征的实训基地建设和规范的"双师型"教师队伍的培养为切入点,全面提升高职教育的社会声誉和办学效益。     

高等职业教育：资源配置现状及优化配置策略——以新疆高等职业教育发展为例

随着社会对高等职业教育发展问题的不断关注,高等职业教育资源配置问题已成为各级政府和教育界的热点话题。该文结合新疆高等职业教育的发展实际,对新疆高等职业教育资源配置情况进行了深入分析,并提出了改善教师队伍结构,加大对高职教育物力资源的整合力度,优化专业、课程资源配置和优化校际资源配置以及财力资源配置等措施,以促进新疆高等职业教育的发展。     

高职单独招生教学创新管理的路径分析

单独招生由试点院校根据自身专业教学需要,设置考试科目,自行命题、考试、评卷和面试,并以职业技能测试作为重点考核内容。结合我院单独招生学生的特点,通过调整专业课程设置,加强基础课程教学,改进教学内容、方法和手段,强化实践性训练等措施对单招学生进行针对性培养。     

新时期高等职业教育发展思路探析

高等职业教育改革与发展实践越来越清楚地表明,我国高等职业教育还缺乏现代办学理念及其保障机制。职业教育要始终坚持＂面向世界、面向市场、面向学生、面向未来＂的办学理念,才能实现职业教育的科学发展。     

高职体育教学改革的探讨

高职体育教学中的素质教育主要包括思想道德素质、科学文化素质、身体素质、高职院校体育教学改革要适应培养实用型技术人才的需要,突出自身发展的特点和规律,以发展学生个性为原则,应高度重视高职学生所学专业与体育基本能力的结合,突出素质教育的特点对高职体育教学进行全方位的改革。     

高职院校校园文化建设探讨

构建特色鲜明、丰富多彩的高职院校校园文化有助于学生人格体系、职业素养以及情感意志等综合素质的全面提升。从高职院校校园文化的内涵、作用出发,对依托行业、企业文化的特色高职校园文化的构建策略进行了探讨。     

Earnings functions: beyond human capital

Taking a short-run view of the labour market, where individuals with given levels of education have to be matched with jobs differing in level of complexity and difficulty, wages are related to education and job levels. In a sample of some 13 000 observations, controlling for age, experience and sex, a model emphasizing both sides of the allocation process is favoured over the simple human capital view that ignores allocation once education is taken care of. It is claimed that the long-run human capital model can fruitfully be expanded with this short-run allocation structure. The empirical results measure the differences in earnings for individuals with given education working at different job levels, and shows them to be substantial. The relevance of adding job levels to the explanatory variables is illustrated with the case of female earnings discrimination and with differences in age–earnings profiles between general and vocational education.     

专业英语在高等职业教育中的作用

高等职业技术院校是培养我国专业技术人才的基础。高等职业教育中专业英语教育作为重要的课程,必须加强对其重视的程度。通过高等职业院校专业英语教育的不断加强,可以提高学生的英语实践水平,为后期的专业学习打下基础,为日后的文献检索、查询打下基础。     

Like father like son? Revisiting the role of parental education in estimating returns to education in China

Parental education has been used as an instrument in the earnings equation to deal with the endogeneity problem of education. Recently, however, many have found that parental education can be a proxy for unobservable networking, which directly affects wages. This article revisits the role of parental education in estimating returns to education by introducing the “geographical isolation” theory. For migrant workers who receive an education and move around to work, parental education affects their education but otherwise is unrelated to their wages, which makes parental education a good instrument in the instrumental variable approach. For local residents who stay in the same place during childhood and adulthood, parental education can directly affect their wages, and is better introduced as a proxy variable using the control variable method. This article identifies the heterogeneous effect of parental education on wages for different Chinese cohorts and contributes to the debate between the control variable and instrumental variable methods in returns to education studies. Moreover, the idea of geographic isolation can help in the search for good instrumental variables for migrant workers, which is valuable when studying the large migrant population in developing countries such as Mexico, China, India, Vietnam, and many African countries.     

高职院校加强学生思想政治教育的新思路探索

加强大学生思想政治的教育是高职院校发展的重要责任,本文主要通过对高职学生的特点和目前思想政治教育的状况进行分析之后,探索出提高高职院校思想政治教育的新思路。     

高职院校学生德育教育创新问题思考

高职院校学生德育教育工作肩负着培养社会所需的复合型人才的重任,如何对学生进行德育教育工作是需要值得社会所思考的。通过对现在高职院校教育的内容进行分析,进而对高职院校学生德育教育创新工作的立足点、内容以及主要方向进行了探讨,给出了加强高职院校学生德育教育的一些措施,希望通过这些分析给高职院校学生德育教育工作一些帮助。     

Wage determination and returns to education in different ownerships of China: Evidence from quantile regressions

In this paper, quantile regressions is used to estimate wage equations of different ownerships. Quantile regressions give us distributions rather than a single estimate of the returns both to education and experience in each ownership sector. For state-owned enterprises (SOE), the returns to education tended to be larger at the bottom of the conditional distribution of wages in 1991 and 1993, and there was no such trend in 1997. For the private sector, however, the returns to education tended to be larger at the top positions in 1993 and 1997. It is also found that the growth rates of the wages at the bottom of the conditional distribution of wages are higher than those at the top in SOEs. No such patterns for the private sector is found. It is suggested the wage mechanism in the private sector is more market-oriented. __________ Translated from Shijie Jingji Wenhui 世界经济文汇 (World Economic Papers), 2006, (4): 1–26     

公共教育经费配置的效率差异与对策——基于中国各地区数据的经验研究

公共教育经费的配置效率是指一个地区各级次教育的经费投入对经济产出的贡献,地区之间经济发展水平不同,教育经费配置的效率也不同。基于中国各地区数据的计量表明,各地区公共教育经费的配置方向与该地区各级次教育的效率优势存在差异,东部地区的经费投入向义务教育倾斜,中西部地区则向高等教育、职业教育倾斜,而东、中、西三大区域教育效率的优势却呈现出分别向高等教育、职业教育、初等教育集中的地区差异。所以,中国公共教育经费的配置,应该考虑各级次、各地区间的教育效率差异,主要思路是:保障基础教育,优化教育经费配置的级次结构;实现教育分工,优化教育经费配置的地区级次结构;重视中部地区,提高教育经费配置的公平水平。     

How Does Imperfect Competition in the Labor Market Affect Unemployment Policies?

We consider a continuum of workers ranked according to their abilities to acquire education and two firms with different technologies that imperfectly compete in wages to attract these workers. The education cost to be borne by workers is higher in the high-technology firm. In equilibrium, we show that the unemployed workers are those with the lowest initial abilities. We then study different policies that subsidize either education cost or wages. We found that the first-best allocation can only be implemented by selective policies. We analyze second-best nonselective policies and show that, in terms of welfare, subsidizing education costs or wages is strictly equivalent.     

Women Managers and The Gender-Based Gap in Access to Education: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in Developing Countries

A number of studies explore the differences in men's and women's labor market participation rates and wages. Some of these differences have been linked to gender disparities in education access and attainment. The present paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the relationship between the proclivity of a firm having a top woman manager and access to education among women relative to men in the country. The study combines the literature on women's careers in management, which has mostly focused on developed countries, with the development literature that has emphasized the importance of access to education. Using firm-level data for seventy-three developing countries in 2007–10, the study finds strong evidence that countries with a higher proportion of top women managers also have higher enrollment rates for women relative to men in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.     

高等职业教育中人力资本开发问题与对策

笔者从高等职业教育中人力资本开发存在的若干问题出发,寻找问题的根源所在,并提出有益的对策,以使高等职业教育的人力资本开发得到提升.