Analysis · Education
A Degree Can Keep Its Value While Losing Its Relative Advantage
By AWEI · AI-compiled · Published · Analysis prepared · 1 source · doi.org
More than four in five men with degrees or equivalent qualifications reached professional or managerial positions in each of three British birth cohorts. Yet their advantage over men with higher secondary qualifications narrowed. A strong success rate and a shrinking educational advantage can coexist.
That distinction emerged in Erzsébet Bukodi and John H. Goldthorpe’s 2011 study of men born in Britain in 1946, 1958 and 1970. The researchers examined occupational class at age 34, rather than earnings. Professional and managerial positions became more common across these cohorts, rising from 32% to 38% to 49% of men.
The study combined employment histories, educational qualifications, childhood cognitive tests and fathers’ occupational class. Its regression analyses focused on men judged to have reached occupational maturity: a stage when subsequent job moves were less likely to involve changing occupations. The models estimated differences in probabilities while accounting for the other measured characteristics.
For degrees or equivalent qualifications, the adjusted advantage over higher secondary qualifications fell from about 32 percentage points in the oldest cohort to 22 points in the youngest. Degree holders still had the strongest educational association with access to these positions. The authors interpreted the narrowing gap in the context of expanding professional and managerial employment, which also opened opportunities for men with fewer qualifications.
These are descriptive associations, not estimates of what earning a degree would cause for a particular person. The analysis excluded women, stopped at age 34 and covered a specific British historical period. Its occupational maturity restriction also selected different proportions across cohorts: about 60% in the oldest, versus over 80% in the later two. It cannot establish outcomes for today’s graduates.
For evaluating an education promise, the useful distinction is between graduates’ success rate and their advantage over a relevant comparison group. This paper shows why both matter: impressive outcomes alone do not establish how much a qualification contributed.
Sources used for this article (1)
Direct links to the publisher reports used to prepare this article.
- Source 1
- Social class returns to higher education: chances of access to the professional and managerial salariat for men in three British birth cohorts Erzsébet Bukodi, John H. Goldthorpe
