Luis E. Vila

The Economics of Higher Education

This chapter synthesises what economists have learned about a number of key topics related to the provision of higher education and its roles in promoting economic development and well-being. The shift towards a global economy, as well as other economic changes brought about by technological and institutional development, have raised new concerns about the importance of post-secondary education in the enhancement of individuals and in the advancement of society as a whole. Economists translate these concerns into research questions of two main types. The first one includes questions about the production process within higher education institutions, that is, the mechanisms through which the resources allocated to higher education are transformed into educational outputs demanded by society. The second type of questions is about the relationships between the outcomes of higher education and people’s well-being. The topics analysed cover both the private market and non-market returns to the investment in higher education, as well as the contribution of higher education to economic growth and to advances in equity.

Education and the Determinants of Job Satisfaction

Abstract Using a representative sample of Spanish individuals, we explore the effects of workers’ education on self‐assessed satisfaction with diverse specific aspects of their jobs. We find that the effects of education level on job satisfaction differ, both in size and direction, according to the aspect of the job considered, especially after controlling for actual job attributes and other workers’ characteristics. We also find that workers’ perceptions of the match between education and employment are relevant as determinants of job satisfaction irrespective of workers’ education level.

The rewards of human capital competences for young European higher education graduates

The concept of human capital is the idea that people spend on themselves in diverse ways, not for the sake of present enjoyment, but for the sake of future monetary and nonmonetary returns. They may purchase health care; they may voluntarily acquire additional education; they may spend time searching for a job with the highest possible rate of pay, instead of accepting the first offer that comes along; they may purchase information about job opportunities; they may migrate to take advantage of better employment opportunities; and the may choose jobs with low pay but high learning potential in preference to dead-end jobs with high pay. All these phenomena – health, education, job search, information retrieval, migration, and in-service training may be viewed as investment rather than consumption, whether undertaken by individuals on their own behalf or undertaken by society on behalf of its members. Consequently, education represents more than an investment in human capital (Becker 1993) because it allows individuals to learn and acquire skills that will fundamentally shape their behaviour, beliefs and role in society (Haveman & Wolfe 1984). Education appears to be related to people’s success in making many economic decisions; longer schooling, in particular, promotes more efficient decision-making processes related to the labour market through the acquisition of information that has a positive impact on personal choices (Arrow 1997). Evaluations of the appropriate level of investment in schooling have typically focused on market outcomes, particularly labour market returns. The relationship between earnings and schooling has been widely studied at both the theoretical and empirical levels. The relationship is simple to state: more educated people enjoy a higher level of earnings than people with a lower level of education. Longer schooling and training improve the chances of employment (Iyigun & Owen 1999; Rivera-Batiz 1992), reduce unemployment duration (Kettunen 1997; Kiefer 1985) and positively influence income through higher labour market

Higher education and the development of competencies for innovation in the workplace

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the production function nexus between higher education practice and the development of innovation‐related competencies by university graduates in Spain. The research hypothesis is the presence of statistically significant relationships between the development of innovational competencies and the modes of teaching and learning used in higher education practice.Design/methodology/approach – The relationships are modeled through a set of stochastic frontier and variance component equations with the development of each competency as the dependent variable. The main explanatory variables capture the prevalence of diverse teaching/learning modes and the behavior of graduates during their studies. Controls for individual and study programs are also included. Data comes from the European graduate survey REFLEX and includes about 5,500 records.Findings – Estimates show evidence of significant marginal effects of the teaching and learning modes and the development of specific co...

Education and skill mismatches: wage and job satisfaction consequences

Purpose - This paper aims to highlight the relevance of examining education and skill job-worker mismatches as two different, although simultaneous, phenomena of the labor market. Most previous literature does not take into account skill mismatch, and a number of papers deal with both kinds of mismatches as equivalent. Design/methodology/approach - Spanish data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) survey for the year 2001 are used to examine the degree of statistical association between both education and skill mismatches, and to estimate wage equations as well as job satisfaction equations, considering satisfaction with pay, with the type of job and overall job satisfaction, in order to analyze the consequences of both types of mismatches from the workers’ viewpoint. Findings - The statistical analysis shows that education and skill mismatches are weakly related in the Spanish labor market. The econometric analysis reveals that skill mismatches appear as key determinants of workers’ job satisfaction, while education mismatches have much weaker impacts, if any, on workers’ job satisfaction; however, both skill and education mismatches have negative impacts on wages. Practical implications - The analysis points out that the research strategy that considers education mismatch as a proxy for the study of the effects of skill mismatch is rather weak because skill and education mismatches appear to capture different aspects of the accuracy of the job-worker pairing, and, therefore, they have separate consequences for workers, both in monetary and non-monetary terms. Skill mismatches are perceived by workers as a much more relevant problem than education mismatches. The wage and job satisfaction consequences of skill mismatches are strongly negative; to the contrary, education mismatches show much weaker effects. Originality/value - The paper emphasizes that neglecting the effects of skill mismatch along with those of education mismatch in the analysis of the monetary and non-monetary consequences of inadequate job-worker pairing can lead to erroneous interpretations of the facts.

Competencies which shape leadership

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse three dimensions of leadership behaviour in professional environments by disclosing the specific competency profile developed by those who actually lead in work organizations. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from a graduate survey oriented to provide evidence on the transition from higher education to labour market, a structural equations model (SEM) is specified and estimated to explain leadership behaviour at work in terms of the competency profile developed by individuals and its determinants. The competency profile behind leadership behaviour is the combination of two elements: the competency accumulated through professional experience and the competency profile of individuals five years before, which was partially a result of higher education. The relationships are tested on two subsamples of graduates from engineering and business/economics fields, and on a sample of graduates from all study fields. Findings – Estimates show evidence of sign...

A System of Indicators for Evaluating Public Broadcasting Corporations

We describe an operational procedure to build an integrated information system (IIS) for monitoring and evaluating the performance of public broadcasting corporations (PBC). The procedure grounds in a conceptual framework derived from evaluation models, and consists of two stages. The first stage is the selection, through expert judgment, of simple indicators that illustrate the most relevant aspects of the corporations. The second stage is the definition of a system of indicators related to each level of the hierarchy of objectives planned by the corporations. The system of indicators has two levels. The first level is a basic indicator system that allows description and monitoring of the reality of the activities of a corporation on a daily basis. The second level consists of a strategic indicator system, which expresses the consequences that the activities of a PBC generate in its environment, both as short-term effects and as medium and long-term impacts.