Lee, Sangwoo;
Burga Idrogo, Cesar;
(2025)
Beyond earnings: the multidimensional job quality premiums for university graduates in European labour market.
Studies in Higher Education
10.1080/03075079.2025.2571637.
(In press).
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Abstract
This study examines how university education relates to multidimensional job quality beyond conventional earnings premiums across European labour markets. Drawing on the European Working Conditions Survey data collected in 2005, 2010 and 2015 from 26 countries, complemented by various national indicators, the study employs random-slope multilevel models to investigate graduate premiums across six job quality dimensions, their temporal evolution and the moderating role of educational expansion. The findings reveal substantial but highly heterogeneous graduate job quality premiums across different dimensions. The largest premium appears in Skills and Discretion, with moderate premiums in Physical Environment and Prospects. In contrast, no significant premiums are found for Social Environment, Working Time Quality or Work Intensity, indicating that graduate advantages are concentrated in specific job quality dimensions rather than universally distributed. Temporal patterns reveal selective changes rather than systematic stability, with temporary deteriorations in Physical Environment and Work Intensity around 2010 and some decline in Skills and Discretion by 2015. The magnitude of graduate premiums is moderated by national levels of tertiary educational attainment, with countries that have higher tertiary attainment rates, on average, show smaller job quality premiums in Skills and Discretion and Physical Environment, though this pattern is absent in other dimensions. These findings demonstrate that returns to higher education are neither uniform across job quality dimensions nor stable across institutional contexts, highlighting the importance of multidimensional frameworks for understanding graduate labour market outcomes.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Beyond earnings: the multidimensional job quality premiums for university graduates in European labour market |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03075079.2025.2571637 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2025.2571637 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Job quality; higher education; labour markets; graduate premiums; educational expansion; Europe |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10219258 |
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