Educational expansion, occupational closure and the relation between educational attainment and occupational prestige over time

This article considers changes in the association between educational attainment and occupational prestige in Germany over time. We argue that the link between attainment and occupational prestige has become weaker over time because of compositional changes in graduate occupational destinations. Pri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSociology (Oxford) Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 3 - 23
Main Author Klein, Markus
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2016
Cambridge University Press
Subjects
Absolvent
Angestelltenberuf
Angestellter
Ausbildung
Berufsausbildung
Berufsprestige
Bildungsabschluss
Bildungsertrag
Bildungsexpansion
Educational attainment
Higher education
Hochschulabsolvent
Hochschulbildung
Labor markets
Men
Prestige
Prestige languages
Social change
Social classes
Soziale Klasse
Soziale Schicht
State universities
Studies
Universities
Westdeutschland
Working class
Zugangsvoraussetzung
Germany
professions
Germany occupational closure
occupational prestige
educational expansion
returns to education
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Summary:This article considers changes in the association between educational attainment and occupational prestige in Germany over time. We argue that the link between attainment and occupational prestige has become weaker over time because of compositional changes in graduate occupational destinations. Prior to higher education expansion, the small elite group of graduates tended to access the occupationally closed and thus more prestigious professions on graduation. As higher education participation expanded, however, an increasing proportion of graduates found employment in less prestigious and more diverse graduate jobs. The results confirm our theoretical expectations. The association between educational attainment and occupational prestige has decreased over time as graduates entered a broader range of jobs and their relative advantage over those with lower levels of qualifications decreased. This can, in fact, be attributed to a merely compositional change among graduates' occupational destinations from prestigious professions towards less prestigious free-market graduate occupations.
ISSN:1469-8684
0038-0385
1469-8684
DOI:10.1177/0038038514560602