Does alma mater matter? An audit study of labour market outcomes of Canadian Bachelor's Degree recipients

Abstract

In many parts of the world, the rewards attached to a university degree vary significantly according to the name of the institution one attends, particularly in countries with highly stratified postsecondary systems. Because the Canadian higher education system is relatively homogenous and non‐hierarchical, it has been generally accepted that Canadian graduates enter the labour market on equal footing regardless of where they matriculate. We test this assumption through an experimental audit study that compares employers’ responses to fictitious matched job applications from equally qualified bachelor's degree recipients from three Ontario universities: Brock, Queen's, and Waterloo. Not all employers make a distinction between the paired applications; but when they do, Waterloo is favoured. In these cases, even though applicants had the same field of study, academic achievement and work experience, employers singled out Waterloo applicants for a response 84% more often than those from Brock. These findings indicate that institutional affiliation matters in Canada, and suggests that graduates from some institutions fare significantly better in the labour market than their equally accomplished peers from other institutions. We conclude that even in relatively non‐hierarchical systems with comparatively minimal structural or resource variation, status hierarchies emerge that privilege some graduates over others.

Educational mobility in Canada, 1969–2016: Evidence from the longitudinal and international study of adults

“…I find that individuals with at least one university‐educated parent are substantially more likely to complete a university degree as their highest level of post‐secondary education than those without university‐educated parents. Together, these results show that while educational expansion has the potential to reduce inequality, it can also maintain inequality in quantitative and qualitative waysas other Canadian sociologists have also shown (Chow & Guppy, 2021; Davies et al., 2014; Lehmann, 2012; Mullen, et al., 2021; Zarifa, 2012), and as suggested by the theories of MMI (Raftery & Hout, 1993) and EMI (Lucas, 2001). In this way, the findings support both the MMI and EMI perspectives, as seen by large and persistent associations between parental education and accesing post‐secondary education relative to completing high school, and through the link between parental education and the highest level of post‐secondary one completes.…”

“…In sum, this article contributes to the literature by replicating and extending the repeated sociological finding that educational links between parents and their children have remained stable in Canada for over a century (Chow & Guppy, 2021; Pineo & Goyder, 1988; Wanner, 1999), and that the changing composition of parents’ education helps to explain this. To this end, inequality of educational opportunity is not being reduced but rather reproduced, which has growing implications for trends in intergenerational income mobility and the shaping of adult socioeconomic attainment as it plays and increasingly essential role in status attainment (Aslam & Lehmann, 2021; Boothby & Drewes, 2006; Mullen et al., 2021; Simard‐Duplain & St‐Denis, 2020).…”

“…Indeed, the work of Canadian sociologists finds support for these theories. While educational expansion in Canada has led to increased access for students with less‐educated parents (Chow & Guppy, 2021; Lehmann, 2012; Turcotte, 2011), more advantaged students have been able to seek out quantitative and qualitative advantages such as attending more prestigious post‐secondary institutions or pursuing graduate studies (Davies et al., 2014; Zarifa, 2012), which research has shown to provide benefits in the school‐to‐work transition and for adult status attainment (Aslam & Lehmann, 2021; Mullen et al., 2021). In this study, support for the MMI perspective would take the form of persistent links between parental education and successive educational transitions, while support for EMI could take the form of institutional differences in access to post‐secondary education.…”

No “haughty and inaccessible ivory tower”: Laval University and Adult Education, 1930–1965

“…As such, the educational attainment of one's parents has a significant impact on one's own educational attainment and labour market outcomes. This fact has persevered in Canada despite the significant expansion of access to post-secondary education in recent decades (Chow & Guppy, 2021;Davies et al, 2014), due in part to the reality that labour market outcomes associated with credentials vary by program of study (Frenette & Handler, 2020) and post-secondary institution (Milla, 2018;Mullen et al, 2021). In short, while the number of university students has increased dramatically in the past 70 years, the basic relationship between universities and social class reproduction in Canada has remained intact.…”

Does the size of foreign population in a city affect the level of labour‐market discrimination against job applicants of migrant origin?

“…It is crucial, as a failure to integrate in this domain can significantly obstruct integration in the society as a whole (e.g., Portes and Rumbaut 2001 ). However, despite the presence and introduction of a wide range of laws prohibiting differential treatment on various grounds, many field experiments have reported that discrimination continues to dampen immigrants’ labour‐market integration in many Western societies (e.g., Ahmad, 2020a ; Andriessen et al., 2012 ; Baert et al., 2017 ; Midtbøen, 2015 ; Thijssen et al., 2021 ; Weichselbaumer, 2017 ; Zschirnt, 2019 ; see also Mullen et al., 2021 ). Immigrants appear to suffer ethnic penalty across several important dimensions, including occupational mobility, remuneration, permanent or temporary employment contracts, in addition to having low job‐satisfaction levels and job commitment (e.g., Triana et al., 2010 ), and more mental and physical health problems (Paradies et al., 2015 ).…”