Is tertiary education expansion observable in private returns to education? (Evidence for Middle and Eastern European Countries)

Abstract

This article provides evidence about differences in the recent tertiary education expansion in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on these differences, we have examined private returns to tertiary education acquired before and after the tertiary education expansion. We compare these returns as follows: Austria with Germany and then the Czech Republic with Poland and Slovakia. Estimating private returns to education by applying the Mincerian (Mincer, 1974) approach on European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions micro data (EU-SILC, n.d.), we show the differences that arise concerning the evaluation of tertiary education in the labour markets of these countries. While in Austria and Germany a more recent tertiary education is related to higher private returns, this is not the case in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia where a declining trend towards private returns in more recent tertiary education is observable. Keywords Private returns to education, tertiary education expansionIncreasing access to tertiary education (TE) is a common pattern observable across all developed countries and is often referred to as the 'TE expansion'. It is approved and supported by national governments. In the European Union this policy has also been promoted on the supranational level, with a clearly articulated target of at least 40% of 30 to 34-year-olds having been in TE by 2020. This is one of the main goals of the Europe 2020 Strategy (European Commision, 2012). Although individual member states are allowed to set up their own quantification of their TE policy targets, a contribution as far as the achievement of common goals is concerned is required from each of

Returns to education in Central and Eastern European transition economies: The role of macroeconomic context

“…Improvements of the quality of education measured by increase in the average learning outcome score (Altinok et al, 2018) do not tend to correlate with the increase of the returns to education. Importantly, the relationship of enrolment into tertiary education and returns to schooling turned out to be negative, which confirms the typical demand and supply effects (Štefánik and Horvát, 2015).…”

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“…In the European Union, this policy was also promoted at a supranational level, with a clearly articulated target of having at least 40% of people aged 30 to 34 in TE by 2020. This was also one of the main objectives of Europe in the 2020 Strategy (Štefánik & Horvát, 2015). In this context, we conducted an analysis of the share of employed persons with tertiary education in the total number of employed persons.…”