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Level of Education to Job Requirements Essay

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Students in higher educational levels attend school/university in the hope of having success in the labour market. An important aspect of labour market success is to bring the gained abilities and knowledge which are learned at school into practice (Robst, 2006 – usa voor meer referenties – rest ref in dit paper). Robst (2006) briefly discusses the relationship between the years of schooling that are required for a job, and completed schooling in the United States of America. With respect to this, it can be said that workers who have had more schooling than the job requires are overeducated, and workers who have had less schooling than the job requires are undereducated. Both types indicate a mismatch between the level of education and job …show more content…

Some skills which are acquired during college are general, whereas others are more specific for a future profession. It is assumed that students choose a major with the expectation to end up working in the field of that major (Betts, 1996 – uit robst) . So, if persons work in a job that does not relate to their major, they work in a job that was not their original choice. Robst (2006) shows that the extent of mismatch differs for different college majors. So, for some college majors the future job is more likely to be in the same field as the major is, but for other majors this is not the case. Furthermore, majors which provide more general skills have a higher chance of delivering graduates which end up with a mismatch between their major and their future job. Also, the higher the degree, the less likely it is to be mismatched. In broader terms, 55 percent of the respondents reported that their work and field of study are very closely related. 25 percent reports a medium relation between their work and field of study and 20 percent of the respondents reports no relation between their work and their field of study. The study of Robst (2006) is only one example of job and educational fit in the USA, and his study is not of primary concern for this review paper. Therefore, some other studies which focus more on the fit between educational level and job requirements instead of focussing on a mismatch between the type of schooling and job requirements. Rumberger (1981

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