Implications of Higher Education on Earnings: An Empirical Analysis of Skills and Competence

One of the central topics in the research of higher education is the degree of match between education and work as measured by earnings. Traditional literature has shown the correlation between the duration of studies and earnings in the work life. The authors' present study aims to enlarge this scope by evaluating the impact of competence and skills learned in the university with that of the skills demanded in the work life in an empirical study. In this paper, the authors have collected elementary data from the Finnish university graduates with a respectively high response rate. Consequently, using the data of these university graduates they aim to demonstrate the mismatch between the demand for academic knowledge and the professional demand in the work life and draw policy implications on the findings. The authors will also show how these phenomena affect higher education and earnings through the analysis of skills and competence. New research opportunities are opened in the survey evidence on skills learned at the university.