Session Information
02 SES 09 A, Higher and Adult Education I: Transitions and Further Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The liberal market economies of the UK, North America and elsewhere have much looser relations between education and work than the coordinated market economies characteristic of continental Europe (Hall and Soskice, 2001). Nonethless, regulated occupations in the liberal market economies share some of the characteristics of similar occupations in continental Europe. This study compares the educational and occupational structures of 2 regulated fields, 2 applied fields, and 2 general fields in a liberal market economy to investigate the implications of those structures on educational and occupational progression.
The aim is to consider the extent to which the potential for educational and occupational progression may be shaped by the macro characteristics of an economy that Hall and Soskice examined, and the extent to which they may be shaped by the specific characteristics of a field, or the skills ecosystems that Finegold (1999) described.
This paper presents data that suggests that upward educational and occupational mobility are influenced equally by educational structures, policies and curriculum, and the structure and processes of the occupations for which educational programs prepare graduates.
The paper analyses data for these selected fields -
General:
experimental sciences
social sciences
Applied:
non accounting business
computing
Regulated:
engineering
nursing
The paper analyses data for each of the top three skill levels Statistics Canada (2012) uses to categorise occupations:
Skill level A2 - professional: occupations usually require university education
Skill level B - occupations usually require college education or apprenticeship training
Skill level C - occupations usually require secondary school and/or occupation-specific training.
Table 1 shows the proportion of workers at skill level A2 by type of qualification. Business had a relatively high 13.7% of professionals without any postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree. The relatively high 44.3% of nursing professionals with only college or trades qualifications reflects the fact that only a college qualification was required to register as a professional nurse in most Canadian provinces until the 1990s, and this falls to 31.0% for 15 to 39 year old professional nurses. A remarkably similar 29.6% to 33.0% of professionals in all fields had combinations of college/trade qualifications and university qualifications.
This may suggest similar opportunities in each field for upward mobility from occupations that require college to occupations that require university qualifications. This may be reinforced by the finding that for all the fields examined except engineering high proportions of workers at skill levels C and B have college and/or university qualifications that would formally qualify them for entry to occupations at a higher skill level. But opportunities for college graduates to proceed to professional occupations also depend on the proportion of workers at each skill level in each field – the structure of the occupation.
There are remarkably different structures in each field (Table 2). The selected business occupations which excluded accounting form a conventional occupational pyramid. However, the other occupations had a markedly different structure. As a result the engineers at skill level B who were 70.2% of all engineers have few opportunities to proceed to professional engineer who were only 8.0% of all engineers. Nursing occupations have an hour glass shape, with the 34.3% of nurses employed at skill level C having relatively few opportunities to progress because only 9.8% of nurses are employed at skill level B. No occupation at skill level C was identified for science nor social science occupations.
Method
The data are from Statistics Canada’s (2011) 2011 National Household Survey on the structure and educational background of people who were working in selected occupations in mid 2011. The National Household Survey was a random sample conducted by Statistics Canada of 4.5 million households. This was 30% of all private dwellings occupied by 13,320,614 usual residents. We chose to examine business as an example of an occupation which is not regulated but which has a prominent occupational identity and thus is associated with applied educational programs, which normally have business or commerce in their title. We excluded from the business analysis financial auditors and accountants which are formally regulated. There were 203,470 financial auditors and accountants reported in Statistics Canada’s (2017) 2011 National Household Survey: Data tables. The remaining business professional occupations included in the analysis had 282,940 workers. Identifying non accounting business occupations at levels B and C required similar exercises of judgement. Statistics Canada (2012) identified a computing occupational group at skill levels A2 and B, which we adopted, and we identified office equipment operators as a relevant occupation at skill level C. Statistics Canada (2012) identified 2 engineering occupational groups at skill level A2, which we adopted except we did not include in the analysis computer engineers (except software engineers and designers), of which there were 25,620 in 2011. Somewhat more judgement was needed to identify engineering occupations at skill levels B and C. Statistics Canada (2012) identified nursing occupational groups at skill levels A2, B and C, which we adopted. We included 2 occupations in each of natural sciences and social sciences at skill levels A2 and B, but identified no sciences occupation at skill level C.
Expected Outcomes
While in most of the fields examined there was a reasonable correspondence between the level of workers’ qualification and the level of their work, there were nonetheless substantial proportions of workers who were at least formally qualified to enter an occupation at a higher level. There was much less correspondence between the field of qualification and the field of work in many fields examined. Transfer from college diplomas to university baccalaureates was closely related to transfer from occupations at skill level B to occupations at skill level A2, which in turn was related to the structure of occupations. We hypothesise that transfer from lower to higher skill occupations may be related to the extent to which work in occupations is segregated by skill level, and the extent and how occupations are systematised by regulation, the structure of the industry’s production, employers’ size and concentration, and the organisation of work. We plan to investigate this in subsequent analysis of the literature and in interviews. The study suggests that educational and occupational progression may be shaped as much by occupational permeability as by educational permeability. An implication is that while the demarcation of occupations characteristic of Europe's coordinated market economies facilitates a close correspondence of education and work, it may also inhibit occupational and corresponding educational progression.
References
Author (2016) Finegold, David (1999) Creating self-sustaining high-skill ecosystems, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, volume 15, number 1, pages 60-81. Hall, Peter A and Soskice, David (2001) An introduction to varieties of capitalism, in Varieties of capitalism: the institutional foundations of comparative advantage, edited by P A Hall and D Soskice, 1-70, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Statistics Canada (2011) National Household Survey (NHS), http://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=5178 Statistics Canada (2012) National Occupational Classification (NOC) 2011, catalogue number 12-583-X, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/subjects-sujets/standard-norme/noc-cnp/2011/index-indexe-eng.htm Statistics Canada (2017) 2011 National Household Survey: Data tables - 99-012-X2011033
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