Positional Advantages of Higher Education Degrees and Occupational Upgrading in West Germany

Abstract

This study examines how the association between higher education and the socioeconomic status is affected by positional educational advantages in West Germany from 1976 to 2015. Positional educational advantages account for the declining exclusiveness of higher education degrees in the course of educational expansion, which is accompanied by occupational upgrading. The empirical results indicate that the decreasing positional educational advantages affect higher education degrees differently than lower educational levels. Graduates from higher education enhance their advantage over degree holders below higher education with regard to socioeconomic status. Thereby, university degrees in particular gain in importance.

Disclosure Statement

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Notes

1 This article uses data from the National Educational Panel Study (H.-G. Blossfeld and Roßbach (2019) and the NEPS Network (2021)). The NEPS is carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi, Germany) in cooperation with a nationwide network.

2 [1a] No qualification, [1b] leaving certificate from Hauptschule without vocational qualification, [1c] leaving certificate from Hauptschule with vocational qualification, [2b] Mittlere Reife without vocational qualification, [2a] Mittlere Reife with vocational qualification, [2c_gen] Abitur without vocational qualification, [2c_voc] Abitur with vocational qualification, [3a] degree from UAS, [3b] university qualification.

3 The category of professions includes liberal professions and highly qualified service professions, like dentists, doctors, pharmacists, teachers at Gymnasium, social scientists, and humanists (Blossfeld, 1985). For this study’s purpose of identifying occupationally closed professions, the category of professions excludes teachers, social scientists, and humanists.

4 As information about having no educational degree was not gathered explicitly in earlier censuses, the categories of having no degree and holding a leaving certificate from Hauptschule without VET were combined.

5 Microcensuses were not been conducted yearly before 1995.

6 [1] Agriculture, forestry, and fishery; [2] manufacturing, mining and quarrying, other industry; [3] construction; [4] trade, traffic, and warehouses; [5] information and communication; [6] provision of financial and insurance services; [7] real estate and housing; [8] provision of professional, scientific, and technical services and other economic service activities; [9] public administration, defense, social security, education, health and social services; [10] other services.

7 The summary of cohorts by annual unemployment rates is presented in Table A1.

8 As educational expansion has proceeded differently for men and women, I reran the analyses separately by gender. The results are available upon request. Regarding females, decreasing positional advantages do not systematically improve returns for higher education. Compared to the original sample, decreasing positional advantages improve returns for higher education for males to a larger extent. As the examination of gender differences deserves and needs its own theoretical and empirical framework, the results are not discussed further.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Löwe

Laura Löwe is a doctoral fellow at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bamberg, Germany. Her research interests are stratification in higher education, returns for higher education, social inequality and positional competition.