Special Issue
Higher Education and the Transition to Work
Comparisons between Europe and Japan
2001 Volume 4 Pages 113-134
Details
2001 Volume 4 Pages 113-134
Utilizing university graduate survey data collected in eleven European countries and Japan, this paper analyzes the relationship between higher education and graduates’transitions to work.
In recent years, the relationship between higher education and work has attracted considerable attention in developed countries due to several circumstances. The enrollment ratio in higher education has increased in Japan as well as in European countries during the lasr decade-a trend known as “massification” or “universalization”. Additionally, knowledge-based economies and socio-economic globalization have developed. Based upon these factors, human resource needs, recruitment practices, and career paths are changing.
European and Japanese researchers jointly conducted a comparative study compiling data from more than 35,000 university graduates in 1999. This paper evaluates transition outcomes and the types of education graduates experienced at their universities. Transition outcomes are then explained by various factors in the graduates’ higher education experiences, including multi-level indexes of each country’s contextual differences.
Several conclusions can be drawn from this study. First, Japanese graduates show better transition outcomes in terms of smoothness in finding employments compared to their European counterparts, but fare worse in terms of ulilizing the knowledge they acquired in college in their new jobs. Secondly, Japanese graduates enroll in college at a younger age and finish in a shorter period of time with fewer work experiences both before and during their college years. Thirdly, the low levels of knowledge utilization in Japan are mostly explained by less work experience during college and a younger graduation age. From these findings, it seems important to encourage work experience, such as internship programs, in Japanese higher education, and to evaluate carefully the competencies university graduates need for their future careers.
