The effects of grades on labour market outcomes for welfare state professionals

The proposed paper examines the effects of grades from initial education programs on labour market outcomes, such as employment and income, for the welfare state professions. Grades from higher education may be viewed as an assessment, from the place of study, of how well the student masters the knowledge and skills taught in initial training. Whether or not employers regard good grades as an expression of valuable skills, and whether good grades are rewarded in the labour market, is uncertain, and the proposed paper will examine this question. The analyses then, will examine whether or not employers tend to reward good grades, and will not determine why employers possibly tend to do so (if they regard good grades as an expression of productivity enhancing human capital or as a signal of other valuable traits). Of course, labour market outcomes depend on several factors other than grades, such as social networks, social background, ethnicity and gender, and such factors may be correlated with grades as well. The analyses will therefore include controls for such factors. The question above will be examined by analysing data consisting of all graduates in social work, nursing, teaching and preschool teaching from Norwegian university colleges. The data are extracted from university college registers, and supplemented with national register data for each individual. Preliminary analyses indicate that there are positive effects of grades on both income and the risk of being unemployed, but that these effects vary between educational groups.