Stratification in Higher Education and Labor Market Returns

The expansion of higher education and its impact on the configuration of educational opportunities and the overall levels of inequality have long interested social stratification scholars. The extensive literature on the subject have shown that both the level of education attained and the type of education received matter for understanding outcomes throughout adult life, particularly the labor market returns. However, there is quite limited evidence on how the return to college attendance has changed for different cohorts of individuals or how the return varies over time for individuals in a given cohort in Brazil. Using nationally representative, restricted-access datasets from National Exam of Students’ Performance (Enade, in Portuguese acronym) and Annual Report on Social Information (RAIS), this study examines the effects of college and major types on economic well-being (social class, occupational status and individual earnings) of college graduates from 2004 to 2014. Preliminary results indicate substantive differences in all three dimensions of economic well-being according to the type of higher education institution, academic degree, and field of study attended. The analysis provide original insights on the relationship between educational and labor market sorting and allocating processes, as well as advance the more specific research agenda on horizontal stratification in higher education and school-to-work transitions.