Over-education in the graduate labour market (Researched Literature Essay

Over-education in the graduate labour market (Researched Literature Review) - Essay Example The universities and the government have thus a responsibility to institute policies to reduce the rising incidence of over-education and its effects. Higher education in the UK has expanded in the last three decades and the trend continues. Policy makers justify this expansion on two rationales. First, it is important to meet the high-skill labour requirements of a knowledge economy and second, to add opportunities in education and, consequently, employment for groups that have been under-represented in higher education in the past (Wilton, 2011). Although this expansion is beneficial in many aspects, there have been no adequate attempts to ascertain the capacity of the economy to absorb the increasing numbers of graduates from the various fields of education, hence resulting into a phenomenon where the demand for labour is unable to keep pace with the supply. Ultimately, some graduates end up getting employment in jobs that do not match their educational qualification. Such workers are overeducated in the labour market (Dolton and Silles, 2008). There is a broad body of evidence for the existence of over-education in the UK grad uate labour market and its incidental effects. Some years back, the discrepancy between graduate and non-graduate level jobs was very conspicuous in the UK. University graduates, usually, entered into traditional graduate careers such as medicine and Law or got recruited onto graduate management training programs with prestigious firms. However, in the recent past the graduate market has become more complex especially because of advancements such as rising global competition and development in technology, which demand that the workforce should be more skilled to fit in the current job market. Thus, jobs that in the past did not require a degree now demand a degree, resulting to expansion of higher education as more people enroll to acquire degrees hence bringing about competition