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More and more adults are earning a tertiary qualification, but not all tertiary degrees have the same value on the labour market. In general, postgraduate degrees such as master's and doctoral degrees are associated with higher employment rates and earnings than bachelor's degrees. Labour market outcomes also vary by field of education. Some fields of education differ markedly in their gender composition, reflecting the sex-typing of occupations and gender stereotypes. Graduates' field of education is closely related with their occupational choices; therefore a better understanding of gender disparities in this area can help to identify some of the mechanisms that lie behind gender differences in the labour market and beyond.

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In 1965, only 43 per cent of young adults aged 25-34 had attained upper secondary education or higher on average across OECD countries. As a result of the rapid expansion in education over the last five decades, the large majority of adults in OECD countries have now attained at least upper secondary education. This educational expansion started in different periods and countries have followed different trajectories: some have chosen to expand secondary education first and then tertiary education, while others have chosen to expand all levels simultaneously. In other countries educational expansion has slowed or remained stable in recent decades. Tertiary education has also experienced considerable expansion with many countries now witnessing the majority of their young adults reaching this level of qualification. Countries have seen a major increase in the educational attainment level of their populations.

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This report examines the performance of public employment services and the effectiveness of activation strategies in Switzerland. It covers the role of the key actors in labour market policy, the placement function of the Public Employment Service (PES), the structure of out-of-work benefits and the related incentives and disincentives for taking up work, and discusses the main features of active labour market programs (ALMPs). ALMPs fund considerable supported employment, rehabilitation and training programs. In a given year, over a quarter of all registered jobseekers participate in at least one active program. Show less

Across the OECD, the labour-market performance of foreign-born-adults tends to lag behind that of the native-born. Immigrants are not only more likely to be unemployed or inactive, but they also earn less and work in lower-skilled jobs. Foreign-born adults feel their skills are underutilised in some countries. This has considerable consequences for the successful socio-economic integration of immigrants. Differences in skills proficiency, language spoken and country of education explain a large part - albeit not the entirety - of these observed gaps. Policies should therefore aim to provide immigrants with effective language tuition, adult education and training programmes in order to ensure the successful integration of foreign-born workers into host economies.

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The demand and supply of tertiary workers contribute to shaping their earnings advantage. The expansion of tertiary education has been accompanied by a decrease in the earnings advantage of tertiary-educated younger and older workers in many OECD and partner countries. Tertiary-educated workers reap the largest advantage in countries where few adults have completed tertiary education, such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico. Tertiary-educated workers with high literacy skills have considerably higher earnings than tertiary-educated workers with lower skills. Older tertiary-educated workers benefit from both their relative scarcity among their generation and their longer professional experience, resulting in a higher earning advantage than their younger counterparts. It is difficult to say whether younger tertiary educated workers will achieve the same earnings advantage over time that the older generation currently enjoys. However, a formal qualification is not the sole assurance of higher earnings: higher skills lead to positive financial outcomes across all educational attainment levels.

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This report is part of a series that aims to offer policy advice to governments and other higher education stakeholders who would like to learn how well their systems are performing in comparison to others. The series will provide insights on how higher education systems are performing overall and in specific areas; why some systems are performing better than others; and what countries can learn from the experience of others.

Half a million higher education graduates enter the labour market every year in Mexico. While their labour market outcomes are considerably better on average than those of upper secondary education graduates, some higher education graduates face periods of inactivity and unemployment. Many graduates who find work end up being over-qualified or working in the informal sector. This report finds that the Mexican higher education system needs to be better aligned with the labour market to help students develop the skills employers seek. Students need better support to succeed in their higher education studies and develop labour market relevant skills, which will help facilitate their achievement of good outcomes in the workforce. This calls for a comprehensive whole-of-government approach and the involvement of all higher education stakeholders. The report proposes a set of policy recommendations to address these issues and help Mexican higher education graduates achieve better outcomes in the labour market.

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Governments are seeking to channel research funds into universities and other institutions in ways that support high-quality research in strategically important areas and bolster effective knowledge diffusion. These issues of steering and funding have even more relevance in light of the current financial crisis and economic downturn which have seen severe fiscal pressures fall on many countries. This publication presents a collection of papers presented at an OECD workshop on performance-based funding for public research in tertiary education institutions in 2010, as well as a rapporteur's report and workshop summary. It takes stock of current thinking and practice around performance-based funding for public research in tertiary education institutions as a tool to help governments meet their research goals. These funding models are essentially systems of ex-post evaluation of research outputs and outcomes from universities and other tertiary institutions, and are generally based on peer review, bibliometrics or other quantitative indicators. Their results are used to inform government decisions about how much and which institutions to fund. An online annex provides additional detail of the performance-based funding systems in place in Australia, Austria, Belgium (Flemish Community), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Poland and the United Kingdom. Show less

Impressive progress has been made in raising participation in early childhood education as well as tertiary educational attainment over the past 30 years. However, the inflow of poorly educated youth into the labour market is unusually heavy for a high-income country, largely on account of high drop-out rates in lower secondary education which, in turn, reflect one of the highest grade repetition rates in the OECD. The supply of workers with intermediate vocational skills is surprisingly low, despite the high return, in terms of labour market outcomes that these skills offer, even if they have recently deteriorated. There is room to raise learning outcomes up to the end of compulsory school, as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), although, owing to a compressed distribution of such outcomes, the share of poorly performing pupils is not unusually large. While significant reforms have been undertaken to address these problems, more measures are needed to reduce grade repetition and raise education outcomes, by improving accountability of schools and school staff, as well as by raising school autonomy further than has already occurred. Vocational training needs to become more attractive. In tertiary education, few Spanish universities have attained a high level of international standing, and scope remains to improve the contribution tertiary attainment can make to gains in economic welfare, notably by reforming funding arrangements.

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The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses the extent to which 15-year-old students have acquired key knowledge and skills that are essential for full participation in modern societies. The assessment, which focuses on reading, mathematics, science and problem-solving, does not just ascertain whether students can reproduce what they have learned; it also examines how well they can extrapolate from what they have learned and apply that knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and outside of school. This approach reflects the fact that modern societies reward individuals not for what they know, but for what they can do with what they know.

Around 510,000 students (representative of about 28 million students overall) from all 34 OECD member countries and 31 partner countries and economies participated in PISA 2012, representing more than 80 per cent of the world economy. For the first time, PISA 2012 also included an assessment of the financial literacy of young people. The findings will allow policy makers to gauge the knowledge and skills of students in their own countries in comparison with those in other countries, set policy targets against measurable goals achieved by other education systems, and learn from policies and practices applied elsewhere.

This is one of six volumes that present the results of the 2012 PISA survey, the fifth round of the triennial assessment. The chapters are as follows: What is PISA?; A profile of student performance in mathematics; Measuring opportunities to learn mathematics; A profile of student performance in reading; A profile of student performance in science; Policy implications of student performance in PISA 2012. Show less

Previous OECD and EU work has shown that even native-born children with immigrant parents face persistent disadvantage in the education system, the school-to-work transition, and the labour market. To which degree are these linked with their immigration background, i.e. with the issues faced by their parents? This publication includes cross-country comparative work and provides new insights on the complex issue of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage for native-born children of immigrants. Complementing the report are seven in-depth country case studies. The countries and regions covered in this publication are Austria, the European Union, France, Germany, the Netherlands, North America and Sweden.

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