Persisting Gaps: Differences in Skill Levels Among College Graduates

• In Event: What the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies Says About the Effects of Social Background on Adult Skills and Social Mobility

Abstract

Objectives
Prior studies examining student outcomes find that completing higher education “erases” social background. That is, early social advantages and disadvantages do not persist into the labor market because a college degree allows anyone – regardless of early socioeconomic disadvantages – access to the same economic opportunities. We examine survey data to see if higher education also “erases” literacy and numeracy skill differences among college graduates with differing levels of early social advantages and disadvantages.
RQ1. Are the advantages of having highly educated parents associated with educational attainment and literacy/numeracy level in adulthood?
RQ2. Controlling for educational attainment and literacy/numeracy level, are the advantages of having highly educated parents associated with occupational outcomes in adulthood?

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
At the center of the status attainment paradigm is the well-documented, empirical relationship between social origins, educational attainment and social destinations. Status attainment sociologists have demonstrated the strong, positive relationship between social origins and educational attainment (Blau and Duncan 1967; Hout 1980; Hout 1985; Torche 2011; Hamilton 2014). Father’s occupation and educational attainment are associated with the occupational outcomes of the child indirectly through education (Blau and Duncan 1967). This research paradigm supports the social belief that a college education is the “great equalizer” and that there are no labor market differences between people with differing social origins.

Data
Data are from the 2012 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

Methods
For our analyses, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used due the continuous nature of literacy and numeracy. Our OLS regression models can be summarized by the following equation:
Y_1= β_"0 " +β_1xi+β_2xi+ε ;

where β_1xi is a vector of independent variables, β_2xi is a vector of control variables, and ε is the error term. We used the 10 plausible values and the OECD SAS macro for all analyses that include literacy and numeracy scores. We use proper weighting for all cases.

Results
First, we find no differences among different types of college graduates in terms of labor market outcomes such as employment, occupational prestige and monthly income. However, we find significant differences in the literacy and numeracy scores of college graduates who are first generation and those who have a college educated parent. Multi generation college graduates outperformed their first generation college graduate peers by large margins on both assessments of literacy and numeracy.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
The findings of this paper temper the central claim of the status attainment tradition. We find that while educational attainment “erases” some aspects of social background advantages, but in other arenas, social background advantages persist despite educational attainment. This finding contributes to a more complicated picture of universities, not solely as places that confer middle class advantages, but as places that are themselves stratified and produce stratified outcomes. This work provides some empirical support to the recent scholarship that has begun to describe the ways that universities are stratified by class, both between and within universities (Mullen 2012; Armstrong & Hamilton 2013; Carnavale 2013).

Authors

• Karly Ford, The Pennsylvania State University

• Mark Umbricht, The Pennsylvania State University