What Makes for a Good Start? Consequences of Occupation-Specific Higher Education for Career Mobility: Germany and Great Britain Compared

Abstract

Previous research on graduate employment points to cross-national similarities regarding the comparative advantage of higher education, but also to quality differences in initial employment positions. This article asks what makes for a good start after higher education and provides an institutional perspective on the specific "production mechanisms" of graduate career mobility in different countries. It argues that the occupational specificity of higher education is vital for establishing either a close or loose link to the labor market, and, accordingly, for shaping early labor market careers. To test this assumption empirically, it analyzes how the organization of professional and management training influences graduate career mobility in two countries that are significantly different in their degree of occupational specificity—Great Britain and Germany. The institutional analysis points to a tight link between higher education and work in Germany and a loose one in Britain. However, the application of discrete time piece-wise constant hazard models to the German Socioeconomic Panel and two British cohort studies (the National Child Development Study and the British Cohort Study 1970) reveals that the picture is more complex than initially assumed. The degree of occupational specificity can explain only the German pattern, where graduates are experiencing more job continuity and higher employment chances in professional and managerial positions than their British counterparts. In Britain, the more turbulent transition from higher education to work depends on a mixture of occupation-specific training and demographic factors.