Is Higher Education Expansion Related to Increasing Unemployment Rates?

Abstract

A wide range of rationales can be used to expand participation in higher education. It is commonly believed that a highly educated workforce serves as a primary driver in elevating the productivity and efficiency of the industrial sector in general. Empirical evidence even suggests that over a lifetime, university graduates earn more than those with other educational attainments. 1 However, an emerging counter-argument states that the supply of graduates might exceed the demand as there are not many graduate-level job vacancies. Against such a broad context, this article adopts longitudinal and comparative stances to investigate the extent to which higher education expansion is related to the unemployment rate in three East Asian societies: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Our empirical data show that the massification of higher education does matter, particularly beyond enrollment rates of more than 50%. Although universal access to higher education provides a more highly skilled workforce to knowledge-based economies, it might also lead to a higher unemployment rate, particularly in South Korea and Taiwan.

Introduction

When looking at global changes in higher education, a key factor in international higher education’s development is expanding participation. Various studies have sought to explore the issues of higher education expansion, including its rationales and stages of development or its developing history in the world and the prediction of its impacts on society. 2 Wang warned us that excessively rapid growth in higher education could lead to possible consequences of unemployment in the educated sector and the devaluation of qualifications. 3 Thus, it is important to use empirical data to track the impact of the growing participation in higher education on various aspects of society, not to mention the cross-country comparison studies on this issue. During the past two decades, we have seen rapid expansion in higher education across the globe. Some countries have even established targets for expanding participation. For example, the United Kingdom set 50% as its goal for expanding the participation rate by 2010, 4 and Singapore aims for a goal of 40% by 2020. 5 California in the United States developed a master plan for higher education in the 1960s, which recommended that the California state university system admit 33.3% of all public high school graduates. The report also suggested that the University of California system admit 12.5%. 6 Thus, a reasonable capacity for four-year universities in California was considered to be approximately 45%. 7 Yet when we examined data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) 8 and the Taiwan Ministry of Education, 9 in some countries in East Asia (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan), entry rates of higher education recently exceeded 50%.

Higher education systems throughout the world are expanding, 10 which means there will be increasing numbers of job seekers with higher education qualifications entering the job market. This trend affects the supply and demand of higher education degree holders and the equivalent jobs in the labor market. 11 For example, the historic development of American higher education after World War ii raised concerns; as higher education expanded rapidly in the United States, some studies predicted that a large number of graduates would face unemployment within 20 years. In reality, the growth of demand for higher education graduates in the United States between 1950 and 1970 continued to exceed the growth in supply. 12 The question is whether East Asia will have a similar experience. The main goal of the present study is to use the cases of Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, three East Asian countries with significant higher education growth rates, to explore the relationship between higher education expansion and unemployment rates for higher education degree holders. These three countries were chosen due to economic, cultural, and geographic factors. From the economic perspective, Taiwan and South Korea were each one of the ‘Four Asian Tigers’ in terms of their economic development pattern, 13 and Japan was seen as an economic role model for Taiwan and South Korea (these three countries borrow policies from one another). 14 From the cultural perspective, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea all emphasize the importance of education in human development and their historic developments have also been influenced by Chinese culture and Confucian traditions. 15 Finally, from the geographic perspective, all three of these countries face the same challenge of being located close to China, as well as the emergent talent and job market in Asia. 16

In this research, we collect data from oecd education statistics and the Statistics Bureau in Taiwan. The data are longitudinal statistics and thus can reflect trends in correlations. This research aims to answer two key questions that are asked by policymakers: Does the expansion of higher education have a positive or negative correlation with labor forces’ unemployment rates? What is a suitable percentage of higher education participation in a nation state? This research has two purposes: i) examining the trend of higher education expansion in relation to unemployment rates since the late 1990s in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and ii) discussing the dynamic relationship between higher education expansion and unemployment rates. These questions will be addressed and the purposes achieved through the performance of a longitudinal analysis.

Literature Review

Rationales for Further Expansion of Higher Education

The idea of expanding educational opportunities can help relate national economic development to the theory of human capital during the 1960s. Schultz argued that the acquisition of useful skills and knowledge should be seriously considered a form of capital. 17 Schultz believed this concept to be quite evident as the length and quality of people’s education can improve their earnings and employment. 18 Investment in human capital can also improve the quality of human effort and productivity, thereby enhancing macro national competitiveness.

The theoretical value of human capital theory is to highlight the importance of personal intellectual capacity as a potential capital of societal economic development. 19 The link between education and personal competence also confirms the importance of personal investment in education. 20 Although there are ongoing debates about the effects on rates of return from primary, secondary, and higher education, 21 higher education’s benefits for personal earnings are a widely accepted concept. 22 The hypothesis that completing a higher education degree can be helpful for personal economic return and employment was also a widely accepted concept, observed through the fact that governments and universities view student employability as one of the tasks of higher education. 23 In this paper, a highly massified higher education sector (more than 50% net enrollment rate) might suggest otherwise.

The second concept relating to human capital investment and educational expansion is the rate of return from receiving an education. Most studies have shown that education has a positive correlation with an individual’s future earnings. However, empirical evidence has revealed that primary education has the highest rate of return compared to secondary and higher education, although higher education still has a significant positive correlation with average earning increase rates. 24

The reasons why the three countries here studied have expanded higher education relate to the widely accepted concept of a knowledge-based economy as the next stage in future economic development. The oecd concluded that, for a country with a knowledge-based economy, ‘the production, diffusion and use of technology and information are key to economic activity and sustainable growth.’ 25 According to Toffler, 26 the new economic development has been changing, and the future generator of wealth will be the mind rather than muscle. Powell and Snellman stated that intellectual capability is one key component of a knowledge-based economy. 27 Thus, economically advanced countries, such as Japan and South Korea, are seeking to become knowledge-based economies, and Taiwan is also making efforts to transition into a knowledge-based economy. 28 As Chen and Lee stated in their book The New Knowledge Economy of Taiwan, 29 Taiwan used to be a leading manufacturing economy in the world, but it is now transforming into a knowledge-based service economy. In fact, South Korea and Taiwan viewed Japan as their role model for economic development; 30 Japan’s movement deeply influenced Taiwan and South Korea, which is another reason why these three countries were chosen as targets for analysis in this research.

In the context of the global pursuit of a knowledge-based economy, it is widely accepted that higher education plays a vital role. 31 The relationship between higher education and a knowledge-based economy became a reason for governments and international organizations to promote the expansion of the higher education sector in developing countries. 32 The logic behind expanding higher education participation and forming a knowledge-based economy is that higher education institutions can help prepare skilled workers with intellectual capacities who are able to use and acquire the information and technology necessary for a knowledge-based economy.

An additional important driver of expanding higher education in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea is the cultural aspiration of having higher education degrees in these three societies. Parents have higher expectations of their children and encourage them to pursue education. 33 Large private education industries (so-called shadow education) in these three countries aim toward helping high school graduates enter universities (Stevenson and Baker 1992). Third, the influence of the Chinese culture and Confucian tradition in the three countries cannot be ignored. An old Chinese saying states that “to be a scholar is to be the top of society (萬般皆下品唯有讀書高)” (quoted from the poet Wang Ju in the Sung Dynasty 宋代汪洙). This saying has continued to influence China and other East Asian societies that have Confucian philosophy embedded in their cultural heritage, including Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

All of the factors discussed above explain the intertwining of the national policies and individual needs for higher education, which has fostered its expansion. Governments in the three countries perceive such expansion to be beneficial for national competitiveness and transformation into a knowledge-based economy. Furthermore, individuals in these three countries are motivated to acquire higher education degrees; thus, governments in the three countries should ease the pressure of the public’s desire for higher education.

Human capital theory and economic reasons for the pursuit of a knowledge-based economy view expanding higher education as a positive movement for both individual and national benefits. However, studies also point out that expanding higher education could cause credential inflation or devaluation. 34 When the rate of university education expands rapidly and the labor market fails to offer enough higher education-level jobs, case credential inflation follows. 35 There is a third perspective that views expanding higher education as a tool by which governments and industries work together to produce higher education degree holders to fulfil industries’ specific skill needs. And industries can view higher education degree as a signal to screen workers with those high skills that industries need. 36

Trow’s Three Phases of Higher Education Expansion

When looking at higher education expansion and its impacts on society, Trow’s hypothesis of the three phases of higher education development must be considered. 37 The basic assumption of Trow’s hypothesis is identifying the different stages of higher education development using the net enrollment rates at the bachelor level. Here, when a country’s proportion of the relevant age to grade enrollment of bachelor level higher education is less than 15%, the higher education system is considered an elite type. When its proportion of the relevant age to grade enrollment of bachelor level higher education is between 16% and 50%, mass higher education emerges. Finally, when a country’s proportion of the relevant age to grade enrollment of bachelor level higher education is more than 50%, universal higher education emerges. An important concept in this framework is that in the mass and universal access phases, diversified higher education institutions coexist. For example, in a mass phase higher education system, elite higher education institutions also exist. In a universal access phase, elite institutions and mass institutions will still represent some proportion of higher education depending on the transformation process of that higher education system. Another important consideration is about the functions of higher education in different phases. According to Trow’s perspective, the function of higher education when it is in the universal access phase could include helping the entire population to adapt to rapid social and technological change. 38

In fact, Trow’s three stages of higher education development has provoked discussions in higher education policy research and it is necessary to examine what happens to degree holders’ employment or earnings when a higher education system enters the phase of universal access. Just within the last ten years, some countries’ net enrollment rates for bachelor level education has exceeded 50%. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have quality data that can be used to discuss this issue. In this paper, we argue that universal access might be related to higher unemployment rates for bachelor degree holders.

Research Hypothesis and Method

Based on the above research context and the literature review, this paper proposes two research hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: The difference between the unemployment rate for higher education graduates and upper-secondary education leavers will be reduced due to expansion in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Hypothesis 2: Universal access (50% net enrollment rate) contributes to some extent to higher unemployment rates in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

In terms of the main research method, this research applies a time series analysis, which is ‘any variable that is measured over time in sequential order.’ 39 We applied this method to observe and compare the statistical data trends of the net enrollment rates in bachelor level higher education as well as unemployment rates for bachelor and upper-secondary leavers between 1998 and 2010.

The data sources for this research include net enrollment rates for bachelor level higher education and unemployment rates for bachelor and upper-secondary leavers in Japan and South Korea, collected from Education at a Glance 2011. 40 The precise data source code is oecd Education Statistics C3; Japanese and South Korean data were collected from ‘Table C3.3. Trends in entry rates at tertiary level (1995-2010).’ 41 Here, the entry rates mean the net entry rates that represent the proportion of people of a synthetic age cohort who enter bachelor level higher education programs. 42 Since oecd differentiated tertiary education into types A and B, in this research we collected data on tertiary type A, which means higher education programs that are largely theoretically based and provide qualifications for entry to advanced research programs and professions with high skill requirements. 43 Such programs typically last four or more years. 44 For Taiwan’s data, we collected equivalent data on net entry rates for the tertiary level type A from the same time period. In Taiwan, the four-year theoretically based programs that prepare graduates for advanced research programs are mostly offered at general universities and universities of technology. Thus, we collected the equivalent data from the Department of Statistics at the Ministry of Education in Taiwan.

Another data source for this research was oecd Education Statistics A7; Japanese and South Korean data were collected from ‘Table A7.4a. Trends in unemployment rates of 25- to 64-year-olds, by educational attainment (1997-2009),’ which indicates the number of 25- to 64-year-olds unemployed as a percentage of the labor force aged 25 to 64, by level of educational attainment. 45 From these statistics, we collected two levels of data for unemployment rates for upper-secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary as well as higher education for Japan, South Korea, and the oecd average. According to the oecd’s definition, a population with higher education refers to those having completed higher education that includes both theoretical programs for conducting advanced research or high skill professions. For Taiwan’s data, we collected equivalent data on unemployment rates for 25- to 64-year-olds by educational attainment for the same time period. We collected the equivalent data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics at Executive Yuan in Taiwan.

Findings and Discussion

Key Facts about Higher Education Expansion in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan

Figure 2.1 presents the data for the proportion of people entering bachelor level higher education programs among the entire 18- to 21-year-old population. The data are consistent with Trow’s definition of the three phases of higher education expansion. We can observe from the data that Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea entered the phase of massified higher education before the year 2000. Based on Trow’s theoretical assumption, Taiwan entered the phase of universal access by 2004, while South Korea did so by 2005. Japan entered the phase of universal access later, by 2010. The data in Figure 2.2 show the increase in the rate of enrollment in these three countries. This figure shows the same data as in Figure 2.1, but the difference is that each dot in Figure 2.2 indicates the difference from the last year’s enrollment rate. For example, in 2001, South Korea’s number is ‘1,’ which means that compared to 2000, the net enrollment rate for bachelor level higher education in South Korea increased by ‘positive 1.’ This figure can help us differentiate the three countries’ speed of expansion in bachelor level higher education. Taiwan’s expansion speed was significantly higher than that of the other two countries between 1998 and 2005, but it slowed down between 2006 and 2010, although it still grew positively at a speed similar to that occurring in South Korea and Japan. South Korea achieved nearly universal access by 2000, but its expansion speed—despite two bursts in 2006 and 2008—was similar to that of Japan. Japan maintained a stable path in the expansion of higher education and became a universal access type of higher education by 2010.

figure 2.1

source: oecd; 46 department of statistics at the ministry of education in taiwan. 47

figure 2.2

source: oecd; 48 department of statistics at the ministry of education in taiwan 49

Comparing Unemployment Rates among Different Educational Attainments in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea

Figures 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6 show the unemployment rates for higher education degree holders and upper-secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education degree holders for the oecd average, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Figure 2.3 shows that a consistent difference exists between unemployment rates for higher education degree holders and upper-secondary degree holders; this difference became even greater after 2008. Thus, the average trend for oecd countries is that receiving higher education helps degree holders’ secure employment and confirms the benefits of higher education for individuals’ employment and the human capital theory hypothesis. This benefit became even more significant in the latest development trend. Figure 2.4 shows the trends in unemployment rates for higher education degree holders and upper-secondary degree holders in Japan. According to this figure, in the late 1990s, the difference in unemployment rates between higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders was not significant. It expanded after 2000, and the difference was consistent and even greater in the latest development trend. Japan’s experience was similar to the trend in the oecd average. Although South Korea’s development was different, in the late 1990s, South Korea was affected by the East Asian financial crisis; during that time, both higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders experienced high unemployment. However, both higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders’ unemployment rates became much lower after 2000, leaving exceedingly small differences between the two levels. Receiving higher education did not seem to reduce unemployment among degree holders compared to upper-secondary education degree holders in South Korea.

Figure 2.6 is the trend in unemployment rates for higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders in Taiwan. Higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders had low unemployment rates in the late 1990s. After 2000, higher education degree holders’ unemployment rates grew rapidly, but their unemployment rates remained lower than those of upper-secondary education degree holders. However, the unemployment rate for higher education degree holders dramatically increased beyond that of the upper-secondary level by 2005, and this trend remained consistent. The year 2005 also marked the year Taiwan’s higher education entered the universal access phase.

figure 2.3

source: oecd. 50

figure 2.4

source: oecd. 51

figure 2.5

source: oecd. 52

figure 2.6

source: directorate-general of budget, accounting and statistics at executive yuan in taiwan. 53

Relationship between Higher Education Participation Rates and Degree Holders’ Unemployment Rates in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea

The previous analysis indicated that for the oecd average and Japanese trends, unemployment rates for higher education degree holders were significantly lower than upper-secondary education degree holders; recently, this difference has become even more pronounced. In South Korea, the differences decreased dramatically after the East Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, indicating that higher education degree holders do not retain advantages in the labor market. Since 2005 in Taiwan, higher education degree holders have faced an even higher unemployment rate than upper-secondary education degree holders, and the gap has been gradually widening. A significant difference between Japan and the other two cases is the speed of expansion of higher education participation rates. Among these three cases, Taiwan demonstrated the fastest higher education expansion rate, followed by South Korea and Japan. Another important difference is the relationship between labor market structure transformations and higher education participation rates and unemployment rates. Later, we will use Taiwan as a case study to further discuss this relationship.

In this research, our first hypothesis is that the difference in unemployment rates between higher education graduates and upper-secondary leavers will be reduced due to greater higher education expansion in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This hypothesis was confirmed for Taiwan and South Korea, but not for Japan.

Comparison of Squeeze Effects in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea and Discussion of the Squeeze Effect with Reference to Enrollment Rates and Stages of Higher Education Expansion

In this section, we use the term squeeze effect to describe the effect of “replacement” in the job market between an upper-secondary degree holder and a higher education degree holder. In Figure 2.7, each dot of data for each year represents the difference in unemployment rates between higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders in that year. We calculated this number by subtracting the unemployment rate of higher education degree holders from the unemployment rate of upper-secondary education degree holders. When this number is positive, it means that the higher education degree holder’s unemployment rate is lower than that of the upper-secondary education degree holder. The higher the number, the lower the higher education degree holder’s possibility of unemployment. Thus, Figure 2.7 shows Japan’s trend of a positive squeeze effect in higher education, but not as positive as that trending in South Korea. Taiwan is different: the trend of changing from positive squeeze effects to negative effects is evident, and it became more negative when Taiwan’s higher education system entered the universal access phase. In Japan, completing higher education leads to a lower possibility of unemployment. In South Korea, the difference in unemployment rates between higher education and upper-secondary education degree holders is small. In Taiwan, upper-secondary education degree holders have lower unemployment rates than higher education degree holders when the higher education system is in the universal access phase.

Our second research hypothesis asserts that universal access (50% net enrollment rate) is related to some extent to the higher unemployment rate in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Our statistical data showed that Japan has lower higher education enrollment rates, but the differences between higher education graduates and upper-secondary leavers are larger than those in South Korea and Taiwan. In contrast, South Korea and Taiwan consistently retained smaller differences, particularly when they reached universal access in 2004/2005. The turning point in South Korea and Taiwan was the 50% net enrollment rate in higher education. Thus, our second research hypothesis was confirmed for Taiwan and South Korea, but not for Japan.

figure 2.7

source: oecd; 54 directorate-general of budget, accounting and statistics at executive yuan in taiwan. 55

Follow-Up Analysis: Relationship Between Macro Economic Change and the Rate of Unemployment for Higher Education Leavers in Taiwan

Higher education systems in these three cases all entered the universal access phase; however, unemployment rates for Taiwan’s higher education degree holders increased more than those of senior high school graduates. Thus, in this research, we focus in particular on the relationship between macro-economic change and the rate of unemployment for higher education leavers using the case of Taiwan. Taiwan was well known for its economic development in the 1980s and it continued to experience positive economic development after the 1990s. According to data from the National Statistics, r.o.c. (Taiwan), 56 despite a small recession, Taiwan’s gdp per capita kept growing to $US22,294 by 2015. However, the economic growth did not seem to be a guarantee of wage increases. Figure 8 shows the average monthly wages for workers of various educational attainments in Taiwan from 2000 to 2010. These data indicate that after 2005, Taiwan’s higher education entered the universal access phase, linking this to the previously discussed findings. Higher education degree holders in Taiwan not only experienced higher unemployment rates than upper-secondary degree holders, but their average monthly wages also decreased compared with upper-secondary and junior college degree holders. This difference was not because of wage increases for the other two, but because of the significant decrease in average monthly wages amongst all higher education degree holders in Taiwan. Compared to South Korea and Japan, Taiwan experienced a significant scale expansion of its higher education system. When higher education graduates do not receive higher-than-average salaries compared with upper-secondary or junior college degrees holders, the squeeze effects between higher education leavers and lower degree holders might be even stronger.

Another important factor to consider related to the relationship between higher education participation rates and unemployment of higher education leavers is the labor market structure change in Taiwan. Figures 2.9 and 2.10 provide data for employees’ occupational types in Taiwan from 1993 to 2010. As these two figures indicate, major changes occurred in the whole labor market structure in Taiwan after 17 years of development, resulting in a significant increase in technicians, associate professionals, service workers, and sales. Meanwhile, knowledge-intensive professionals only increased from 5.54% to 8.78%. Even legislators, administrative directors, business owners, and managers decreased from 5.04% to 4.18%. According to a definition by the statistical bureau of Taiwan, professionals refers to “people normally with higher education qualifications who can apply scientific knowledge to conduct professional activities and solve economic, social, industrial, agricultural, and environmental problems.” The major increase in occupational types in Taiwan in the last 17 years was in semi-professional jobs while higher education expanded rapidly in the same period. When society and the labor market do not offer or need knowledge-intensive jobs, the economy still needs time to change into one that is knowledge-based, and the overproduction of higher education graduates means that they will inevitably be unemployed.

figure 2.8

source: department of statistics at the ministry of education in taiwan. 57

figure 2.9

source: directorate-general of budget, accounting and statistics at executive yuan in taiwan. 58

figure 2.10

source: directorate-general of budget, accounting and statistics at executive yuan in taiwan. 59

Conclusion

One significant convergent change in higher education systems throughout the world is increasing participation rates across countries. Advanced industrial countries such as the United States have entered the phase of universal access, as have some East Asian countries such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. The question arises whether a higher rate of participation in higher education will lead to higher unemployment rates among graduates. The historic development of the United States suggests that no direct relationship exists between participation in higher education and higher unemployment rates among higher education degree holders. We collected data from oecd statistics and the Statistical Bureau of Executive Yuan and Ministry of Education in Taiwan to examine two research hypotheses: “The unemployment rates between higher education graduates and upper-secondary leavers will be reduced due to expansion in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan” and “Universal access (50% net enrollment rate) contributes to some extent to higher unemployment rates in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.” Although these three countries have similar cultural and geographic backgrounds and although all three have experienced expansion in higher education, they did not experience the same relationships of unemployment and level of educational attainment. Our two hypotheses were not confirmed in Japan, but they were confirmed in South Korea and Taiwan. Higher participation in higher education indeed impacted higher education degree holders’ rates of unemployment in South Korea and Taiwan. Higher education leavers had unemployment rates similar to upper-secondary education degree holders in South Korea. Higher education degree holders had higher unemployment issues than upper-secondary education degree holders in Taiwan. The turning point for South Korea and Taiwan was the 50% net enrollment rate in the higher education sector. This finding suggests that given Taiwan’s experience, any government in the world should consider a 50% net enrollment rate in higher education to be an important reference.

As our analysis suggested, labor market transformation is an important index for governments to watch when considering ways to expand higher education. Taiwan expanded its higher education too far ahead of turning into a knowledge-based economy, based on the trend in changing numbers of knowledge-intensive professional jobs or other jobs requiring high skills. Another debate arising here was whether higher education expansion led the economy to transform or if it was necessary to wait until an economy transformation occurred in order to expand its higher education. From the development experiences in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, it could be suggested that the expansion speed of higher education should not exceed the transformation of the economy. The squeeze effect of the two levels of education could be an important policymaking index in this specific context.

Based on Trow’s classification, although universal access to higher education contributes to adaptation to rapid social and technological change, in these societies, it might have also led to higher rates of unemployment, particularly in South Korea and Taiwan. Completing higher education might not increase an individual’s chances of being employed in the labor market when a society reaches universal access. Any government hoping to expand its higher education sector should use the 50% enrollment rate as an important benchmark; when it has an economic structure similar to Taiwan, it should consider the 50% net enrollment rate as a point at which to watch for unemployment issues facing higher education graduates.

Taiwan’s unique problem could be the result of inconsistencies between its industrial advancement and the expansion speed of higher education. The potential causal factors of unemployment among higher education graduates, from the macro market perspective, could be wage differences and the scarcity of professional jobs. Several questions remain related to individual reasons for unemployment among higher education graduates: Are such graduates being unemployed actively or passively? One issue is related to the concept of the voluntary unemployment of higher education graduates: Are their major fields and expertise learned at universities consistent with their potential jobs? Do the lower monthly wages and inconsistency in skills learned at universities and the content of potential jobs instead discourage graduates from seeking employment in society? Countries approaching universal access should consider these important questions.

This research was limited by the availability of data on unemployment rates among graduates from diversified higher education institutions. However, the relationship between diversified higher education and (un)employment, such as tracking the difference between unemployment rates for graduates from elite and other universities, is an important issue. This study found that higher education degree holders in Taiwan had a reduced advantage when it came to employment due to inconsistencies between professional job opportunities and higher education reform.