Mihut, Georgiana (2021) Does university prestige lead to discrimination in the labor market? Evidence from a labor market field experiment in three countries. Studies in Higher Education . doi:10.1080/03075079.2020.1870949 (In Press)

PDF WRAP-Does-prestige-lead-discrimination-labor-market-evidence-labor-countries-2021.pdf - Accepted Version Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only until 5 July 2022. Contact author directly, specifying your specific needs. - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (956Kb)

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

Do employers prioritize university prestige above an applicant’s skills in the hiring process? To distinguish between the effect of human capital in the hiring process from the effect of the name of the graduating university—while controlling for networking effects—2,400 fictitious applications were submitted to IT and accounting jobs in the US, UK, and Australia. The resumes belonged to fictitious citizens, both female and male. For each sector of the labor market, two resumes were designed. One resume had a high skills match with the generic requirements of entry level jobs in each sector. A second resume had a low skills match with the same requirements. For each country, one high-ranked university and one non-high-ranked university were selected to signal prestige. The name of the graduating university and the sex of the applicant were randomly assigned on otherwise identical resumes. High skills match applications were 79 percent more likely to receive a callback than low skills match applications. University prestige and sex were not statistically significant predictors of callbacks. These findings suggest that human capital, and not university prestige, predicts callback outcomes in skill intensive sectors of the labor market for entry-level applicants with a bachelor’s degree.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Education Studies (2013- )
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Employee selection, Discrimination in employment
Journal or Publication Title:	Studies in Higher Education
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	0307-5079
Official Date:	5 January 2021
Dates:	Date Event 5 January 2021 Published 5 December 2020 Accepted
DOI:	10.1080/03075079.2020.1870949
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	In Press
Publisher Statement:	“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Studies in Higher Education on 05/01/2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03075079.2020.1870949
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Open Access Version:	ArXiv

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item