The Labour Market Positioning of Continuing Education from Universities: Evidence from a Factorial Survey Experiment in Switzerland

Abstract

Since the educational expansion in the twentieth century, universities around the globe provide more diversified education programmes to a broader group of individuals. This paper focuses on the case of Switzerland, where universities have responded to this trend by introducing continuing education for individuals with a tertiary degree and work experience. Using data from a factorial survey experiment on hiring decisions of employers, we investigate the effect of continuing education from universities on the hiring probabilities and salaries of tertiary educated applicants. Our results show that applicants with a professional tertiary education strongly profit from a continuing education from universities. However, for applicants with an academic tertiary education, continuing education credentials from universities do not lead to better hiring prospects compared to a formal master’s degree, but they lead to higher salaries. Our results support job competition models and credentialism theories stating that applicants profit from obtaining more educational credentials, especially from university credentials that have high symbolic capital. Our paper contributes to the literature by showing that the increasingly offered continuing edu-cation programmes from universities enhance the labour market outcomes of their graduates but also need a clearer positioning in the Swiss educational landscape.