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The need for non-formal education (NFE), which does not result in a formal degree or certificate, is substantial as labour markets often require adult workers to take an initiative in advancing their job-related skills. Yet, NFE opportunities are more often pursued by high-income and high-skilled adults than their low-income and low-skilled counterparts. For this study, we used data from the 2012 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) for Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the US, to compare participation rates in NFE by medium/high and low-skilled adults. Additionally, to gain insights of adult education and training policies that promote NFE, international key informant interviews (n = 33) and document reviews were conducted. Findings include (a) as compared to high-skilled adults, low-skilled adults are less likely to participate in NFE (b) as compared to the US, low-skilled adults in Norway and the Netherlands are more likely to participate in NFE, and (c) NFE is often more acceptable to low-skilled adults, possibly due to previous negative experiences with formal education. These findings are especially relevant to the increased need for retraining and reskilling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has negatively impacted low-skilled workers more than their higher skilled counterparts (OECD, 2020a).

Sweden aspires to become 'the best in the world at utilizing the opportunities of digitalization' and is internationally recognized for its digital performance. Education has been identified as instrumental for the digital transformation of Swedish society, and efforts are made to accelerate the digitalization of the educational system. As governments' demands for digitalization get increasingly loud and persuasive, it is important to critically explore what values and ideologies are embedded in the argumentation. In this study, we use Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the Swedish Digitalization Commission's report 'For digitalization with the times'. Our results demonstrate that the policy argumentation, despite being anchored in traditional Swedish welfare values, is characterized by a coherent and reductionist neoliberal framing of education. Students are represented as self-managing entrepreneurial citizens with a moral obligation to renew their human capital and adapt to market demands, while the educational system is constructed as a flexible, largely automated, infrastructure for 'life-long learning', in which teaching is reduced to 'facilitating'. We suggest that such discourses around education in Swedish policy rest upon three preconditions: digitalization as an "interconnective policy object," Swedish digitalization policy making as "soft governance," and the Swedish welfare model as susceptible to "discursive drift."

The overall aim was to identify predictors of adult immigrant students' job expectations after they have finished the language training program. We studied both socio-demographic predictors (sex,family status, socio-economic status, and level of education) and experience predictors (age at arrival, teacher, and language exposure). To get a more in-depth understanding of immigrants' job expectations, we also studied the following predictors: having had a job in the home country and in the host country. Using survey data collected from 187 adult immigrants participating in the Swedish-language-training program (SFI), we conducted ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regressions. We found that the majority of immigrant students have high job expectations and that age at arrival and level of education predicted job expectations. In addition, we found that student sex predicts having had a job in the home country but did not affect job expectations in the host country. The study has implications on how we organise inclusive education for adults in Swedish education and hence build an inclusive society throughout one's life course.

Are the gifted and talented destined for greatness in a neoliberally oriented knowledge economy? This is undoubtedly an important question for scholars, teachers, and parents advocating the value of gifted education to policy makers and employers worldwide. This review of literature from a multitude of relevant disciplines attempts to answer this question in drawing from political ideology, economic history, human universal behaviour, and principles of social evolution to the extent that we currently understand them. The analysis showed that while high ability is well underway to take centre stage globally in terms of stakeholder interest, the analysis also suggested that hopes projected onto the highly able are often illusory. The social dynamics characterizing the knowledge economy appears unlikely to accept potential contributions of the highly able, since it is not in the nature of a neoliberal economy to offer the necessary conditions needed for creative and innovative efforts. Given that these conclusions are reasonably correct, clearly much of gifted education, its research and raison d'?tre, will need to be reconsidered and new objectives and fields of research be explored.

In times of increasing skills shortage, regions and particularly non-core regions, need to attract highly-skilled workers. It is better for these regions to (re)attract highly-skilled workers that gained knowledge and contacts elsewhere and because they once lived in the region for study have already ties to the university region than trying to attract outsiders without such ties. In general, social networks can contribute to nurturing a "warm place" perception among potential workers. This paper looks at special kinds of social networks. It focuses on higher education alumni networks and discusses their role in retention and (re)attraction for increasing the highly skilled workforce in their university regions. Being part of a university community means that alumni networks are able to maintain continuous contact with their alumni and have a positive effect on students remaining in the region. This can occur through co-operation with the regional economy. However, the current study found that the analysed alumni networks were set up primarily as communication instruments for graduates and alumni and not for regional economy purposes. If elements of retention and (re)attraction are found in the network activities, this is more an unintentional side effect than a purposeful attempt to contribute to the regional economy. This paper argues that alumni networks could take on such a retention and (re)attraction function if they broadened their scope of activities and reorganized their management structure. Alumni networks are an untapped potential, which can be activated for regional purposes.

The Scandinavian countries currently face their largest ever wave of immigration. The immigration wave increases the need for immigrants to learn the host language to be able to participate in work life and become a citizen of the host country. Yet, the language training programmes -- 'Swedish for Immigrants' in Sweden have come under great criticism for inefficiency. But now, surveys have been carried out with the adult immigrants taking part in the language training programmes. Consequently, the purpose of the present study is to identify predictors of adult immigrant students' attitudes towards language learning at the training programmes in Sweden. Using survey data collected from adult immigrants participating in the language training programmes, we conduct a series of ordinary least squares regressions. We report that the majority of immigrant students are satisfied with the language programmes. Our findings indicate that satisfaction seems to be due to variables such as level of education, age at arrival, and language exposure through social networks but not to socioeconomic status or sex.

Drawing on cognitive science, child psychology, education and economics literature, this paper investigates the significance of early childhood development and highlights the value of investment in early childhood education (ECE). The young child requires adequate psycho-stimulation for the optimal development of the brain, which subsequently helps her to accomplish at school and achieve in adulthood. It has been previously emphasized that for all young children who start life at an equal footing, governments should provide equal opportunities for ECE and care where families are not able to provide. In this paper, we contrast the current status of early childhood and pre-primary education in Turkey with that of Nordic countries, which have advanced far in this level of education. Despite the striking evidence on affirmative effects, early childhood and pre-primary education is not considered a priority in the education system in Turkey and has a lot of room for improvement.

In a period of student loan scandals and U.S. financial market instability impacting on the cost and availability of student loans, this paper looks at alternative models of higher education funding. In this context, it also considers the level of financial support that the government should provide to higher education.

Based on Swedish register data from 2003 to 2012, this study attempts to explain over-education and upward mobility among tertiary graduates. Rarely used explanatory factors are central in the analyses, such as 'still in study' and 'field of education'. Tertiary graduates in low-wage jobs are regarded as over-educated. The results of this work suggest that the general increase in graduates correlates well with the increase in over-educated graduates. Many of those who were categorised as over-educated were students, and graduates from some specific fields were particularly vulnerable to working in low-wage jobs. Sixty per cent of the graduates found more suitable jobs, while up to 40 per cent stayed in jobs related to lower wages. Graduates from fields associated with higher risks of over-education were also less likely to experience upward mobility. The increasing occurrence of over-education among graduates may not only result in a substandard utilisation of human capital (and absence of social mobility), it also seems that the presence of large numbers of over-educated graduates in low-paid work may have implications for unskilled workers, through displacement effects.

The present study compares how Swedish (n = 340) and Norwegian (n = 236) teachers' human capital and social capital support reading habits as an aspect of professional development. The overall aim was to describe how teachers' human and social capital support their professional development as measured by the aspect of reading habits during leisure time. Our research questions were: To what extent do Swedish and Norwegian teachers differ in their reading habits during leisure time? To what extent do young and old Swedish and Norwegian teachers differ in their reading habits during leisure time? To what extent does Swedish and Norwegian teachers' social capital (collegial talk, principal talk) predict their reading habits during leisure time? To what extent does Swedish and Norwegian teachers' human capital (based on their age, education, and work years) predict their reading habits during leisure time? We compared teachers' reading habits between countries. Older teachers read, on average, more fiction, nonfiction, and newspapers. However, younger teachers in both countries are more prone to read digital texts than older teachers. By contrast, teachers' social capital only seemed to matter in Sweden, while talks with the principal had no effect in either country.

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the long-run effect of human capital through higher education on economic development. Using unique long panel data for 36 advanced and emerging economies spanning over the period 1870-2010, we find that higher education has a positive and significant effect on the level and the growth rate of national per capita income. Specifically, our empirical results indicate that a 1% increase in educational attainment at higher education level would raise the growth rate of per capita income by about 0.01% to 0.02% over a five-year period. That is, at the sample mean, an increase in average tertiary education by one year would raise output growth by about 6% to 11% in five years. We find that the returns to female education are lower than the returns to male education at tertiary schooling levels. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.

This study explored drivers of participation in job-related lifelong learning (LLL) among low-educated mature-aged employees and compared them across four Nordic countries. Workplaces can be low-threshold, effective arenas for development of their skills in work and learning. The paper builds on the Bounded Agency Model and theories of learning motivation, human capital, and workplace learning. We used data from the Survey of Adult Skills (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The average participation rate was 36%. Results of the logistic regression analyses showed that income, skills use at work, sector and gender were significant drivers of participation in all countries. Additionally, being under-skilled was significant in Finland and parents' education in Sweden. Totally, these variables explained a quarter of the variation in participation. Thus, the drivers of participation appeared more similar than different across the countries. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to how to support skills development among low-educated older workers, and to some challenges in cross-country comparative research.

The article presents a comparative analysis of educational policy and provision in Sweden and Australia, with particular emphasis on the relative investment in continuing and further education in both countries. The authors investigate the extent to which further education opportunities provide a "second chance" at learning for adults and contribute to social and economic capital. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Empirical evidence suggests that educational attainment nurtures people's social outcomes and promotes active participation in society and stability. However, it is unclear to what extent other types of human capital also correlate with social outcomes. Hence, we explored the opportunity offered by the PIAAC survey through its provision of information on educational attainment, observed individual key skills proficiency, and participation in adult education and training (adult lifelong learning). We therefore studied the association between these human capital variables and social outcomes, and more specifically interpersonal trust and participation in volunteering activities. Results revealed that these social outcomes were affected not only by the formal qualification obtained, determined by the education variable, but also throughout the life-cycle. Indeed, education and training when undertaken during adult life have a significant impact, especially on volunteering. The fact that the skill proficiency also plays a significant role is extremely relevant, as skills are more likely to change over the life-cycle, either in a positive or negative way. Whilst the formal education received is constant after exiting the educational system, skills reflect competences more accurately: first, because those with the same level of education may have different skill levels because of differences in the quality of education or ability; second, because skills can vary over time. For example, they may increase with work experience or informal education, or decrease as a result of depreciation and ageing. These findings suggest that social outcomes are prone to be affected by many factors other than formal education, suggesting that policy makers can implement recommendations even after formal education has been completed.

The present study examined how access to home and school IT resources impacted student mathematics achievement. Data comprised 144,395 secondary school students from 7,308 schools in 22 developed economies who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012. Results of hierarchical linear modelling showed that after controlling for student and school covariates, student achievement benefited from their access to home IT resources (main effect), and from the access to both home IT resources and highly educated mothers (interactive effect). Furthermore, IT resource shortages in school had a detrimental impact on student achievement (main effect), and the shortage accentuated the negative effects of school shortage in qualified teachers on achievement (interactive effect). Lastly, the results showed that students with less home academic and cultural resources were more impacted by IT resource access when compared to peers from advantaged families.

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the estimated returns can be causally interpreted. Using the PIAAC Survey of Adult Skills, this paper explores several approaches that aim to address potential threats to causal identification of returns to skills, in terms of both higher wages and better employment chances. We address measurement error by exploiting the fact that PIAAC measures skills in several domains. Furthermore, we estimate instrumental-variable models that use skill variation stemming from school attainment and parental education to circumvent reverse causation. Results show a strikingly similar pattern across the diverse set of countries in our sample. In fact, the instrumental-variable estimates are consistently larger than those found in standard least-squares estimations. The same is true in two "natural experiments," one of which exploits variation in skills from changes in compulsory-schooling laws across U.S. states. The other one identifies technologically induced variation in broadband Internet availability that gives rise to variation in ICT skills across German municipalities. Together, the results suggest that least-squares estimates may provide a lower bound of the true returns to skills in the labor market.

Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a theoretical perspective, there are many reasons why this relationship is not perfect, and to some degree this is due to third variables. Thus, we want to explore the net relationship between educational attainment (harmonized according to the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED) and literacy skills, and how much skills vary within education levels across countries. Methods: We use data from 21 countries from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012. This paper compares the literacy skills of adults who achieved different levels of educational attainment across countries. Given the high degree of educational differentiation in most countries, we do this using a more differentiated educational attainment variable than what is commonly used. In our analyses we firstly adjust for factors that are likely to affect access to education and the acquisition of educational qualifications and literacy skills, such as parental education and language and migration background. In a second step, we also take into account factors affecting skill development after initial formal education, such as occupation and skill use at home. Results: We firstly find a high degree of heterogeneity of skills across countries for equivalent education categories. Secondly, we find skill similarities for equivalent education categories classified at different broad education levels, sometimes even breaking the hierarchical order of 'higher education entails higher competencies'. Conclusion: We conclude that ISCED levels cannot be taken as a cross-nationally comparable proxy for human capital in terms of literacy skills, and that education has to be harmonized in a substantively more meaningful way in future adult literacy surveys.

The purpose of this study was to explore participation in job-related lifelong learning (LLL) among well-educated mature workers and compare it across four Nordic countries. Although this group generally is very active in LLL, the centrality of knowledge work in society, rapid pace of skills-renewal and rising learning demands for all qualifications levels, necessitates a better understanding of the patterns and factors affecting their skill development. The paper builds on theories of learning motivation, human capital and workplace learning. Data from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) by the OECD were used. In addition to high participation rates, systematic level differences in participation were found across the countries. Results of logit regression analyses revealed clear differences between countries in the models that explained participation, which gave limited support to a single "Nordic model" of LLL. Furthermore, the predictors of participation commonly found among adult populations, low-educated individuals and/or younger adults, appeared less valid for well-educated individuals.

In the context of higher education in Sweden, we see how major policy change is forming the field of Education Sciences. This change has promoted an increased focus on competitiveness, while reducing inefficiencies in mass-education. It has given legitimacy to specific recruitment strategies and career paths, but can also explain what determines how career capital is accumulated. The aim of the present study is to describe how academics experience recruitment and positioning processes in their career. How do academics gain career capital and symbolic value in career and use it to gain recognition? The results illustrate three career paths, identified as "the invited", "the useful" or "the uninvited". Thus, the present article describes a Matthew effect in recruitment, where young PhD students are positioned early on as either promising researchers, teachers, or as substitutes who are sorted out from both research and education.

Following Ben-Porath [1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life-Cycle of Earnings." "Journal of Political Economy" 75 (3): 352-365], the influence of life expectancy on education and on human capital has attracted much attention among growth theorists. Whereas existing growth models rely on an education decision made either by the child or by his parent, we revisit the Ben-Porath effect by modelling education as the outcome of bargaining between the parent and the child. We develop a three-period overlapping generations (OLG) model, where human capital increases life expectancy and shows that as a result of the unequal remaining lifetimes faced by parents and children, the form of the Ben-Porath effect depends on how bargaining power is distributed within the family, which in turn affects long-run economic dynamics. Using data on 16 OECD countries (1940-1980), we show that introducing family bargaining helps to rationalize the observed education patterns across countries.

This paper empirically examines the impact of academic research on high-tech manufacturing growth of 28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and emerging countries over the 1991-2005 period. A standard research and development (R&D) expenditure based measure is found to be too general to capture the input in high-tech research. To overcome this problem, a novel proxy for high-tech research investment--the supercomputer capacity--is proposed. Empirical evidence strongly supports this choice of variable. It is also found that academic R&D exerts a larger growth effect on high-tech output than its industry and government counterparts, but only the impact differential between academic and government R&D is statistically significant.

We analyse the utility of social capital for children's achievement, and if this utility interacts with family human capital and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Our focus is on parental activities directly related to children's school work. Our data stem from a Swedish cohort born in 1953 and consist of both survey and register data. We find that parents with more human capital tended to offer their children more social capital. OLS regressions showed that, when present, social capital was directly related to children's grades and its utility for achievement did not depend on parents' human capital. The utility of social capital was enhanced when combined with a very good parent-child relation.

While it is accepted that there are "sensitive" and "critical" periods of life during which certain human capabilities are more readily acquired, and where the multiplied returns on our investment in human capability building are more significant, it is also argued that there are place-based contexts (society, nature, culture, economy) that are sensitive and critical in their relational contribution to such success. The discussion of the role of the regional milieu in enhancing human capability naturally raises questions about the engaged role of the learning institution, particularly the university, and the way pedagogy is designed and delivered. Human capital planning and actions that take into account capability enhancement at critical and sensitive stages of life and in critical and sensitive places of attachment appear to be useful initiatives in which universities could take the lead in their engagement with other formal and informal education sectors and with the wider communities in which they are located. Värmland region in west central Sweden is given as a successful example of human capability planning and building through engaged learning with place.

Using data on Swedish university entrants, this study finds that earnings are significantly lower for students who change universities compared to students who do not change. Earnings differences decrease over time and over the earnings distribution. The pattern in the estimates seems consistent with non-transfer students having higher earnings because of their earlier labor market entry and transfer students catching up because of their additional human-capital investments. But by changing universities, individuals signal that they are more likely to jump between jobs, and some employers account for these factors when screening job applicants. (Contains 4 tables and 4 notes.)

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be attributed to differences in classroom- and school-level resources available to students from different SES backgrounds. In some countries, achievement gaps can be largely explained by differences in the characteristics of schools attended. However, in many other countries, the gap appears more closely related to differences in the characteristics of the students. The results point to the importance of institutional difference among countries in explaining international differences in the quality of education received by different groups within a nation. (Contains 4 tables, 2 figures and 13 notes.)

Sons (daughters) with criminal fathers have 2.06 (2.66) times higher odds of having a criminal conviction than those with noncriminal fathers. One additional paternal sentence increases sons' (daughters') convictions by 32 (53) percent. Compared to traditional labor market measures, the intergenerational transmission of crime is lower than that for high school completion but higher than that for poverty. At the intensive margin, the intergenerational crime relationship is as strong as those for earnings and years of schooling. Parental human capital and parental behaviors can account for 60-80 percent of the intergenerational crime relationship. Paternal role-modeling also matters. (Contains 7 tables and 44 footnotes.)

In this paper the authors focus on the consequences of economies and cultures of speculation in the field of education. Education is one of the arenas where the logics of speculation are being played out. It is argued that the major shifts in educational policy over the past decades in Sweden derive from what Ian Baucom aptly called "speculative epistemologies". The field of education is contemporaneous with the wider recasting of society, economy, politics and culture that is premised on the neo-liberal calculus of accumulation and value maximization. In this context, education could be understood in terms of "speculative pedagogy". Speculative pedagogy stands for education that strives to both capitalize knowledge, schooling or learning and realize immediate returns from knowledge, schooling and learning. Speculative pedagogy is used here as an umbrella concept to denote profit driven education and the various educational philosophies, theories and practices in education that are based on notion of valorization, capitalization and immediate returns to education, such that the primary role of education is reduced to augmenting marketable value (personal, economic, aesthetic, national, etc.). Following the classical logic of "Game theory", speculative pedagogy is about learning how to calculate risks, under highly uncertain conditions. Trusting other players is a liability. Each player bets for him/herself, and expects everybody else to do the same. The basic idea being that one can only be a winner at the expense of others. Neo-liberal educational policies provide the necessary political and institutional environment where speculative pedagogies are enacted and can flourish. (Contains 74 footnotes.)

This paper exploits discontinuities and randomness in the college admissions in Sweden in 1982, to estimate the economic return to college in the 1990s. At the time, college admissions were highly selective and applicants were ranked with respect to their formal merits. Admissions were given to those ranked higher than some threshold value. At the margin, applicants were sometimes randomly assigned to college. Exploiting this Regression-Discontinuity design, individuals who were admitted in 1982 are estimated to have about 0.20 years longer college education in 1996. However, the earnings effects for applicants at the margin of admission are insignificant. Controlling for the college admission determinants, the OLS-estimates of the return to college is 1.4 percent in 1991-96. The IV-estimates are not significantly different from the OLS counterparts. (Contains 4 figures and 6 tables.)

While higher education is regarded a high priority for economic development in many countries, public budgets often fall short to support desired levels of expansion in higher education. This leads to cost-sharing: students and their families are required to contribute more to the costs of higher education. This paper explores worldwide trends to cope with this issue based on the following questions: Is it fair to ask for larger contributions from students? What are the global patterns and forms of higher private shares in the costs of higher education? And what is the impact of cost-sharing on higher education access and equity? (Contains 4 tables and 2 footnotes.)

I examine patterns of joblessness among immigrant men and women from 33 countries of origin now living in Britain, Germany and Sweden. Access to welfare, access to the labor market, job segregation and institutional support for women's employment define distinct policy configurations in these three destinations. Findings show that gaps in joblessness between immigrants and the native-born are larger in Sweden than in Britain and Germany, net of human capital, sociodemographic characteristics and sending country. However, long-settled immigrants have more similar outcomes across the three countries than recent newcomers. Also, immigrant women in Sweden work at higher absolute rates than immigrant women elsewhere. This suggests that gendered employment policies in destination countries are a crucial dimension of immigrant economic incorporation. Ultimately, such policies also shape the fiscal impact of immigration. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure, and 14 notes.)

Investigates the usefulness of the schooling coefficient, in equations developed by the human capital theorist Jacob Mincer, in estimating the internal rate of return to education in Sweden. Examines several assumptions underlying the coefficient, for example, that schooling precedes work. Finds that in some cases inference from the estimated schooling coefficient is misleading. (Contains 18 references.) (PKP)

Cross-sectional and panel estimations of Swedish data reveal that different types of career interruptions have different effects on wages, varying by gender. Therefore, human capital depreciation does not entirely account for the negative effect of career interruptions on subsequent wages. (SK)

Discusses recurrent education as an educational objective. Includes functions, models, policy dimensions, and policy dilemmas. Suggests that progress includes extension of conventional adult education programs to a wider clientele, expansion of upper secondary education, increased localization of programs, and an increase in policy relevance in reforming and planning future education. (DK)

Evidence from four Eastern and three Western European countries suggests that there has been some convergence in the application of manpower and social demand criteria to higher education planning. The theoretical case for and against manpower planning is discussed, and the approaches of specific countries are described. (Author/MLW)

Using Swedish administrative panel data, we document that workers facing higher left‐tail income risk when equity markets perform poorly have lower portfolio equity share. In line with theory, the relationship between cyclical skewness and stock holdings increases with the share of human capital in a worker's total wealth and vanishes as workers get closer to retirement. Cyclical skewness also predicts portfolio differences within pairs of identical twins. Our findings show that households hedge against correlated tail risks, an important mechanism in asset pricing and portfolio choice models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]