Date of Award

1-1-2011

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Markus P. Schneider, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Yavuz Yasar

Third Advisor

Katherine Freeman

Fourth Advisor

Daniel McIntosh

Keywords

Business cycles, Higher education, Labor, Master's degree, Masters of Business Administration

Abstract

Since the 1970s, recessions have become more frequent and severe, causing major changes to the labor market and the importance of education. This study focuses on the problems for employees with master's degrees and MBAs, and asks three questions: 1) Do employees with graduate degrees have higher earnings than bachelor's degree recipients, 2) Do they experience greater job security as a result of their additional education, and 3) Is graduate school a way to avoid unemployment during a recession? Ordinal logistic regression analysis is conducted and finds that master's degrees and MBAs experience very different outcomes, with much higher returns for MBAs, although master's degrees do see higher earnings than bachelor's degrees. Job security is slightly higher for the graduate degrees relative to bachelor's degrees, which could account for the relatively higher earnings.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Claire Foley

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

84 p.

Discipline

Economics, Labor, Higher education

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