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Using a unique data set from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), we estimate the gender starting-salary gap for college graduates from 2000 to 2010. Simulation techniques are used to estimate how the salary gap would change if women had selected the same majors or job types as men. We find that about 90% of the starting-salary gap is explainable by gender differences in majors and types of job offers – a higher percentage than found in most other studies. Duncan indexes of dissimilarity also indicate that the gender distributions of job offers by college major and type of first jobs have not become more similar over the past 10 years. Although differences in college major and types of first jobs explain most of the gender gap in starting salaries of college graduates, small but unexplained gender pay differences reveal themselves in the NACE statistics.

Learning gain – the attempt to measure the different ways in which students benefit from their learning experience – is now a core part of government plans for higher education across many countries. A focus on student outcomes is a key strand of enquiry for judging quality and assessing value for money. New approaches to quantifying learning gain and new metrics were developed through 13 pilot projects across England. Evaluation of the projects explored the theoretical underpinnings of the metrics including behavioural, cognitive and affective approaches, as well as progress and outcome measures, and identified challenges to measuring learning gain. In this chapter policy implications of the global accountability agenda are discussed, including the use of metrics to drive enhancement, rank excellence and ensure quality and standards.

This study aims to examine the effects of participating in physical activities on female college graduates' starting salaries. We used an instrumental variable (IV) approach to address the possible endogeneity problem. By using the Taiwan Higher Education Dataset, we discovered that participating in physical activities during college increased an individual's earnings by 3.06%. The significant positive effect of physical activity on salary demonstrated in this study is consistent with that in other relevant studies. This study also discovered that both the intensity and the persistence of participation in physical activities affected salary outcomes. Individuals earned 0.17%–2.41% more if they exercised for an additional hour per week, suggesting the importance of the intensity of participation in physical activities. In addition, persistent participation in physical activities was associated with a 3.08% higher salary.

This study takes the position that the vitality of academic libraries is grounded in the working experiences of its librarians. It suggests that a full understanding of problems facing contemporary information professionals in the post-industrial workplace requires an analysis of the labouring aspects as well as the professional nature of their work. The study of changes in the academic library work experience thus depicts the state of the library, and has implications for other intellectual workers in a social environment characterized by expanding information technologies, constricted economic resources, and the globalization of information production. Academic librarians have long recognized that their vocation lies not only in the classical role in information collection, organization, and dissemination, but also in collaboration with faculty in the teaching and research process, and in the contribution to university governance. They are becoming increasingly active in the protection of information access and assurance of information quality in view of information degradation on the Internet and various compromises necessitated by interaction with third party commercial information producers.

Over the last several decades, virtually all large U.S. law firms have adopted a human capital strategy that emphasizes academic performance and the prestige of the law school attended. Although this focus is rooted more in tradition than in hard empirical evidence that it produces a competitive advantage, the question has long been irrelevant for most law firms because of the perennial rise in profits. If the model is not broken, the adage runs, why fix it? Drawing upon extensive historical and contemporaneous evidence, this essay argues that the limitations of the traditional credentials-based model have been masked by a steady multidecade surge in the demand for corporate legal services. Further, various data and trendlines suggest that the growth in demand for corporate legal services is beginning to flatten out. In the coming years, many large corporate law firms will be in the unfamiliar position of competing over market share. Unlike the relative calm and prosperity of the prior era, their survival will likely depend upon a human capital strategy that asks and answers several basic empirical questions regarding the selection and development of lawyers.

There is growing interest in diversity in the environmental field. The issue has become more pertinent as country undergoes noticeable demographic changes. Researchers have been interested in diversity for sometime too. This chapter traces the evolution of research on diversity and the environment. It discusses the results of new studies examining students' attitudes toward their work in environmental organizations as well as their salary expectations. The chapter also analyzes the demographic characteristics of the leadership of environmental institutions as well as their hiring and recruiting practices.

Universities have a long history of training students to work in industry, and in recent years the number and percentage of students, especially those trained in science and engineering, who go to work in industry has grown. Today, three-eights of all PhDs with a degree in science and engineering (S&E) work in the private sector. These placements provide a major means for universities to participate in technology transfer. Students are not only up-to-date in terms of codified knowledge; they also possess tacit knowledge that can only be transferred by face-to-face interaction. They may also have participated as research assistants or as postdocs in the development of a technology that has been licensed by the firm where they are employed. Despite the important role that alumni play in technology transfer, universities rarely track the placements of graduate students in industry. Universities do not also systematically keep information on the contributions that alums make to innovations after graduating. Moreover, few programs socialize students to think of careers in the private sector as a top choice. Instead, many programs, especially in the biomedical sciences, socialize students to aspire to research careers in academe, with industry seen as a distinct second choice. Indeed, many PhDs only take jobs in industry after failing to find an academic position after serving as a postdoc for four or five years.

This paper examines recent placements of doctoral students in industry, using the verbatim records from the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) for 1997–2002. An advantage of this data is that we know the name of the firm (and the location of the firm) where the individual plans to work. This permits an exploration of several interesting dimensions regarding technology transfer not explored elsewhere, such as (1) sources (in terms of universities) educating students going to industry; (2) the R&D intensity of the firms where newly trained PhDs go to work and the industrial classification of the firms; (3) the role that proximity plays in facilitating these knowledge spillovers; and (4) the degree to which universities make placements with firms licensing their technologies.

The paper also examines the amount of information that universities provide regarding the placements of their PhDs. We find that although students are ready and willing to provide information regarding work plans after graduation, universities seldom provide information on placements. We conclude with a suggestion regarding the procedures universities could follow to create and make placement data available.