ABSTRACT
In recent decades, there has been a sharp rise in the proportion of graduates in the labour force, mainly in Western countries. Whereas there were 424,000 students in the Netherlands in 1990, by 2015 this had already risen to 664,000, an increase of 56%. Most OECD countries have seen similar increases. In view of this, it is striking that in the same period, the US slipped from first to thirteenth place in terms of the share of highly educated people in the population. 1 In other words, although the West has seen a significant rise in the proportion of graduates, the pattern differs sharply from country to country. Nevertheless, on paper, every government is following policies that are designed to encourage such an increase. This follows from the idea that a high-quality economy that is characterized by a high level of innovation is dependent upon having a highly educated workforce. In addition to governments encouraging rising participation in tertiary education, there is a second and extremely important reason for the growing influx of students: access to better paid segments of the job market is now largely determined by having a university degree.
