Werken op niveau. Over scholing en onderbenutting van kennis en vaardigheden

Samenvatting

Working at one's own level. Overeducation and underutilisation of skills. Summary: Overeducation is usually defined in terms of a mismatch between required education and acquired education. Utilisation refers to actual use of skills in a job. The question is raised to what extent overeducation is related to underutilisation of skills. In this article several operationalisations of overeducation and underutilisation are compared and the relation between overeducation and underutilisation is examined. The authors show that the operationalisations give diverse outcomes. Besides, analyses show that overeducation has a significant negative effect on utilisation. However, the two concepts are not closely related. More research is needed to determine the validity of the measures. Besides, longitudinal case studies are suggested to get more insight into the relation between overeducation and actual skill use and the effects of overeducation and underutilisation on the careers of employees.