How educated you are effects how long you work for

Educational inequality plays key role in how long you work for, according to new research by the University of Cologne.

The study, conducted by Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology researchers Jana Mäcken and Lea Ellwardt, analysed the differences in voluntary and involuntary labour market exit between lower and higher educated workers in 15 European countries.

They found that in 13 of the 15 countries, people with less educational qualifications were more likely to leave the labour market by being let go, or made redundant, than higher educated people.

This is because increased education provides individuals with opportunities to exit the labour market voluntarily as it is typically associated with more attractive, stable, high-income, and healthier working conditions.

“The demographic change represents one of the greatest financial challenges for European pension systems and, to counteract this, political measures – such as raising statutory age, or cutting early retirement options - have been adopted in almost all European countries.

“However, these measures affect older workers differently based on their level of education and runs the risk of exacerbating social inequalities. As lower income workers are more likely to leave the labour market involuntarily, this could widen the pension gaps after the end of working lives, this is known as the social gradient,” says Dr. Jana Mäcken.

This social gradient was largest in Czech Republic, Germany and Portugal, and was the smallest in the Netherlands and Denmark.

The research reveals that for lower educated workers, it is more difficult to reach the new political goal of extending workers lives.

For this reason, the researchers suggest policies that provide training opportunities specifically for low-educated workers to help reduce educational inequalities in labour market.

Furthermore, stricter employment protection legislation would lead to a smaller social gradient in involuntary labour market exit.

The study was published in the Journal of Social Policy.

https://portal.uni-koeln.de/en/sub/uoc-home.

Students recall online course content better when taking notes as a team, research finds

Students who collaborate together on note-taking activities perform better than individual note-takers when recalling course content from online lectures, while individual note-takers perform better on tasks focused on academic writing, finds new research from Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education.

Matthew Courtney, Assistant Professor at NU GSE, and colleagues compared individual and collaborative note-taking and how the completeness of students’ notes is associated with performance on quizzes and academic writing tasks. 

They focused on 186 students on a course dedicated to learning how to compose a manuscript for an academic journal. Video lectures for the 10-week course were uploaded online.

Students were separated into two conditions, individual note-taking or collaborative note-taking, and used Google Docs to make notes on video content. Those in the collaborative group were asked to do so in small groups of three to five.

Towards the end of each week, students took an online quiz testing their knowledge of the video content. Students enrolled in the scientific writing course also submitted five individual writing assignments.

The researchers found that collaborative note-takers performed better in the weekly quizzes, indicating better recall of content, whereas individual note-takers performed better on the writing assignments, indicating better skill application.

The findings also show that note completeness, the extent to which notes accurately reflect meaningful information from the videos, has no effect on collaborative note-takers’ recall of course content and a negative impact on their skill application. However, note completeness has a positive impact for individual note-takers on both recall and skill application.

Prof Courtney said "Prior research has noted that students are often very poor note-takers. Findings from our study suggests that collaborative note-taking provides an antidote, as students working together create higher quality notes to improve recall. 

"However, despite benefits to recall, collaborative note-taking may not be the most effective way to learn to apply knowledge as a skill as applying knowledge to a real-world problem requires more than just recall.”

These findings were first published in the journal The Internet and Higher Education.

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