Terje Næss

The future of the humanities has been the subject of debate in several countries where it is often stated that too many students are accepted into courses that offer relatively poor employment opportunities. In this article, we examine the development in mismatch among master’s graduates in Norway for the period 1995–2015, to see whether this situation is reflected here, and if it applies to all subfields of the humanities. Two types of market mismatch among new graduates are investigated: unemployment and over-education. The findings indicate that master’s graduates in the humanities are slightly more exposed to unemployment than other graduates and clearly more exposed to over-education. The proportion of over-educated graduates increased during the latter part of the 1990s but has been relatively stable since 2003. Graduates in language studies are less frequently mismatched, while graduates in literature, culture studies and philosophy face more challenges. Combined with the fact that labour market mismatch of graduates in the humanities in Norway is substantially lower than neighbouring countries, this suggests that transition from higher education to the labour market for graduates in the humanities should not be perceived as challenging per se, but depends on subfields and contextual factors.

The main purpose of this article is to analyse to what degree master’s degree education in Norway enhances employability through enhancing or signalling generic competence, or through enhancing specialised competence. Using multiple correspondence analysison the links between educational group, economic activity and sector, educational groups with strong links to certain economic activities were categorised as specialised education, otherwise generic. In the next step, we analyse how the distinction between specialised and generic education affects the transfer to employment. The main data source for the analysis is the NIFU Graduate Survey for the period 1995–2015, where data on graduate numbers as well as detailed information about graduate employment are collected. According to a narrow definition, business administration, information and computer technology, electronic, mechanical and machine subjects and teacher training and pedagogy were specialized education. Using a broad definition, this also includied languages, humanities and arts other, psychology, health, welfare and sport, law and political science. The analysis found that generic education graduates had a more difficult transfer to the labour market than specialised education graduates and that this cannot be explained by generic education being less selective than specialised education.

Denne artikkelen ser på i hvilken grad arbeidsmarkedet har klart å absorbere større kull av kandidater fra samfunnsvitenskapelige og humanistiske og estetiske fag i perioden 1995–2015. Datagrunnlaget er NIFUs kandidatundersøkelser. På tross av sterk vekst i kandidattall, har det ikke vært tilsvarende vekst i arbeidsledighet eller annen mistilpasning. Samtidig ser vi at særlig kandidater fra humanistiske og estetiske fag har høyere risiko for mistilpasning i arbeidsmarkedet enn andre grupper. Dette har sammenheng med at høye andeler er ufrivillig deltidsarbeidende. Situasjonen er ikke vesentlig forverret i den perioden som undersøkes, men en del nyutdannede samfunnsvitere og humanister opplever likevel et gap mellom forventninger og realiteter i arbeidsmarkedet.