Browsing by Author "Van Broekhuizen, Hendrik"

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    Graduate unemployment, higher education access and success, and teacher production in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Van Broekhuizen, Hendrik; Van der Berg, Servaas; Burger, Rulof; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In the context of South Africa’s socio-economic challenges, Higher Education (HE) has a key role to play, not just in terms of producing su cient numbers of graduates and the scarce skills that are required for economic development and growth, but also in terms of providing opportunities for social mobility and restitution. This dissertation examines the extent to which the public HE system ful ls these roles by investigating three topics within the nexus between the secondary schooling system, HE, and the labour market in South Africa. Chapter 2 of the dissertation investigates graduate unemployment by focussing on the associations between HE institutions and the expected employment and unemployment outcomes for graduates from di erent race groups. Using a probabilistic approach to link labour force and HE data, the chapter estimates the associations between the probability of having graduated from a particular type of HE institution and the likelihood of being unemployed or employed. The results indicate that graduate unemployment in South Africa is neither high, nor rising rapidly over time and that much of the observed inter-racial variation in graduate unemployment rates may be explained by di erences in the types of HE institutions that di erent race groups have historically been likely to attend. Chapter 3 investigates HE access and success in the Western Cape, with speci c emphasis on the roles that demographics, academic performance, and school-level factors play in explaining the extent of, and the differentials in, HE participation and throughput among matric learners in the province. By explicitly linking learner records from matric examination data with student records from HE data, the chapter estimates the marginal contributions and relative importance of various pre-entry correlates and HE-level factors for observed HE outcomes among learners in the Western Cape and illustrates the respective roles that HE access rate and HE throughput rate di erentials play in explaining observed racial di erentials in HE graduations. The ndings reveal that HE access, throughput, and dropout rates are strongly correlated with matric performance and that much of the observed racial di erentials in HE access and dropout in theWestern Cape can be explained by di erences in matric performance levels between race groups. It is argued that the persistent HE completion rate premiums for White students may partly be driven by di erential conditional selection into HE. Lastly, Chapter 4 focusses on the production of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) graduates by the public HE system between 2004 and 2013 and its implications for teacher supply in South Africa. Using aggregate Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS) data, the chapter provides a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the trends and underlying correlates of rst-time enrolments and graduations in ITE programmes. Despite the fact that enrolments and graduations in ITE programmes have risen signi cantly since 2004, the ndings suggest that South Africa is currently not producing su cient numbers of teacher graduates. Projections indicate that the system could begin to produce su cient numbers of graduates to satisfy projected teacher demand within the next decade, conditional on current enrolment growth and programme throughput rates. The chapter concludes that, in order to address South Africa’s teacher supply shortfall, greater emphasis is needed on ensuring that ITE students complete their programmes, specialise in high-demand subject areas and phases, and transition into the teaching profession with minimal delay.
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    Labour market returns to educational attainment, school quality, and numeracy in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011-12) Van Broekhuizen, Hendrik; Van der Berg, Servaas; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Economics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates the extent to which educational attainment, school quality and numeric competency influence individuals’ employment and earnings prospects in the South African labour market using data from the 2008 National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS). While NIDS is one of the first datasets to contain concurrent information on individual labour market outcomes, educational attainment levels, numeric proficiency and the quality of schooling received in South Africa, it is also characterised by limited and selective response patterns on its school quality and numeracy measures. To account for any estimation biases that arise from the selective observation of these variables or from endogenous selection into labour force participation and employment, the labour market returns to human capital are estimated using the Heckman Maximum Likelihood (ML) approach. The Heckman ML estimates are then compared to Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates obtained using various sub-samples and model specifications in order to distinguish between the effects that model specification, estimation sample, and estimation procedure have on estimates of the labour market returns to human capital in South Africa. The findings from the multivariate analysis suggest that labour market returns to educational attainment in South Africa are largely negligible prior to tertiary levels of attainment and that racial differentials in school quality may explain a significant component of the observed racial differentials in South African labour market earnings. Neither numeracy nor school quality appears to influence labour market outcomes or the convex structure of the labour market returns to educational attainment in South Africa significantly once sociodemographic factors and other human capital endowment differentials have been taken into account. Though the regression results vary substantially across model specifications and estimation samples, they are largely unaffected by attempts to correct for instances of endogenous selection using the Heckman ML procedure. These findings suggest that the scope for overcoming data deficiencies by using standard parametric estimation techniques may be limited when the extent of those deficiencies are severe and that some form of sensitivity analysis is warranted whenever data imperfections threaten to undermine the robustness of one’s results.