That’s pretty much a question of culture and the field.
In Germany, it’s pretty much impossible to get into some jobs without a degree. In others, you get a higher salary for having a degree, to the point where some companies will not take you for a position because your degree makes you too expensive. In the public sector, your highest degree determines your salary scale (and most importantly where it caps out).
Not saying the system is good like that, but it is currently that way, so at the very least here, degree often corresponds to higher salary.
Interesting, I did not know that Germany was so structured in terms of pay for public servants.
Does that create a bias for people who are from higher socioeconomic backgrounds? I.e. lower socioeconomic people don’t generally join the public service?
A public service with senior staff made up of only uni grads wouldn’t reflect the community as a whole I assume.
Yeah, not the entire pay structure is that way, but there are several payment catecories where your “top” salary is determined exclusively by degree.
But here’s the weird part: most highly (academically) educated people stay out of public service jobs, either because of the bureaucracy clusterfuck or because they can make a lot more money in the private sector (because public service is very underfunded). That’s not to say that there aren’t any people with degrees in those jobs, but from what I’ve seen they’re the minority.
Idk about the bias part. Definitely possible, but I haven’t looked into it, so I can’t definitively say. I will say that German society as a whole tends to value education and a degree fairly highly (likely a remnant of the last few centuries of German culture where those factored into your societal standing even stronger). That has already created an issue where people who aren’t well suited to academia try to go to higher education rather than training in a craft, which has caused a shortage of specialized tradespeople.
In Finland when public sector is doing a competitive procurement from the private sector, e.g. an IT project, by law they have to prefer the company with higher educated employees. A lot of talented people in IT don’t have degrees, so those people don’t get hired to public sector jobs or even to private sector that has public sector as a client.
All public sector IT projects here have been gigantic, expensive shit shows.
That’s pretty much a question of culture and the field.
In Germany, it’s pretty much impossible to get into some jobs without a degree. In others, you get a higher salary for having a degree, to the point where some companies will not take you for a position because your degree makes you too expensive. In the public sector, your highest degree determines your salary scale (and most importantly where it caps out).
Not saying the system is good like that, but it is currently that way, so at the very least here, degree often corresponds to higher salary.
Interesting, I did not know that Germany was so structured in terms of pay for public servants.
Does that create a bias for people who are from higher socioeconomic backgrounds? I.e. lower socioeconomic people don’t generally join the public service?
A public service with senior staff made up of only uni grads wouldn’t reflect the community as a whole I assume.
Yeah, not the entire pay structure is that way, but there are several payment catecories where your “top” salary is determined exclusively by degree.
But here’s the weird part: most highly (academically) educated people stay out of public service jobs, either because of the bureaucracy clusterfuck or because they can make a lot more money in the private sector (because public service is very underfunded). That’s not to say that there aren’t any people with degrees in those jobs, but from what I’ve seen they’re the minority.
Idk about the bias part. Definitely possible, but I haven’t looked into it, so I can’t definitively say. I will say that German society as a whole tends to value education and a degree fairly highly (likely a remnant of the last few centuries of German culture where those factored into your societal standing even stronger). That has already created an issue where people who aren’t well suited to academia try to go to higher education rather than training in a craft, which has caused a shortage of specialized tradespeople.
In Finland when public sector is doing a competitive procurement from the private sector, e.g. an IT project, by law they have to prefer the company with higher educated employees. A lot of talented people in IT don’t have degrees, so those people don’t get hired to public sector jobs or even to private sector that has public sector as a client.
All public sector IT projects here have been gigantic, expensive shit shows.