Few jobs for PhD graduates Do you believe that everyone who has completed a doctorate holds well-paid teaching jobs? Think again! According to a recent survey by MITACS, an organization dedicated to training innovators, only 20% of doctoral students land a university position after their studies. While most coveted a job as a professor, the number of university positions available each year in Canada is simply too low to accommodate them all. About 70% of new doctoral graduates find themselves in post-doctoral work, a paid internship within a research team. Initially, the post-doctorate had an educational and scientific purpose. It allowed them to perfect their skills as an independent researcher before accepting a position as a professor-researcher. Today, a large number of doctoral graduates find themselves confined to a series of successive post-docs and, with advancing age and increasing competition, see their hope of an academic career disappear.

Overqualification in Quebec and Canada These data, as well as the results of several other studies, tend to support the idea of a decline in the overall return on educational investment as the stock of education grows, as well as the thesis of the devaluation of diplomas: the multiplication of educational titles leads to a loss of relative value of these and the return on the number of years of study tends to fall. We observe that, like any good whose value was guaranteed by its rarity, diplomas tend to lose their real value and their distinctive value when their holders become more numerous. The new generations of young people entering working life find it increasingly difficult to find a job commensurate with their level of training and the knowledge they have acquired in the education process is not fully applied in their work. The proliferation of diplomas induces a shift in the correspondence between training and employment and generates the phenomenon of overqualification. Finally, companies have an important role in the genesis and management of overqualification. First, by the value they place on the diploma in all the criteria for recruiting the workforce, and then, by the use they make of the skills of young people on the job market. work. In this regard, we see that, for companies, [...] [the diploma is used] to identify the inherent capacities of an individual rather than for their capacity to actually reflect skills.

a) In the course, you have seen several theories emphasizing the importance of education (the level of studies or the diploma) in the decisions of individuals in the labor market, both in the employee and the employer. What theories can be associated with the Charrette and Vultur articles? Establish relationships between these theories and their texts.

b) What criticisms can we formulate with regard to the two theories in the face of the situation evoked in the two texts?