The consequences of the dualization of the French higher education system for graduates’ vertical mismatch in the labour market

This chapter examines higher education graduates’ vertical educational mismatch five years after labour market entry in the context of the dualization of French higher education between the grandes écoles and universities. Comparing both ‘normative’ and ‘subjective’ measures of overeducation, we examine rates in France across the two-tiered structure of the higher education system. The authors analyse data from four surveys following successive representative cohorts of young people and examine how probabilities of reporting being overeducated changed from the early 1990s to 2015. The results suggest that while graduates of the grandes écoles are less likely to report being overeducated than other graduates as defined by a normative measure, this is not the case when a subjective measure is used. This leads the authors to be cautious about the consequences of the rise in the level of university degrees and to argue that it cannot be considered as degree inflation stricto sensu.