Higher Education Expansion and Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Vietnam

This study investigates how dramatic increase of university and college graduates affects labor market outcomes. Using a series of seven repeated cross sections of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys, this paper analyzed the changes in the rate of returns to higher education attainment along with the increased supply of university and college graduates due to the higher education expansion throughout the 2002-2014 period. The study utilized a ratio of number of university and college students to the number of upper-secondary pupils within each province as an instrumental variable to calculate the effects of higher education expansion on the labor wage. The study found that, with the basic equations, the coefficients for higher education attainment are statistically significant and have positive values for the whole period. Our instrumental variables were found to be valid. For instrumental variable estimation, the return to higher education in IV earning equations was quite high. The findings of this study suggested that the expansion of the higher education system in Vietnam during 2002-2014 had positive effects on wages for those who increased their education attainment due to the reforms and there was a declining trend of the returns to higher education toward the end of the period.