Study finds that grads from some universities fare significantly better in job market

A U of T Scarborough study finds that your alma mater matters when it comes to finding a job. It found that employers respond to job applicants from some universities more often than others — even if the candidates are equally qualified. Photo by Rattankun Thongbun

A new U of T Scarborough study finds that graduates from some Canadian universities fare significantly better in the job market compared to their equally accomplished peers.

The study, published in the Canadian Review of Sociology, involved creating fictitious job applicants with virtually identical resumes. The only difference was their university — either Waterloo, Queen’s or Brock.    

The researchers applied to 797 online job postings over a four-year period, and for each posting one candidate from Queen’s was paired with a candidate from either Brock or Waterloo. They found that employers responded to applicants from Waterloo 84 per cent more often than those from Brock.  

“This tells us that candidates from Brock will have to spend nine extra months to get the same number of employer responses to their job applications as those from Waterloo,” says Ann Mullen, an associate professor in the department of sociology and lead author of the study.

“These are sobering findings. As much as we like to think Canadian post-secondary education is non-hierarchical, there appears to be a significant advantage in going to one university over another.”

Each fictitious candidate was given a common name not associated with a racialized community, along with the same gender, field of study, academic achievement and work experience listed on their resume.

The researchers also found that employers slightly favoured candidates from Waterloo over Queen’s, but the response rates weren’t high enough to be considered statistically significant.

arbitrary decisions and assumptions

Mullen says it’s an open question why employers favour candidates from one university over another. Since employers need to manage a great deal of uncertainty in the hiring process, they might be using a university’s reputation or ranking to decide who to interview. If true, she says it’s an arbitrary decision because even if one university is ranked higher, it doesn’t mean all students at that institution are automatically better candidates.

Another possibility is that employers are making assumptions about a student’s background that goes beyond academics.

“They could be assuming that students who go to a certain university come from a more privileged background, so they might be more concerned with socio-economic status,” says Mullen, an expert on social inequality, gender and higher education.

Mullen says there’s also very little research looking at exactly how an education from one institution makes a difference in job performance, if a difference exists at all.

“Even if a particular university attracts students with higher grades out of high school, it doesn’t mean that university will necessarily produce ‘better’ workers, that is, someone more productive or efficient at their job,” she says.

“There appears to be a lot of irrationality behind the decision-making process by employers on who to interview.”    

Institutional affiliation seems to matter to employers

Mullen says the findings are important because they challenge the notion that the Canadian higher education system is non-hierarchical and that graduates enter the job market on equal footing. Even in relatively non-hierarchical systems such as Canada (Canadian post-secondary education is a lot less hierarchical than in the U.S., for example) status hierarchies have emerged that privilege some graduates over others based on where they attended university.  

She also points out that this research isn’t a value judgment on the quality of education or the quality of candidates from certain universities compared to others. Instead, it reveals that institutional affiliation seems to matter to employers. 

“There’s no evidence whatsoever in our findings that candidates from Waterloo are better prepared or will perform better in a job compared to those from Brock,” says Mullen.

“What we do find is that employers show more interest in candidates from some universities over others.” 

Originally published by U of T Scarborough