The education premium of the Portuguese higher education graduate

Abstract

The study of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) impacts, until 1990s, only focused on the short term impacts, i.e. the economic approach. In recent years, there has been a more significant advance about the long term impacts of higher education, especially concerning the human capital. The human capital analysis, developed by Schultz (1961) and Becker (1993), estimates the increase in productivity and incomes for the individuals due to the acquired knowledge and skills for attending an HEI. Following these authors, Bluestone (1993) suggested that the creation of human capital for higher education graduates can be estimated assuming that the wage is correlated only with the number of official school years. In this paper, the human capital of the Portuguese higher education graduate is determined, considering that the education premium (the increased wage when compared with secondary education graduates) is due only to the number of years in higher education.