Laura Löwe

// DISSERTATION PROJECT

Social inequality in German higher education graduates’ labour market outcomes. An investigation in the course of educational expansion and heterogeneity processes in the graduate labour market.

The dissertation project examines how the association between social origin and occupational returns of German higher education graduates is affected by educational expansion. Regarding occupational returns in the course of educational expansion, it is presumed that higher education certificates become less informative and that occupational returns change as graduate jobs become more wide-ranging. It is going to be clarified how expansion processes in (higher) education affect the value of (different) higher education degrees with regard to the socioeconomic status and how social origin effects are reflected in the internal higher education stratification to conclude how the potentially changing value of different higher education tracks influences the association between social origin and labor market success. To comply with the potentially changing value of higher education degrees, the most central aspect of this dissertation is the treatment of education as a positional good which implies measuring educational degrees relative to other credentials. The application of education as a positional good with a special focus on higher education stratification will contribute to international research trends in social mobility research and opens up new insights regarding research on the German higher education system and its labor market outcomes. Moreover, revealing largely disregarded processes that potentially contribute to the formation and reproduction of social inequality in higher education is of central interest in terms of societal issues regarding equal opportunities and distributive justice. The analyses are based on the adult cohort (respondents born between 1944 and 1986) of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and the German micro censuses.

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// PUBLICATIONS

Löwe, L. (2023): Positional advantages of higher education degrees and occupational upgrading in West Germany, European Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2023.2237006.

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// CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
 

Lerch, N., & Löwe, L. (25th March 2021). Ungleichheiten beim Erwerb der Hochschulzugangsberechtigung: Eine Frage der Messung von Bildung? [Poster]. 7. Jahrestagung des Berliner Netzwerks für interdisziplinäre Bildungsforschung, Berlin, Deutschland (Online).

Löwe, L. (14th to 18th July 2020). Occupational positions and the exclusiveness of higher education degrees. [Presentation]. 4th International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology, Porto Alegre, Brazil (Online).

Löwe, L. (20th and 21st June 2019). Socially selective labour market outcomes of higher education graduates in the course of educational expansion. [Poster]. 3rd Joint Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, Barcelona, Spain.

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// ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

2014 - 2018
Master's degree (M.A.) in Sociology at the University of Kassel
Thesis: “Grade Inflation in German Higher Education. An empirical investigation in the causes of Grade Inflation.”

2011 - 2013
Bachelor's degree (B.A.) in Sociology and English Studies at the University of Kassel
Thesis in German: “Die zeitliche Entwicklung der sozialen und akademischen Integration Studierender deutscher Hochschulen. Eine empirische Analyse anhand der Daten des Konstanzer Studierendensurveys.“

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// EXPERIENCE

Working Experience

10/2022 - Today
Research Assistant, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories, Study administration and controlling

03/2020 - 09/2022
Research Assistant, Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories,  Arbeitseinheit Qualitätssicherung im Feld

Academic Experience

09/2013 - 02/2018
Student Assistant at the Chair for Methods of Empirical Social Science, University of Kassel

09/2017 - 12/2017
Student Assistant for the project "Competence orientated assessment of communicative skills of students (KomPrue)” at the International Centre for Higher Education Research Kassel (INCHER)

Teaching Experience

10/2012 – 03/2017
Tutor for Methods of Empirical Social Science l and ll at the University of Kassel

Voluntary Experience

05/2019 - 05/2020
Student representative in the BAGSS Executive Committee and member of the Doctoral Student Council

Image Credits: © Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences