Network, discipline and income : the social mobility of Ontario university graduates

This thesis examines the link between background factors to educational attainment, discipline choice, how first job was found and income at that first job. Findings are based on results of a panel study of Ontario high school students. Using human capital theory and comparing and contrasting it with the radical and credentialist arguments, I create a model to further specify the contributing factors to the already well established link between education and jobs. The results produced from the interactive causal model indicate that past research has neglected certain variables while confounding others. Specifically, while the findings are generally consistent with other empirical work, they suggest that (i) education should be treated as a more differentiated variable, (ii) the role of networks in job search behaviour should be included, (iii) gender differences should be considered and, (iv) that non additive models will often provide a better description of the data. Finally, it is also suggested that future work explore the possibility that the relationship between job search behaviour and discipline choice can best be described using a non-recursive causal model