Bildungsexpansion und Arbeitsmarkt in Japan

Abstract This paper deals with changes in the relation of education and employment due to educational expansion. It shows that the expansion occured in Japan - a country in which this process has already gone much further than in the Federal Republic of Germany - without causing considerable frictions in the labour market. Upper secondary school graduates and university graduates lose some of their privileges, but the probability did not decrease for them to obtain positions according to their educational rank. The development of educational and labour policy shows that educational expansion neither completely meets the qualification requirements of the employment system nor runs explicity counter to them; it indicates a growing accomodation to the expansion. It is argued that the relationship of education to employment has to be characterized in terms of educational meritocracy. In the process of the development of mass higher education the social selection function of education and the necessity to legitimize social inequality by means of emphasis on achievement are becoming the dominant factors in educational policy. Finally, it is argued that a similar development is likely to take place in the Federal Republic of Germany.