The role of employers’ beliefs in the evaluation of educational output

The purpose of this paper is to advance an alternative view of the educational output and the question of how to evaluate it. In contrast to the dominant tradition in the economics of education, we take the view that that output is what agents evaluate as such. We focus more specifically on an analysis of employers’ beliefs and representations. Several tens of recruiters were interviewed. Analysis of these interviews shows that employers regard the qualities required at work as either ‘learnable’ or innate. These beliefs as to the origin of workers’ qualities will shape employers’ evaluations of employees’ education, influence firms’ organization as well as how labour markets operate.