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This study looks at the effects of education level on job performance in 2 ways. First, it provides a meta-analysis on the relationships between education level and 9 dimensions of job behaviors representing task, citizenship, and counterproductive performance. Results here show that, in addition to positively influencing core task performance, education level is also positively related to creativity and citizenship behaviors and negatively related to on-the-job substance use and absenteeism. Second, we investigate the moderating effects of sample and research design characteristics on the relationships between education and job performance. Significant results were found for gender, race, job level, and job complexity. The article concludes with implications for future research and the management of an increasingly educated workforce.
According to U. S. National Center for Education Statistics, the proportion of Americans attaining more education continues to increase. For example, the percentage of individuals completing high school increased from 69% in 1980 to 86% in 2006; the percentage of individuals (aged 25 and older) who have completed college increased from 17% in 1980 to 28% in 2006. In both the labor economics and organizational sciences literatures, there is substantial evidence that individuals' educational attainments are associated with positive career outcomes, including salary level, number of promotions, development opportunities, and job mobility (Cappelli, 2000; Howard, 1986; Lazear, 1981; Ng, Eby, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2005).
Because most organizations use education as an indicator of a person's skill levels or productivity (Benson, Finegold, & Mohrman, 2004), they frequently employ it as a prerequisite in hiring decisions. However, over the past 2 decades, there has been very little research directly examining the relationship between educational level and job performance. This is particularly surprising given that it was during this time period when educational opportunities increased substantially (Trusty & Niles, 2004), when many organizations raised their educational qualifications for jobs (Kroch & Sjoblom, 1994), and when the conceptualization of job performance expanded considerably to include more extrarole behaviors (Welbourne, Johnson, & Erez, 1998). In this study, we provide a quantitative analysis of the relationship between education level and a wide range of inrole and extrarole performance dimensions.
For organizations, this study has relevance for at least three reasons. First, if highly educated workers contribute only marginally more to organizational effectiveness...