Welcome to the Overeducation International (OI) website. The OI was registered as a non-profit organization in the state of Massachusetts (USA) in March 2014. I'm a faculty of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. I'm also affiliated with the department of economics in the same university. I'm an economist and specialize in economies of the Middle East. I developed an interest in the crisis of over-education in 2005 and initiated formal research project on emergence of this issue in the Middle Eastern Countries in 2013.
I believe that overeducation is a global crisis that has not received adequate attention. My hope is that this website will create interest and awareness about this issue among academic and non-academic individuals alike. In many countries students and their families are caught in an over-education trap. As college graduates who cannot find suitable jobs take away the low-skilled jobs that high school graduates used to do, families put more pressure on their children to go to college and this behavior makes the overeducation crisis even worse over time. They argue that one needs a college education to have at least a chance for getting a low-skill job. Without collective action there is no way that a modern society can pull itself out of this trap. It is only through coordinated political and regulatory action to restrict the supply of college graduates that this problem can be addressed.
Publications on Overeducation:
Focus on college affordability obscures real problem: we’re overeducated. (December 2015)
Is Saudi Arabia training too many university graduates? (July 2015)
Turkey: Jobs market faces a tsunami of university graduates (May 2015)
Iran's Overeducation Crisis (January 2015)
Publications (Fiction):
Three Stories One Middle East (2014)Atul's Quest (2003)