2.1 Enrollment Quota Policies and Graduate Wage Compression
The structural relationship between large-scale higher education quota expansion and graduate labor outcomes reflects a complex dynamic of credential devaluation and occupational friction. When university admissions expand rapidly without concurrent growth in high-technology and knowledge-intensive industries, the labor market encounters an oversupply of degree holders relative to available professional positions [1]. Under such conditions, human capital theory suggests that marginal returns to schooling decline, while signaling models explain how employers escalate entry-level educational requirements for previously non-graduate occupations. Furthermore, empirical assessments of institutional expansion policies indicate that the resulting labor market bottlenecks generate heterogeneous outcomes across demographic groups, with women and less advantaged cohorts experiencing slower absorption into stable career pathways and heightened risks of occupational downgrading [3]. Consequently, quota expansion transforms from a pure vehicle of upward social mobility into a catalyst for qualification displacement and prolonged entry-level unemployment transitions.