An analysis of the dynamics of higher education’s influence on the level of wages

The paper focuses on an assessment of the changes over time in tertiary education’s influence on the level of wages with the application of the Mincerian earnings function method. The conducted empirical research allowed for the identification of growth patterns in the so called pseudo rate of return to higher education in Poland and Germany in the last decade (using data from the Polish Social Diagnosis and German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP)). In addition, an analysis of dynamics of influence of auxiliary factors on earnings (such as gender, geographical location, character of work etc.) is given. Since 1998, when the Sorbonne Declaration was signed, the development and modernization of higher education have been the priorities of the European Union policies. A significant part of the postulated reforms require changes in the area of funding of universities, in particular encouraging a shift from centralized input oriented funding mechanisms towards decentralized outcome oriented financing. In that context one of the key problems is the measurement of the efficiency and effectiveness of various aspects of higher universities activities, including the education area.