Degrees Without Guaranteed Prosperity? Tertiary Educational Attainment and the Uneven Conversion of Human Capital Into Local Welfare Across Indonesian Regencies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59890/ijaeam.v4i5.5Keywords:
Tertiary Education; Human Capital; Regional Welfare; Poverty; Education–Occupation Mismatch; Labour Market; Regional Inequality; Human Development; Indonesia; Local DevelopmentAbstract
Higher education is commonly expected to raise productivity, earnings, employability, and social mobility. Yet the spatial relationship between tertiary educational attainment and welfare is far from automatic. This qualitative literature review examines an unusual Indonesian pattern: fifteen regencies with relatively high proportions of residents aged 15 years and above whose highest completed education is D1–S3 display markedly different welfare outcomes. Combining recent peer-reviewed literature published mainly during 2020–2026 with contextual evidence from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), the article develops a human-capital-to-welfare conversion framework. The evidence indicates that tertiary educational attainment constitutes a valuable human-capital stock but does not independently guarantee low poverty or high multidimensional welfare. Among the fifteen selected regencies, 2024 poverty incidence ranged from approximately 2.23% in Badung to 29.18% in Maybrat, despite both appearing among districts with high tertiary-education shares. Similar contrasts are evident between Sleman and Nabire, and between Tana Tidung and Biak Numfor. The synthesis identifies six principal conversion mechanisms: labour-market absorption and education–occupation matching; sectoral economic structure; migration and demographic selectivity; spatial accessibility and infrastructure; complementary health, digital, and social services; and local fiscal-institutional capacity
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