CREDENTIALS AND CAPACITIES:

The "new structuralism" in stratification research has made important contributions to our understanding of job assignment by directing attention to the demand side of labor markets. This article builds on this work by conceptualizing job matching in terms of labor market transactions (hirings and promotions). Detailed quantitative and case study evidence is presented to ask how employers perceive the link between schooling and the acquisition of skills required for job performance. The results show that employers generally see a link between schooling and the acquisition of both general and specific skills, but rarely feel very strongly about this and are often willing to concede that skills might well have been acquired elsewhere. Managers hiring from the outside and managers assigning promotions differ in the information they glean from the educational credentials of job candidates. Little evidence is found that any one theory (human capital, screening, credentialism, or cultural capital) can account for the pattern of results.