E-ISSN 2281- 4612 ISSN 2281-3993 Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Published by MCSER-CEMAS-Sapienza University of Rome Vol 1 No 2 November 2012 9 Psychosocial Variables and Overschooling at the Tertiary Education Level: Implications for Psycho-Academic Interventions Okoro, Christopher Cornelius PhD Udoh, Nsisong Anthony M.Ed. * Department of Educational Foundations, Guidance and Counselling, Faculty of Education, University of Uyo, P.M.B. 1017, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. *Corresponding author: nsisong99@yahoo.com Doi:10.5901/ajis/2012.v1n2p9 Abstract This study examined the individual and collective contributions of selected psychosocial variables to overschooling at the tertiary education level. This ex-post-facto research randomly selected 500 graduate students from the University of Uyo for the study. The Self-assessment Graduate Overschooling Questionnaire (S-GOQ) was used in obtaining data. Chi square statistics and regression analysis were used in testing the two hypotheses in the study. The results indicate that there is significant relationship between overschooling and each of the selected psychosocial variables while the variables returned a no significant collective effect on overschooling. The implication of these findings for psychoacademic intervention was drawn. Keywords: Overschooling; Labour Economics; Unemployment; Occupational Mobility; School counselling. 1. Introduction Overschooling, the situation whereby individuals operate occupationally below their level of acquired education or completed schooling with concomitant wage penalty is spawned by a handful of psychological, social, and economic variables. These variables, as exposed by scores of researches, include favourable expectations on the marginal economic returns to educational investments, favourable position in the person queue in the labour market, social mobility, occupational mobility (both v rtical and horizontal), personal idiosyncrasies, attitude towards education and certification, employability of graduates, and job-skills utilization concerns, inter alia. Contemporary concerns for overschooling at the tertiary education level are founded on the apparent lack of justification for the value of education as the machinery for productivity. Education is generally assumed to positively correlate with productivity. As Becker’s (1964) Human Capital Theory postulates, education