Sunday, March 22, 2009

University Quality and Graduate Wages in the UK

In a new IZA working paper, Iftikhar Hussain, Sandra McNally and Shqiponja Telhaj examine the links between various measures of university quality and graduate earnings in the United Kingdom. They explore the implications of using different measures of quality and combining them into an aggregate measure. Their findings suggest a positive return to university quality with an average earnings differential of about 6 percent for a one standard deviation rise in university quality. However, the relationship between university quality and wages is highly non-linear, with a much higher return at the top of the distribution. There is some indication that returns may be increasing over time.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp4043.pdf

4 comments:

Kevin Denny said...

Interesting:there are probably too few universities here to replicate this study.

Anonymous said...

And some of them are starting to get closer to each other...

Anonymous said...

There's a worthwhile discussion on the paper here:
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2009/03/returns-to-good-universities.html

"The paper is, however, silent on the question of whether good universities raise graduate earnings by giving them more skills, or merely by signalling their higher quality."

Anonymous said...

/stumbling_and_mumbling/2009/03/returns-to-good-universities.html