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Title: Is it what you know or who you know?

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2018

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Abstract: Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Simon Feeny, Massimiliano Tani and the seminar participants at RMIT University as well as the anonymous referee for their helpful comments and suggestions. We are indebted to Laura Moate for her research assistance on this paper. Abstract Several previous studies focus on whether graduates from higher quality universities command higher wages. These papers typically proxy for quality through students' entrance exam scores, smaller classes, university-level rejection rates, and faculty wages. The common view is that these are mechanisms in which human capital is typically transferred from the university to the student. Our hypothesis is that in addition to typical human capital factors, the accumulation of social capital is also a strong driver for short-term labor market success. This study decomposes university characteristics into human and social capital proxies to test their effect on the median wages of over 300,000 recent graduates from 940 tertiary institutions in the United States. Our findings confirm previous findings that suggest that both entrance exam and choice of degree are strong predictors of graduate wages. Yet our results also suggest that students graduating from both party schools and Catholic 2 institutions are commanding a small wage premium, indicating that the social engagement offered at these universities persist into the work force. JEL: I21; I28

Url: http://www.tmkollmann.com/Papers/University characteristics and wages.pdf

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Authors: Kollmann, Trevor; Posso, Alberto

Publisher: School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education

Countries: United States