The earnings payoff from attending a selective college

Dirk Witteveen; Paul Attewell

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.01.005

The earnings payoff from attending a selective college

Soc Sci Res. 2017 Aug:66:154-169. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.01.005. Epub 2017 Jan 30.

Authors

Dirk Witteveen¹, Paul Attewell²

Affiliations

¹ The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Sociology Department, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 6112.04, New York, NY 10016, United States. Electronic address: dwitteveen@gradcenter.cuny.edu.
² The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Sociology Department, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 6112.04, New York, NY 10016, United States. Electronic address: pattewell@gc.cuny.edu.

PMID: 28705353
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.01.005

Abstract

Studies relating the selectivity of colleges to the earnings of their graduates report inconsistent findings. Some find no effects; most report statistically significant but quite small earnings benefits from attending a more selective college; and a few studies report large effects. Analyzing two recent national longitudinal studies of college graduates, with models sensitive to selection bias, we find large earnings payoffs from attending a highly selective college both four and ten years after graduation. However, those returns are uneven: full-time working women graduates earn a lot less than their male counterparts from equivalent colleges, college majors pay differently, and family background also affects earnings over and above one's college's selectivity. Nevertheless, earnings differences attributable to college selectivity are striking.