Does Higher Education Level the Playing Field? Socio-Economic Differences in Graduate Earnings

Abstract

Education-and in particular higher education-is often regarded as a route to social mobility. For this to be the case, however, the link between family background and adult outcomes must be broken (or at least reduced) once we take account of an individual's education history. This paper provides new evidence on differences in graduates' earnings by socioeconomic background, exploiting rich individual-level data to account for more of the ways in which graduates from different socioeconomic backgrounds differ from each other than has been possible in previous research on this topic. We continue to find significant differences between the earnings of graduates from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds, even after accounting for a rich array of characteristics, skills and experiences from before individuals went to university, as well as their labour market experiences subsequently. These results suggest that it is not enough simply to encourage more young people to go to university, or even to ensure that they graduate with "good" degrees; policymakers interested in increasing social mobility also need to focus on what happens to them once they leave university to ensure that higher education is truly able to "level the playing field" between those from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

A 10-year case study on the changing determinants of university student satisfaction in the UK

“…The model of universities as bastions of an elite liberal education is being replaced across the globe by one in which universities are seen as accessible providers of applicable and relevant knowledge [ 8 – 10 ]. This transition, however, has sometimes had undesirable and unexpected consequences and, with more and more money being spent on HE internationally, the debate has intensified over whether it is actually worth it or not, and more specifically whether it actually delivers social mobility [ 11 – 14 ]. There is evidence, for example, suggest that the growth of HE in China may have actually intensified social inequalities, at least in some circumstances [ 15 ].…”

Coming to College Hungry

“…The dummy variable adjustment method is a common method for dealing with missing data and is beneficial for retaining sample size (Allison, 2002(Allison, , 2010Puma et al, 2009). Furthermore, this technique can be widely found in published education and higher education-focused research (Adamecz-Völgyi et al, 2020;Crawford & Erve, 2015;Fitzpatrick, 2019;Marcenaro-Gutierrez et al, 2016;Whitaker et al, 2019).…”

Do private school girls marry rich?

“…Second, with school-type homogamy their husbands are more likely to be privately educated, and this yields an additional boost to their earnings. Studies variously reveal a large pay premium for private schooling in Britain, or a substantially greater chance of being in the top earnings decile, or of attending a high-status occupation, or of avoiding downward social mobility (Dolton & Vignoles, 2000;Naylor, Smith & McKnight, 2002;Dearden et al, 2002;Crawford & Vignoles, 2014;Macmillan, Tyler & Vignoles, 2015;Crawford & van der Erve, 2015;Green et al, 2012;Green et al, 2017a;Green et al, 2018). For women, much or all of this return is accounted for by their educational attainment, but for men there remains a direct pay premium, over and above that which can be explained by their educational credentials.…”