Employer Learning and the Dynamics of Returns to Universities: Evidence from Chinese Elite Education during University Expansion

Abstract

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Measuring the provincial supply of higher education institutions in China

“…Nevertheless, the resulting regional differences in the quality of HEIs have created disparities in earnings, and thus, returns to higher education based on the quantity of education alone can be misleading (Jia & Li, 2021;Zhong, 2011). Démurger, Hanushek, and Zhang (2019) show that such wage premia become even more pronounced the higher the quality. They estimate the returns to elite university education and find a substantial premium at job entry for graduating from a world-class Chinese university, especially in coastal provinces and economically more developed regions.…”