How much does degree choice matter?

Jack Britton; Laura Van der Erve; Chris Belfield; Anna Vignoles; Matt Dickson; Yu Zhu; Ian Walker; Lorraine Dearden; Luke Sibieta; Franz Buscha

doi:10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102268

How much does degree choice matter?

Jack Britton, Laura Van der Erve, Chris Belfield, Anna Vignoles, Matt Dickson, Yu Zhu, Ian Walker, Lorraine Dearden, Luke Sibieta, Franz Buscha

Institute for Policy Research (IPR)

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

15 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

We use a large and novel administrative dataset to investigate returns to different university ‘degrees’ (subject-institution combinations) in the United Kingdom. Conditioning on a rich set of background characteristics, we find substantial variation in returns across degrees with similar selectivity levels, suggesting students’ degree choices matter a lot for later-life earnings. Returns increase with university selectivity much more at the top of the selectivity distribution than further down, and much more for some subjects than others. Returns are poorly correlated with observable degree characteristics other than selectivity, which could have important implications for student choices and the incentives of universities.

Original language	English
Article number	102268
Number of pages	22
Journal	Labour Economics
Volume	79
Early online date	1 Nov 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102268
Publication status	Published - 31 Dec 2022

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the Department for Education for data access and a huge amount of help and support in developing this paper. We thank Elaine Drayton and Ben Waltmann for research support and Richard Blundell, Pedro Carneiro, Damon Clark and Eric French for detailed comments, as well as seminar participants at the IZA Economics of Education Workshop, Royal Holloway, Institute of Education, UC Irvine and Lancaster University.

Funding

We also thank the Economic and Social Research Council for funding through grant ES/S010718/1 and the Centre for Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (RES-544-28-50001) and NORFACE for funding through grant HuCIAW 462-16-090. All errors are our own.

Keywords

Degree choice
Returns to education

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Access to Document

10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102268Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "How much does degree choice matter?",

abstract = "We use a large and novel administrative dataset to investigate returns to different university {\textquoteleft}degrees{\textquoteright} (subject-institution combinations) in the United Kingdom. Conditioning on a rich set of background characteristics, we find substantial variation in returns across degrees with similar selectivity levels, suggesting students{\textquoteright} degree choices matter a lot for later-life earnings. Returns increase with university selectivity much more at the top of the selectivity distribution than further down, and much more for some subjects than others. Returns are poorly correlated with observable degree characteristics other than selectivity, which could have important implications for student choices and the incentives of universities.",

keywords = "Degree choice, Returns to education",

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year = "2022",

month = dec,

day = "31",

doi = "10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102268",

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