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Elite universities, fields of study and top salaries: Which degree will make you rich?
Author(s) -
Sullivan Alice,
Parsons Samantha,
Green Francis,
Wiggins Richard D.,
Ploubidis George
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1002/berj.3453
Subject(s) - salary , elite , prestige , demographic economics , cohort , psychology , degree (music) , higher education , sociology , political science , economics , economic growth , medicine , law , philosophy , linguistics , physics , politics , acoustics
This article assesses the chances of entering the top 5% of earners for a British cohort currently in their 40s. We assess the difference made by a university degree from an elite (Russell Group) or non‐elite university, and from different undergraduate fields of study. Our study uses rich longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study ( BCS 70). This allows us to control for an unusually large range of potential confounding factors, including childhood socio‐economic circumstances, cognitive scores, secondary schooling and prior qualifications. We find that large raw differences in the chances of achieving a top salary are strongly attenuated by our controls, but substantial differences between degree subject areas remain. The large gap between men and women in the chance of gaining a top salary is not explained by the type of degree achieved, and we found no evidence of gender differences in the gains from institutional prestige or particular fields of study.