Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/173940 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IFS Working Papers No. W16/06
Publisher: 
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), London
Abstract: 
This paper uses tax and student loan administrative data to measure how the earnings of English graduates around 10 years into the labour market vary with gender, institution attended subject and socioeconomic background. The English system is competitive to enter, with some universities demanding very high entrance grades. Students specialise early, nominating their subject before they enter higher education (HE). We find subjects like Medicine, Economics, Law, Maths and Business deliver substantial premiums over typical graduates, while disappointingly, Creative Arts delivers earnings which are roughly typical of non-graduates. Considerable variation in earnings is observed across diff erent institutions. Much of this is explained by student background and subject mix. Based on a simple measure of parental income, we see that students from higher income families have median earnings which are around 25% more than those from lower income families. Once we control for institution attended and subject chosen this premium falls to around 10%.
Subjects: 
Administrative data
Graduate earnings
Human capital
Labour earnings
Degree subject
Student loans
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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