College Quality and the Wages of Young Men

Using the rich data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we show that several dimensions of college quality have substantial positive impacts on young men’s wages. This finding is robust to a wide array of alternative specifications. Controlling for ability reveals that sorting of more able persons into better colleges accounts for only a modest portion of the unconditional quality effect. We find that young black men reap larger gains to quality than do young white men. Our results also indicate that attending a college with a racially diverse student body increases the later earnings of both white and black men. JEL Codes: I2, J3.