Sheer Class? Returns to educational performance: evidence from UK graduates’ first destination labour market outcomes

We exploit individual-level administrative data for whole populations of UK university students for the leaving cohorts of 1985-1993 (together with that of 1998) to investigate the in‡uence of degree performance on graduate occupational earnings. We …nd that there is a signi…cant premium associated with a good performance at university. We also …nd that this premium increased between 1985/6 and 1993/4, a period of substantial expansion in the graduate population. Among other results, we …nd that there are signi…cant di¤erences in the occupational earnings of leavers according to university attended, subject studied, and pre-university educational and social background, ceteris paribus. Keywords: Graduate earnings, degree class, educational performance. JEL Classi…cation numbers: J3, J4, I2 We are grateful to Massimiliano Bratti for excellent research assistance and to Wiji Arulampalam, Andrew Oswald, Barry Reilly, Mark Stewart and Ian Walker for helpful comments. We acknowledge both the USR, as the original depositors, and the UK Data Archive for the use of the data-set SN:3456 Universities’Statistical Record. We also thank HESA for the release of data. None of these individuals or organisations bears any responsibility for any of the analysis or interpretation presented in this paper. Email: [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected], tel.: 024 76523055, FAX: 024 76523032.