Does It Pay to Attend an Elite Private College ? Cross-Cohort Evidence on the Effects of College Type on Earnings

Although a substantial and rising labor market premium is associated with college attendance in general, little is known about how this premium varies across institutions of different types and across time. In this paper we explicitly model high school students' choice of college type (characterized by selectivity and control) based on individual and family characteristics (including ability and parental economic status) and an estimate of the net costs of attendance. We estimate selectivity-corrected outcome equations using data from both the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 and High School and Beyond, which permit us to determine the effects of college quality on wages and earnings and how this effect varies across time. Even after controlling for selection effects, strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution, and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time. Dominic Brewer is an Economist and Research Director, RAND Education. Eric Eide is an assistant professor of Economics at Brigham Young University. Ronald Ehrenberg is Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Coeditor of the Journal of Human Resources. The authors thank Randy Hill and Matt Sanders for research assistance. They are grateful to Kathyrn lerulli, seminar participants at Brigham Young University and Vassar College, and at the Society of Labor Economists Conference, Chicago, IL, May 3-4, 1996, for helpful comments on an earlier version. Brewer was supported by RAND's Institute on Education and Training with funding provided by grants from the Lilly Endowment and the Sloan Foundation. Eide was supported by a grant from the College of Family, Home, and Social Science at BYU. The date used in this article are restricted; they may be obtained from the National Center for Education Statistics under license. [Submitted September 1996; accepted February 1998] THE JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCES * XXXIV * 1 Brewer, Eide, and Ehrenberg 105