How Much Are Elite Universities Really Worth? The Real Relationship Between University Rankings and Career Development

This article is for you if you are choosing an undergraduate institution, preparing for postgraduate studies (whether through recommendation or entrance exam), planning to study abroad, or comparing postgraduate programs at home and abroad. For parents weighing family budgets against their children’s career paths, the question is equally direct: is an elite university truly worth paying more for and taking on more risk?

First, let’s look at some figures. A study using data from Chinese fresh graduates in 2010 found that the unadjusted wage premium for graduates from elite universities was approximately 26.4%; after controlling for factors such as Gaokao scores, major, and family background, this premium decreased to about 10.7% [1]. While these figures are older and may not reflect today’s salary levels, they clearly illustrate that the “average graduate difference” is not the same as the “benefits directly attributable to the university itself.”

This disparity reveals the core message of the entire article:

Elite university graduates generally earn more, but the average salary gap does not equal the full value created by the university.

A university’s background can indeed leave a better initial impression on employers and may lead to a broader network and more opportunities. However, an individual’s academic performance, family resources, region, major choice, and career goals also influence which university they ultimately attend and what job they later pursue. Therefore, the real question isn’t whether “elite universities are useful,” but rather: under specific country, educational stage, major, and family conditions, what opportunities can a university truly add? Can students actually seize these opportunities? And are these opportunities worth the additional cost for families?

This article uses “elite university” as a general term. Universities with higher admission thresholds (often referred to as “highly selective universities” in research), elite universities, and Australia’s Group of Eight (Go8) are not entirely identical concepts. The cross-national income evidence below primarily comes from undergraduate education and cannot be directly used to price a specific master’s, doctoral program, or study abroad option. For postgraduate and study abroad sections, a judgment method is provided, but it still needs to be applied to specific majors, programs, supervisors, and local policies.

I. Cross-National Evidence: Elite University Graduates Have an Income Advantage, But It’s Not Solely Created by the University #

To understand these studies, it’s crucial to distinguish between two types of figures:

• Apparent average income gap: Answers “how much more do elite university graduates earn on average,” which mixes pre-existing student differences and university influence.
• Benefit estimates after attempting to exclude background differences: Tries to answer “how much difference would the university itself make if students with similar backgrounds entered different universities.” Researchers typically use matching, instrumental variables, or quasi-experimental designs around admission cutoffs to minimize pre-existing student differences, and conclusions are more dependent on specific samples.

The two cannot be conflated. Academic performance, family resources, regional opportunities, access to admission information, and room for trial and error all influence who is more likely to enter universities with higher admission thresholds. For students with limited family resources, they often need to achieve academic or comprehensive performance far above average to bridge the initial gap.

To assess the benefits of an elite university, three questions must first be answered: Who is more likely to get in? What does the university truly provide after admission? How much do employers value the university’s background? In research, these are typically called selection effect, platform effect, and market effect. Therefore, an elite university is more like a ticket to an environment rich in resources and opportunities, rather than a guaranteed pass for a salary increase.

A Brief Overview of Cross-National Research Findings #

The period of data used in the research is indicated in parentheses, not the publication year of the paper.

• China (2010 fresh graduates; also 2010–2015 data): The unadjusted wage premium for elite university graduates was approximately 26.4%, decreasing to about 10.7% after controlling for background. Research on students near the admission cutoff still found that attending an elite university contributes to higher starting salaries for their first job [1,2].
• United States (students admitted in 1976, income tracked until 1995): For most students, attending a more selective university did not necessarily lead to a significant average income advantage; students from low-income families may benefit more [3].
• United Kingdom (students who took GCSEs in 2002, income tracked until fiscal year 2016/17; also included 2003/04–2013/14 graduates): Both university and major are important, and any discussion focusing solely on one is incomplete [4,5].
• France (left education in 1998, surveyed in 2001): Differences among ordinary universities were limited, with educational qualification, major, and student composition often being more important [6].
• Italy (applicants from 1995–2000, income data from 2005): A quasi-experimental study targeting an elite business university estimated that, after excluding pre-existing student differences, the income return from admission was approximately 52%; this applies to a specific university with highly concentrated resources and cannot be universally applied to all universities [7].
• Canada (multi-year tracking data from 1998–2009, observed 4–6 years post-graduation): Universities with higher admission thresholds still yielded some early career benefits, but the differences between universities were relatively small [8].
• Australia (graduate survey from 2013–2015; also multi-year tracking data from 2001–2012): Go8 graduates had an unadjusted starting salary premium of approximately 4.3%–5.5%, part of which could be explained by pre-admission academic performance; after controlling for relevant factors, the independent effect of university type was limited [9,10].

These results can generally be divided into three categories. In systems with significant differences between universities and educational tracks, or for a few highly resource-intensive universities, universities may bring substantial benefits; in systems with smaller university differences, major and industry may be more important; even if elite university graduates earn significantly more, this often mixes selection effects. Since these data come from different countries, periods, and career stages, and use different estimation methods, they cannot be arranged horizontally into a “ranking of elite university benefits,” nor can they be directly used to predict the specific returns a student might receive today.

Income is also just the most easily quantifiable part of career development. Job stability, working hours, job satisfaction, opportunities for further education, debt, and quality of life also influence whether an educational choice is worthwhile; the income studies cited in this article cannot fully answer these questions.

The most crucial statement is:

The “elite university premium” is not a uniform figure, but rather a result for specific students within a specific system, major, and job market.

University Rankings: What They Tell Us, and What They Miss #

Many people regard QS as an “education quality ranking,” but it is actually a comprehensive indicator that includes dimensions such as academic reputation, research output, employer reputation, and employment outcomes [11]. The following discussion uses QS as an example. Different rankings have different indicators and weightings, but they share a common limitation: they measure the overall performance of an institution, while students use them to make personal choices. Rankings are more like the market’s comprehensive evaluation of an institution, rather than a precise measure of teaching quality.

Therefore, when we discuss whether “a higher QS ranking leads to better job opportunities,” we are essentially using an indicator that already includes employer evaluations and employment information to explain employment outcomes. This correlation is valuable for reference but cannot lead to the conclusion that “the educational quality of a university ranked 40th is twice that of one ranked 80th,” nor can it be directly translated into specific impacts on a particular student’s employment and income.

Rankings can help students and parents determine the approximate tier of a university, but they often overlook three factors more pertinent to personal choice: major, industry, and city. British research found that within the same university, income differences across different majors are substantial [4,5]; Australian data, meanwhile, show that the influence of major and industry may be stronger than university type [9,10].

Moreover, the meaning of the same comprehensive ranking varies across different educational stages:

• When choosing an undergraduate program, the university’s overall resources are more important, but one should also consider the major’s foundational strength, flexibility to change majors, how many undergraduates secure internships, and whether undergraduates can participate in research or practical projects.
• When choosing a taught master’s program, program length, curriculum content, industry accreditation, internship arrangements, and graduate destinations are often more directly relevant than the university’s overall ranking.
• When choosing a research master’s or PhD program, the supervisor, research direction, lab environment, funding, and career paths of previous graduates may be far more important than the university’s overall ranking.
• When considering inter-regional or international study, one must also account for the language environment, visa and work conditions, local industry demand, exchange rates, and recognition back home. Studying abroad isn’t a separate educational level; rather, it superimposes regional and systemic differences onto undergraduate or graduate education.

A more realistic expression is:

Career Development Outcome ≈ University × Major × Industry × City × Ability × Internship × Network × Luck

This is not a mathematical formula but a decision checklist. The university is just one element: if the major doesn’t align with the individual, the elite university advantage will also be diminished; when the target industry is concentrated in specific cities, geographical location might outweigh slight differences in ranking.

Therefore, rankings are suitable for an initial screening but should not replace the final decision. When two admission choices are at similar tiers, one should prioritize comparing program strength, cultivation methods, industry connections, and suitability for oneself, before comparing overall rankings.

Measuring Economic Returns: A Comparison Method for Different Educational Choices #

Below, we temporarily set aside interests, identity, life experience, immigration preferences, and academic aspirations, and focus solely on economic assessment from the perspective of family expenditure and career income. The purpose is not to predict future wages or price universities, but to clarify the key conditions under which an educational investment is worth considering: how much more will the family have to pay? And how much more must one earn each year after graduation to recoup the investment within the expected timeframe?

Calculations must compare two real options, not contrast a specific program with “doing nothing.” Tuition fees, financial aid, and graduate destinations for similar programs should specify their year and source; living expenses, after-tax income, and family budget should be based on personal circumstances. The simplest preliminary judgment involves just two steps:

Additional Cost = Actual Total Cost of Option A − Actual Total Cost of Option B

Minimum Annual Additional Earnings = Additional Cost ÷ Number of Years to Recoup Investment

If loans, exchange rates are involved, or if payback is expected to take more than ten years, interest, income changes, and the difference in value of the same amount of money today versus many years later must also be considered. “Taught master’s” here generally refers to programs focused on coursework and professional training; “research master’s” generally refers to programs focused on supervisor guidance, thesis writing, and further research. These do not fully correspond one-to-one with China’s professional and academic degrees.

A Calculation Example: First Find the Payback Threshold, Then See if Statistics Support It #

Suppose choosing a more resource-intensive university costs an extra 120,000 yuan over four years compared to another university. If the family hopes to recoup this amount within ten years of graduation, then the student’s annual after-tax income must average at least 12,000 yuan higher than the alternative path. At this point, the first step of the economic assessment is complete. The next step is not to assert that an elite university will definitely lead to earning an extra 12,000 yuan, but to verify whether this requirement is realistic.

Taking the Chinese study mentioned earlier as an example, after controlling for student background, the wage premium for elite university graduates significantly narrowed; the study also observed early career stages and thus cannot prove that the same wage premium would persist for ten years [1]. Therefore, statistical results can only help us judge whether the payback requirement is reasonable; they cannot replace an individual’s prediction of future wages.

The same method can be applied at different stages, but the data sources will differ:

• Undergraduate. The 2020–2021 academic year data from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics show that the average net price of attendance for aided students at four-year public and private non-profit universities was approximately $14,700 and $28,400, respectively [15]. Here, “net price of attendance” already deducts scholarships and grants, and includes tuition and living expenses. However, public and private do not equate to low-ranked and high-ranked; actual calculations should still use figures from individual admission materials.
• Taught Master’s. According to Shenzhen University’s 2025 admission standards, tuition for full-time professional master’s degrees ranges from 10,000 to 19,500 yuan per year, while part-time programs have total tuition fees of 54,000 to 298,000 yuan over three years [16]. This indicates that the mode of study and the major itself can lead to significant cost differences. The U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard platform allows searching for income and federal student loan data by institution, degree level, and major, but loan data does not include all fees and interest [17].
• Research Master’s. China’s 2025 student financial aid policies stipulate that eligible full-time master’s students receive a national scholarship of 6,000 yuan per student per year, with other scholarships and research assistant stipends determined by the university [18]. The 2023 Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science, Engineering, and Health in the U.S. shows that funding methods differ for master’s and PhDs, and there are also clear differences across disciplines [19]. Whether domestic or international, only confirmed tuition waivers, stipends, and funding durations from admission or funding documents can be deducted.
• PhD. China’s 2025 policies stipulate that eligible full-time PhDs at central universities receive a national scholarship of 15,000 yuan annually, while local universities offer no less than 13,000 yuan [18]. A U.S. survey of 2023 research doctorate recipients showed that 85.6% received tuition waivers during their PhD studies; another statistic with a different scope showed that 14.7% primarily relied on personal or family resources [20]. The two percentages cannot be subtracted, and the sample only includes those who have already obtained a doctorate, not all entrants. This data only indicates that funding is common; it does not mean everyone receives full funding.

Rankings do not directly appear in the formula. They influence the student’s likelihood of achieving higher income and entering target positions. Rankings are sometimes effective because they do correspond to higher social recognition and more opportunities; rankings sometimes fail because research reputation does not necessarily translate into specific training and employment quality, or students simply cannot access the resources the university possesses.

At this point, the economic assessment should conclude. It can answer whether a family can afford it and what conditions are needed for payback, but it cannot fully measure the supervisor’s trust, peer and alumni networks, research opportunities, and future career options. Next, we must assess whether the resources provided by the university can truly be transformed into the student’s own capital.

Transforming University Resources into Personal Gain #

If university benefits cannot be fully explained by classroom knowledge, then the additional value of an elite university is more likely to come from three types of capital and one option value. The following framework aims to explain why a university might generate value, and does not imply that every cross-national study mentioned above directly measured these four resources. Elite universities do not monopolize these resources; their advantage lies in concentrating resources within a single institution and pre-providing a layer of social recognition through the university’s reputation.

• Signaling Capital: Initial trust conferred by the university’s brand. In the early stages of a career, employers find it difficult to judge a young person’s true abilities, so a university background becomes a convenient and quick screening criterion.
• Network Capital: Connections with peers, supervisors, and alumni. For students from ordinary families, this network can be a crucial gateway into certain industries.
• Opportunity Capital: Access to internships, campus recruitment, and research. The extent to which a university provides internships, campus recruitment, research projects, and corporate collaboration opportunities directly affects the difficulty students face in finding information and access points.
• Option Value: Room to change direction in the future. Pursuing a PhD, employment, changing industries, going abroad, or starting a business all require access points. The ability to change direction in the future is itself an asset.

However, abundant university resources do not mean every student can access them extensively. Elite universities often have many resources, but also many excellent students. Gaining admission to an elite university only grants the qualification to compete for these resources, and does not automatically mean that distinguished professors, research positions, exchange opportunities, and quality internships will fall into everyone’s lap.

Whether university resources can ultimately be transformed into personal gain depends on four key factors: whether there are many resources, whether one can access them, whether they are suitable for oneself, and whether one has the ability to turn opportunities into achievements. If any of these links are weak, the resource advantages listed in the university’s brochure may not materialize. The scarcer the resources, the fiercer the competition after admission. The university’s halo can bring initial trust, but it will not automatically turn into a portfolio, recommendation letters, practical experience, or professional network.

Supervisor guidance, internships, alumni assistance, and research opportunities are hard to put a direct price on, and there’s no need to invent precise probability values for them. They can be broadly categorized into three types: those that most similar students can obtain and are supported by complete data are high-probability; those that require competition but students with similar backgrounds often obtain are medium-probability; and those with only a few success stories, but without total numbers or coverage rates, can only be considered low-probability. If an educational choice requires hitting multiple low-probability opportunities simultaneously to be worthwhile, it inherently carries high risk.

An environment with a high concentration of talent also has its other side. Excellent peers can broaden one’s horizons, raise standards, and improve collaboration quality, but they can also change how students evaluate themselves. A student who previously performed well in their class, upon entering an environment dense with high achievers, might feel “not good enough” because their relative position has dropped, even if their actual ability has not declined and they’ve learned more. This is the “big-fish-little-pond effect”: people’s judgments of their own abilities stem not only from actual performance but also from the surrounding comparisons.

Marsh and Hau used PISA 2000 data to analyze 103,558 15-year-old students across 26 countries. They found that, after controlling for individual academic performance, the higher the average academic performance of a school, the lower students’ evaluations of their own academic ability tended to be, and this relationship was universally present across all 26 countries studied [14]. In the study, this self-evaluation was called “academic self-concept.” It is not actual ability, nor is it equivalent to psychological well-being.

This change is noteworthy because whether students can transform university resources into personal gain depends not only on the existence of the resources themselves but also on whether they are willing to raise their hand, apply for research or practical opportunities, proactively seek guidance from supervisors, and tolerate failure. Continuously perceiving oneself as “the worst person here” might make some students conservative when opportunities arise; frequently comparing oneself to stronger classmates might help others raise their standards and find collaborators. Whether these two outcomes occur depends on how students adapt and whether the university can provide adequate mentors, courses, and psychological support, which cannot be inferred solely from university rankings.

This study targeted secondary school students and academic self-concept and cannot directly prove that elite university students will achieve worse grades, resources, or career outcomes, much less lead to the conclusion that “it’s better to be number one at a lower-ranked school.” What it truly raises is a profound question about school choice: beyond asking “can I get in?”, one must also ask “once I’m in, will I hesitate to try new things because there are too many high achievers around me? Does the university have enough mentors, courses, and psychological support? Can I continue to proactively seek opportunities and produce tangible results?” An ideal university should both offer sufficient challenges and ensure students have opportunities to participate, grow, and be recognized.

The influence of university background also changes over time. In the early stages of a career, employers might first ask “where did you study?”; after a few years of work, what becomes more important is “what projects have you worked on?”; further down the line, the question will become “why should others trust your judgment?” As work performance gradually becomes visible, employers will increasingly rely less solely on university background to judge an individual; researchers call this change “Employer Learning effect” [12,13]. However, university background will not completely lose its influence, as the first job, the city initially entered, and industry connections may have already altered a person’s career path.

AI has reduced the cost of acquiring knowledge and information, but it has not made supervisor trust, excellent teams, and critical opportunities equally abundant. The value of universities may therefore shift more towards organizing opportunities, building trust, and providing social recognition.

Students and Parents: How to Effectively Compare Universities and Programs #

Elite universities usually enjoy stronger social recognition, more and more concentrated opportunities, and broader alumni networks, but they can also entail fiercer competition and higher costs. Universities with lower rankings and social recognition have less concentrated opportunities, requiring students to put in more effort to prove their abilities to the outside world; however, in universities with strong specialized programs or close ties to local industries, students may also find it easier to gain supervisor attention and lead projects. Thus, elite universities often raise the ceiling for opportunities, while other universities sometimes offer greater scope for individual initiative. The risk with the former is “seeing resources but finding them hard to obtain,” while the risk with the latter is “having room for action but lacking access to larger markets.”

The so-called “significant platform gap” should not be simply understood as a difference of how many ranks in a leaderboard, but rather whether it genuinely alters the strength of the target major, campus recruitment lists, industry recognition, supervisor resources, or eligibility for subsequent applications. If these critical access points remain largely unchanged, it is usually not worth paying high additional costs merely for slight differences in ranking.

Students and parents also need to clarify the questions they each need to answer. Parents primarily assess the maximum cost and risk their family can bear; students primarily assess whether the major suits them, whether they can truly access resources, and whether they can turn opportunities into achievements. Neither party can complete all assessments alone.

When specifically comparing undergraduate, postgraduate programs, or study abroad options, you can ask five questions in sequence:

1. Do the major, supervisor, and program style align? For undergraduates, look at foundational major strength, flexibility to change majors, and course quality; for postgraduates, delve into the supervisor, research direction, lab, funding, and graduate destinations.
2. How many opportunities do most students actually get? Don’t just look at how many opportunities are listed on the official website; also consider participation thresholds, coverage rates, and competition methods. A university possessing a resource does not mean the student can obtain it.
3. How does the university connect with the target industry and city? Local internships, campus recruitment scope, alumni career paths, and visa policies might be more directly relevant than international renown. For international students, also consider the language environment, duration and conditions for legal work, and pathways to stay or return home after graduation.
4. Can the family bear the actual total cost? Besides tuition, consider living expenses, exchange rates, whether scholarships are confirmed, income loss from not working during postgraduate study, and potential income and opportunity loss from forsaking other options for the university’s reputation.
5. Can the student adapt to and leverage this environment? Whether one thrives on competition or needs more guidance, prefers proactive pursuit or requires clear support, will change the actual value of the same university for an individual.

How to Verify “Whether These Resources Are Actually Obtainable” #

• Check the specific major or program’s curriculum handbook, class size, graduate destinations, and statistical year, rather than using overall university average data for that specific major or program. For income, prioritize median figures, and confirm whether unemployed individuals are included, whether it tracks starting salaries or multi-year income, and what percentage of graduates are covered by the sample.
• Check the supervisor’s research over the past three years, ongoing research projects, admission methods, and student destinations; for research master’s or PhDs, also confirm funding, frequency of guidance, and graduation requirements.
• Ask current students and graduates in the same major specific questions: who secured internships or research positions, what are the participation thresholds, and do international or interdisciplinary students have similar opportunities?
• Distinguish between “list of partner companies” and “list of companies actually recruiting on campus.” Also differentiate between “university provides application access” and “university guarantees internship positions.”
• Scholarships, credit transfers, internship arrangements, and graduation conditions should preferably be based on written rules; visa and work rights should only be based on the latest information from government departments.

If a university only showcases a few success stories without specifying the total number of students, the actual coverage rate, the year of the data, or the conditions that must be met, then this “resource” can only be considered a potential opportunity and cannot be directly counted as personal gain.

For students without an elite university background, it is more honest to acknowledge that opportunity gaps indeed exist between universities than to lightly claim “effort is all it takes.” However, since the elite university advantage can be dissected, parts of it can be gradually compensated for through external paths:

• Make abilities visible: Build more specific proof of ability than a university’s name by showcasing a portfolio, research achievements, internship performance, open-source contributions, or actual projects.
• Build a network: First, find teachers or professionals willing to provide feedback, then enter peer circles that allow for long-term collaboration.
• Actively seek opportunities: Look for supervisors with industry connections, internships that involve actual work, inter-university projects, or public competitions. One’s first exposure to a larger platform does not necessarily happen at university admission.
• Retain options: Accumulate skills that are needed in the target industry and remain useful when changing companies or positions, avoiding staking one’s entire future on a single position or qualification.

This method cannot guarantee that an individual will change their circumstances, nor can it eliminate starting disparities that are difficult to overcome through individual effort alone. It provides a direction for action: don’t just focus on the elite university background you lack, but understand what resources the university’s brand truly represents, and then assess which ones you can compensate for independently, and which require alternative paths.

Conclusion: Beyond Rankings, Focus on Actual Platform #

Cross-national studies often find that elite university graduates earn higher average incomes, but the benefits directly attributable to the university itself are not constant. They change with national systems, majors, student backgrounds, educational stages, and job markets; and income cannot represent all dimensions of career development.

Therefore, students and parents truly need to compare three aspects:

1. What more can be gained: What additional initial trust, professional network, opportunities, and options does a stronger university truly provide, and how much of that can this student actually obtain?
2. What more must be paid: Can the family bear the additional tuition, living expenses, loan interest, time, and risks involved?
3. Is there a more suitable choice: Could a program with a slightly lower ranking but stronger major, lower cost, or more easily accessible resources potentially lead to better actual outcomes?

Significant platform gaps are worth noting; among platforms of similar caliber, don’t be swayed by minor differences of dozens of ranks.

Students admitted to elite universities or advantageous programs still need to transform university resources into personal achievements; students without an elite university background, meanwhile, need to build other proofs of ability through portfolios, projects, and experiences, and proactively seek larger platforms outside the university. The former should not treat admission as the finish line, nor should the latter consider a single admission result as a lifelong definitive outcome.

Appendix: Research Evidence and Methodological Notes #

This section provides research details omitted from the main text, for readers interested in data and methodology.

1. China: Elite University Benefits are Clear, But Most Come from Selection Effects #

• A study using data from the 2010 Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) of fresh graduates found that, without controlling for other factors, elite university graduates had a wage premium of approximately 26.4%; after controlling for Gaokao scores, major, university location, individual characteristics, and family background, this premium decreased to about 10.7% [1].
• Another study, based on six rounds of CCSS fresh graduate data from 2010–2015, used a regression discontinuity design around the Gaokao admission cutoff and found that students who just crossed the elite university admission threshold indeed received higher starting salaries for their first job [2].

2. United States: Average Benefits Not Significant After Controlling for Application and Admission Information #

• Dale and Krueger’s core analysis used data from students who entered university in 1976 and their 1995 income survey, combined with data tracking 1972 high school graduates until 1986.
• The study compared students with similar application and admission experiences who ultimately attended universities with different admission thresholds; after controlling for students’ own abilities and aspirations, it found that attending a more selective university did not lead to significantly higher average incomes for most students [3].
• However, students from low-income families might obtain more significant benefits from more resource-intensive universities, indicating that the advantages of elite universities are not distributed evenly among everyone.

3. United Kingdom: Both University and Major are Equally Important #

• The 2018 report covered graduates from the 2003/04–2013/14 academic years and tax records from the 2005/06–2015/16 fiscal years, primarily examining wages 3–7 years after graduation [5].
• The 2020 report focused on students who took the UK General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in 2002, primarily born in the 1985/86 academic year, with income data tracked until the 2016/17 fiscal year, and income after age 30 simulated by a model [4].
• The studies found that even after controlling for students’ prior academic performance and family background, significant differences in income returns existed between different universities and majors; major differences within the same university were also substantial [4,5].

4. France: Significant Differences in Educational Tracks, But Limited Impact Among Ordinary Universities #

• Giret and Goudard used the “Génération 98” survey by the French Centre for Studies and Research on Qualifications (Céreq) to study 5,883 young graduates from 73 universities. The sample left the education system in 1998 and was surveyed in spring 2001.
• Multilevel models showed that while universities themselves did cause some differences, they could only explain a small part of the wage disparities; more significant influences came from the level of education, major, and personal educational background [6].
• This study examined ordinary universities, and its conclusions cannot be mechanically extrapolated to elite tracks such as Grandes Écoles (French ‘Grand Schools’).

5. Italy: Highly Resource-Concentrated Universities May Bring Significant Returns #

• Anelli used a regression discontinuity design based on the admission cutoff scores of an elite university in Milan. The core sample consisted of students who applied to this university between 1995 and 2000, with income data from 2005 tax records.
• The study found that students admitted to this university subsequently had annual incomes about 52% higher [7].
• However, the unadjusted gap reached 87%, indicating that at least part of the difference came from student selection; the causal estimate was about 52%, and after removing the effect of major choice, the remaining institutional and university effect was about 33% [7].

6. Canada: Benefits from Admission Thresholds Exist, But University Differences are Smaller #

• Milla used multi-year tracking data from Canada’s Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) from 1998–2009, employing matching and instrumental variable methods to correct for bias from non-random university selection.
• Graduates from universities with higher admission thresholds had an estimated wage premium of 7%–14.8% 4–6 years after graduation: the matching estimate was 7%, and the instrumental variable estimate was 14.8% [8].

7. Australia: University Brand Weakened by Major and Industry #

• Carroll, Heaton, and Tani used data from three rounds of the Graduate Destination Survey (2013–2015) and students’ Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) data. They observed an unadjusted starting salary premium of approximately 4.3%–5.5% for graduates from Australia’s Group of Eight (Go8), but approximately 13%–46% of this could be explained by higher pre-admission ATAR scores [9].
• Another study using Rounds 1–12 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey from 2001–2012 found that, after controlling for factors such as major, industry, and age, university type, overall, had no significant independent income effect; major and industry, by contrast, were stronger influences [10].

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