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Understanding Variation in Post-College Earnings: Evidence from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard

Michael D. Bloem et al.

Education Finance and Policy2026https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp.a.445article
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0.50

Abstract

Using the detailed college level data from the College Scorecard on students’ post-college earnings from the near universe of four-year colleges, we assess the usefulness of going beyond comparing colleges based only on median earnings and analyze the descriptive relationship between college selectivity and earnings outcomes and how this relationship may differ by student sex and field of study. We show that considering the full distribution of earnings outcomes can greatly improve our understanding of college level earnings dynamics. Using different points in the distribution other than the median would markedly change how colleges rank on these metrics, largely due to widely overlapping earnings distributions across colleges. On the link between college selectivity and earnings, we find that there is virtually no correlation among less selective colleges but a strong relationship among more selective colleges. Earnings are significantly higher at colleges with lower acceptance rates, especially at the high end of the earnings distribution, and the gender earnings gap is also larger at these colleges. We also show that the relationship between selectivity and earnings varies dramatically by field of study, with some fields showing a large return to college selectivity while others revealing none at all.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp.a.445

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@article{michael2026,
  title        = {{Understanding Variation in Post-College Earnings: Evidence from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard}},
  author       = {Michael D. Bloem et al.},
  journal      = {Education Finance and Policy},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp.a.445},
}

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

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