The role of mathematical and verbal skills on the returns to graduate and professional education

Postgraduate Education and Labor Market Outcomes: An Empirical Analysis Using Micro Data from Japan

“…It should be mentioned that past studies on the effects of education employing instrumental variables or using data for twins generally report similar or somewhat large effects compared with the simple OLS estimation results (see, for example, Card and Oreopoulos and Petronijevic for surveys on this issue). Although studies on postgraduate education are limited, Song, Orazem, and Wohlgemuth (), for example, estimate wage premiums for MA and Ph.D. degrees in the United States and report that the premium correcting for sorting bias is larger than the OLS results.…”

“…Deere and Vesovic () used data from the U.S. Census in 2000 and found that the hourly wage for workers with postgraduate educations is approximately 30 percent higher than the wage for workers with college educations. Song, Orazem, and Wohlgemuth () used the U.S. scientist and engineer statistics data system, collected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for 1993, and found that the sorting effect produces a substantial downward bias in estimated returns to postgraduate education. Furthermore, these authors found that correcting for the sorting effect raises estimated annualized returns to a MA or Ph.D. degree from approximately 5 percent to 7.3 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively.…”

A study of the rate of return to higher engineering education in China

“…In general, higher education results in considerable economic benefits for educatees, and this phenomenon has been confirmed by numerous empirical studies (Song et al, 2008;Perna, 2005;Boarini and Strauss, 2007). Thomas examined three sources of influence on the initial earnings of college graduates and found that graduates from health-related and engineering majors commanded the highest salaries (Thomas, 2000).…”

Admissions Policy and the Male-Female Gap in Post-Baccalaureate School Quality

“…In addition, I control for potential experience (the time since the last date of educational enrollment), whether the individual was unemployed in 2003, and degree program d. Most importantly here, I control for ability. Song et al (2008) show that there is negative selection according to ability into PB education, particularly with respect to master's programs.…”

“…I also provide preliminary but novel evidence that, holding ability constant, there are positive and large returns to PB quality (between a 1.1 and 1.3 percentage point increase in salary per one percentile increase in the quality rankings) for women, but not men, in professional and doctoral degree programs. Song, Orazem, and Wohlgemuth (2008) investigate the returns to the three major PB award types (masters, professional, and doctoral), and demonstrate substantial the existence ability bias in the estimates, but I am aware of no other paper to estimate the mean value of quality in PB education.…”