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Title: Does it Pay to Attend an Elite Liberal Arts College?
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Maloney, Paul
Does it Pay to Attend an Elite Liberal Arts College?
Undergraduate Honors Thesis, College of the Holy Cross, April 2012
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: College of the Holy Cross
Keyword(s): College Characteristics; College Enrollment; Colleges; Data Linkage (also see Record Linkage); Human Capital; Human Capital Theory; Undergraduate Research; Wages

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

One of the most important decisions in a person’s life is what college they will attend. The choice of college can have an effect on future earnings. With the increase in college tuition, it has become even more important to make cost effective decisions. This paper studies how wages are affected by the type of school an individual attends and in particular elite liberal arts colleges. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the U.S. News and World Report’s individual characteristics are linked to characteristics of the college that the individual attended. Individual’s wages are regressed on the individual and college characteristics at different points in the individual’s career in order to determine the percent change in wages when attending an elite liberal arts college. The findings suggest there is not a statistically significant relationship between wages and attending an elite liberal art college at the beginning of a career but in the middle of an individual’s career there is a positive and statistically significant relationship.
Bibliography Citation
Maloney, Paul. "Does it Pay to Attend an Elite Liberal Arts College?." Undergraduate Honors Thesis, College of the Holy Cross, April 2012.