Original title: Observed Earnings Differences Across Elite, Urban/Regional Public, and Adult-Serving Universities
William Maguire · August 2026
People often judge the value of a whole college all at once. However, what students study and what degree they earn change how much money they make. To investigate this, researchers compared early-career earnings across three distinct types of colleges: eight Ivy League schools, 10 urban or regional public universities, and three large universities focused on working adults. They matched programs directly so they only compared schools offering the exact same degree and field within business, computing, education, and health. They looked at earnings after one year and two years. They found that graduates from adult-serving schools and public universities earn very similar amounts. Meanwhile, Ivy League graduates earn substantially more than both other groups across every single category. Still, the size of that Ivy earnings advantage changes drastically depending on the specific major and degree level. These descriptive patterns do not prove colleges caused the pay differences.
Imagine comparing the salaries of people who went to three different types of high schools: elite private schools, regular public schools, and night schools for adults. You might expect the elite school graduates to earn much more, but you'd also expect the night school graduates to earn far less than the public school ones. In this paper, the researchers found that the night school and public school graduates actually earn very similar amounts, while the elite school graduates earn much more. The comparison uses only people who studied the same subjects, so the difference is not due to different fields.
For students deciding between a regional public university and an adult-serving online program, this study shows their early-career earnings are much closer than commonly assumed. Meanwhile, the Ivy League earnings premium is enormous—over $30,000 more than either group. That matters for college choice and public funding debates.
The findings are descriptive, not causal—they do not prove that attending a certain type of university causes higher earnings. The analysis is limited to bachelor's and master's programs in four fields (business, computing, education, health) and only includes programs where all three institutional groups reported earnings for the same detailed field and degree. Results may not generalize to other fields, credential levels, or institutions. Additionally, the one-year and two-year earnings measures come from different student cohorts, so they do not track the same graduates over time.
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Observed Earnings Differences Across Elite, Urban/Regional Public, and Adult-Serving Universities — William Maguire — EdArXiv — doi:10.35542/osf.io/v3cr9_v1
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.