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

Moohoun Song, Peter Orazem and Darin Wohlgemuth

ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Students in majors with higher average quantitative graduate records exam (GRE) scores are less likely to attend graduate school whereas students in majors with higher average verbal GRE scores are more likely to attend graduate school. This sorting effect means that students whose cognitive skills are associated with lower earnings at the bachelor's level are the most likely to attend graduate school. As a result, there is a substantial downward bias in estimated returns to graduate education. Correcting for the sorting effect raises estimated annualized returns to a Master's or doctoral degree from about 5% to 7.3% and 12.8%, respectively. Estimated returns to professional degrees rise from 13.9% to 16.6%. These findings correspond to a large increase in relative earnings received by postgraduate degree holders in the United States over the past 20 years.

Date: 2008-12-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/server/api/core/bitstre ... d0be020e1583/content
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: The role of mathematical and verbal skills on the returns to graduate and professional education (2008)
Working Paper: The Role of Mathematical and Verbal Skills on the Returns to Graduate and Professional Education (2007)
Working Paper: The Role of Mathematical and Verbal Skills on the Returns to Graduate and Professional Education (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genstf:200812010800001230

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISU General Staff Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer (econwebmaster@iastate.edu).