The impact of student academic achievement on graduate salaries: the case of a leading Russian university

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the impact of academic achievement on future salaries by looking into the grade point average (GPA)-earnings relationship for graduates of a leading Russian university. The study is based on pooled cross-sectional graduate survey data for 2014–2015. The issue of how student academic achievement impacts future labour market rewards is analysed through academic, demographic and labour market factors. We found that there is a significant positive impact of GPA on salaries of BA graduates (9–12% wage premium for an additional GPA point) and an insignificant or negative impact for MA programmes graduates. The study depicts that this negative effect can be partially explained by employment sector-specific variables. Among the main factors which positively affect earnings of graduates is work experience. Graduates who combined study and work achieve a 30% wage premium. However, there is no evidence that combining study and work affects student academic achievement, even for those who combined studies with full-time job. Despite the higher GPA of female students, male graduates’ earnings are 18% higher. Gender wage differences can be explained by gender distribution by the sector of employment: the over-representation of women in the low-paid education and science sectors and their under-representation in entrepreneurship and corporate sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic achievement
• student employment
• graduates salaries
• school-to-work transition
• job market signaling

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Igor Chirikov and Maria Yudkevich for remarkable ideas and comments and to Daria Drozhzhina for data preparation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. National Research University Higher School of Economics – is the official name of the institution. The name ‘HSE University’ is a widely used unofficial name.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2017.

Notes on contributors

Victor Rudakov

Victor Rudakov is a Research fellow at Laboratory for Labour Market Studies and Centre for Institutional Studies of National Research University Higher School of Economics and a Postdoctoral researcher at CIPES - Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies, University of Porto. His main area of research interests are labor economics and economics of education.

Sergey Roshchin

Sergey Roshchin is a vice-rector at National Research University Higher School of Economics and the Head of Laboratory for Labour market studies. His main research interests are labor and personnel economics.