IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0266981.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does GPA matter for university graduates’ wages? New evidence revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Tao Zou
  • Yue Zhang
  • Bo Zhou

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of GPA on graduating students’ wages using a data set from an elite university in China. Students are homogenous since their majors are closely related to economics and business The OLS regression results indicate that GPA has positive and significant impacts on wages on average. As GPA increases by 1 unit, the starting monthly wage increases by 29.6 percent on average, and the wage in the survey year that is 3–5 years after graduation (current wage) soars by 25 percent. Theoretically, the GPA matters for the wages due to both the human capital or signaling effect. Given that the signaling effect should diminish over time, and the effect on starting wage is a little larger than that on current wage, it is suggested that signaling effect of GPA should be trivial, and high GPA is associated with high wage should be mainly due to the human capital effect. These results are robust to different model specifications. The distributional analysis suggest that the effects are positive for both wages and significant for almost all quantiles. In addition, the effect is basically the same from the 0.05th to 0.80th quantiles, and then rises as the starting wage increases. The effect on current wage is a U shape from the 0.05th to 0.60th quantile, and then becomes an inverse-U shape with peaks at the 0.75th and 0.80th quantiles where the effect is 82.2 percent when GPA increases by one unit.

Suggested Citation

  • Tao Zou & Yue Zhang & Bo Zhou, 2022. "Does GPA matter for university graduates’ wages? New evidence revisited," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-16, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0266981
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266981
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0266981
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0266981&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0266981?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel J. Henderson & Alexandre Olbrecht & Solomon W. Polachek, 2006. "Do Former College Athletes Earn More at Work?: A Nonparametric Assessment," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(3).
    2. Long, James E & Caudill, Steven B, 1991. "The Impact of Participation in Intercollegiate Athletics on Income and Graduation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(3), pages 525-531, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fricke, Hans & Lechner, Michael & Steinmayr, Andreas, 2018. "The effects of incentives to exercise on student performance in college," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 14-39.
    2. Jerome Segura III & Jonathan Willner, 2019. "Athleticism in NCAA D-III: It Ain’t Only Football That Matters," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(7), pages 929-958, October.
    3. Lechner, Michael & Fricke, Hans & Steinmayr, Andreas, 2017. "The Effect of Physical Activity on Student Performance in College: An Experimental Evaluation," CEPR Discussion Papers 12052, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Lechner, Michael, 2009. "Long-run labour market and health effects of individual sports activities," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 839-854, July.
    5. Daniel R. Marburger, 2015. "How Are Athletic Directors Rewarded in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(3), pages 254-267, April.
    6. Olbrecht, Alexandre, 2009. "Do academically deficient scholarship athletes earn higher wages subsequent to graduation?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 611-619, October.
    7. James D. Paul & Albert A. Cheng & Jay P. Greene & Josh B. McGee, 2023. "The Value of College Athletics in the Labor Market: Results from a Resume Audit Field Experiment," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(3), pages 329-351, April.
    8. Caruso, Raul, 2011. "Crime and sport participation: Evidence from Italian regions over the period 1997–2003," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 455-463.
    9. P Wesley Routon & Jay K Walker, 2015. "Student-Athletes? The Impact of Intercollegiate Sports Participation on Academic Outcomes," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 592-611, September.
    10. Steven Caudill & James Long, 2010. "Do former athletes make better managers? Evidence from a partially adaptive grouped-data regression model," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 275-290, August.
    11. Cabane, Charlotte & Hille, Adrian & Lechner, Michael, 2015. "Mozart or Pelé? The effects of teenagers’ participation in music and sports," Economics Working Paper Series 1509, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    12. Heckman, James J. & Loughlin, Colleen P., 2021. "Are Student-Athletes Exploited?," IZA Discussion Papers 14857, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Laura Capranica & Mojca Doupona & Ilvis Abelkalns & Ugis Bisenieks & Antonio Sánchez-Pato & Francisco José Cánovas-Alvarez & António J Figueiredo & Juan Alfonso García-Roca & Alejandro Leiva-Arcas & L, 2022. "Understanding dual career views of European university athletes: The more than gold project focus groups," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-20, February.
    14. Brad R. Humphreys & Jane E. Ruseski, 2006. "Economic Determinants of Participation in Physical Activity and Sport," Working Papers 0613, International Association of Sports Economists;North American Association of Sports Economists.
    15. Jaana T Kari & Jaakko Pehkonen & Mirja Hirvensalo & Xiaolin Yang & Nina Hutri-Kähönen & Olli T Raitakari & Tuija H Tammelin, 2015. "Income and Physical Activity among Adults: Evidence from Self-Reported and Pedometer-Based Physical Activity Measurements," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-15, August.
    16. Charlotte Cabane & Andrew E. Clark, 2015. "Childhood Sporting Activities andAdult Labour-Market Outcome," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 119-120, pages 123-148.
    17. Daniel J. Henderson & Alexandre Olbrecht & Solomon W. Polachek, 2006. "Do Former College Athletes Earn More at Work?: A Nonparametric Assessment," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(3).
    18. Betsey Stevenson, 2010. "Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 284-301, May.
    19. Michael Lechner & Paul Downward, 2017. "Heterogeneous sports participation and labour market outcomes in England," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(4), pages 335-348, January.
    20. Mulholland, Sean E. & Tomic, Aleksandar (Sasha) & Sholander, Samuel N., 2014. "The faculty Flutie factor: Does football performance affect a university's US News and World Report peer assessment score?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 79-90.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0266981. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.