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The structure and determinants of expected and actual starting salaries of higher education students in Germany: identical or different?

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  • Bernd Frick
  • Michael Maihaus

Abstract

Using two representative samples of some 74,000 students and 11,000 graduates, respectively, we analyse the accuracy of students’ wage expectations given their individual characteristics. We find that students are aware of the effects of most of their own characteristics, as a large number of determinants of expected and realised salaries do not differ significantly. However, important determinants of graduates’ starting salaries are not consistent with students’ expectations: Students seem to overestimate the presumably negative impact of age at graduation on starting salaries while at the same time they seem to underestimate the positive effects of grades and internships in renowned companies. Moreover, students seem not to be able to anticipate the effects of different job characteristics. Analyses of several subsamples confirm our main findings. Thus, students seem to focus too much on graduating fast while under-investing in more beneficial activities like preparing for exams and completing top internships.

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  • Bernd Frick & Michael Maihaus, 2016. "The structure and determinants of expected and actual starting salaries of higher education students in Germany: identical or different?," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(4), pages 374-392, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:24:y:2016:i:4:p:374-392
    DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2015.1110115
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    Cited by:

    1. Vaishali Zambre, 2018. "The Gender Gap in Wage Expectations: Do Young Women Trade off Higher Wages for Lower Wage Risk?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1742, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Tiziano CAMPORESI & Gelsomina CATALANO & Massimo FLORIO & Francesco GIFFONI, 2016. "A Professional Premium for LHC Students: Perceptions from within," Departmental Working Papers 2016-07, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano, revised 08 Jun 2016.
    3. Charlotte Kräft, 2022. "Equal pay behind the “Glass Door”? The gender gap in upper management in a male‐dominated industry," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(6), pages 1910-1926, November.
    4. Antoni, Manfred & Gerner, Hans-Dieter & Jäckle, Robert & Schwarz, Stefan, 2024. "When Women Learn That They Earn Less: The Gender Pay Gap in University Student Internships," MPRA Paper 122018, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Sam Jones & Ricardo Santos & Gimelgo Xirinda, 2020. "Misinformed, mismatched, or misled?: Explaining the gap between expected and realized graduate earnings in Mozambique," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-47, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

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