Student exposure to socio-economic diversity and students’ university outcomes – Evidence from English administrative data

Many countries encourage universities to increase the ethnic and socio-economic diversity of their student bodies, for example, through affirmative action policies. We use unique administrative data for all undergraduate degree students entering English universities between 2008 and 2010 to investigate the role of a more diverse environment for students’ degree outcomes. We find a complex picture – a more diverse environment is beneficial for students, but so is meeting some students from the same background. These effects are different for good and top degrees, interact with each other and vary across institutions, subjects and student subgroups.