The returns to undergraduate degrees by socio-economic group and ethnicity

Published this week by IFS this report considers evidence on the potential benefits of a degree by studying earnings of recent graduates in a range of subject areas. The focus is on whether certain social class and ethnic groups get more economic benefit out of going to university. According to the website:
“The research finds that people from all socio-economic and ethnic groups benefit financially from going to university, but students from some groups benefit more than others. Among the state-educated, students from the poorest 20% of families have relatively large gains, even though their median earnings at age 30 are the lowest at only £25k for men and £21k for women. This is because we estimate that they would have earned much less still had they not gone to university. For state-educated 30-year-olds from the poorest 20% of families who did not go to university, median earnings are very low at £20k for men and £11k for women.”