Who Scars the Easiest? College Quality and Earnings Losses from Graduating into a Recession

Graduating from college into a recession is associated with earnings losses, but less is known about how these effects vary across colleges. Using restricted-use data from the National Survey of College Graduates, the authors study how the effects of graduating into adverse economic conditions vary over college quality in the context of the Great Recession. They find that earnings losses are concentrated among graduates from relatively high-quality colleges. Key mechanisms include substitution out of the labor force and into graduate school, decreased graduate degree completion, and differences in the economic stability of fields of study between graduates of high- and low-quality colleges.