Occupat ional earnings of graduat es: evidence for t he 1993 UK university population Robin Naylor, Jeremy Smith and Abigail McKnight ¤ Depart ment of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL. June 6, 2000 A bst r act In this paper, we use the individual-level USR data for the whole population of 1993 leavers from the `old' universities of the UK to investigate the determinants of graduate occupational earnings. Among other results, we ¯ nd that there are signi¯ cant di®erences in the occupational earnings of leavers, according to: university attended, subject studied, degree class awarded, and Social Class of family background, ceteris paribus. Our results suggest t hat t here is likely t o be signi¯ cant variat ion around t he average rat e of ret urn t o a ¯ rst degree, with important implications for t he debate on the funding of students through higher educat ion. K eywords: Graduat e earnings, degree class, subj ect . JEL Classi¯ cation numbers: J3, J4, I2 ¤ We are grateful to Wiji Arulampalam, Norman Ireland, Andrew Oswald, Jennifer Smith, Mark Stewart and Ian Walker for helpful comments. A number of people have given us invaluable help in generating the dataset: in particular, we would like to give special thanks to John McClure and Peggy Paull at UCAS, John McNeill in MIS at Warwick, and to sta® at HESA, HEFCE, DfEE and the Schools Register. We acknowledge both the USR, as the original depositors, and the UK Data Archive for the use of the data-set SN:3456 Universities' Statistical Record. None of these individuals or organisations bears any responsibility for any of the analysis or interpretation presented in this paper. Email: R. A. Nayl or@warwi ck. ac. uk , Jer emy. Sm i th@warwi ck. ac.uk and A. A. Mckni ght @ l se. ac. uk , t el.: 01203 523055, FA X : 01203 523032. 1