The Definition and Impact of College Quality

In this paper we are concerned with the characteristics of colleges which serve to increase subsequent monetary incomes of those who attend. Usually, lifetime earnings are explained by variables such as innate ability, experience in the labor force and years of education, although other socio-economic, demographic and occupational data can be inserted to increase the explanatory power of the model. This paper attempts to add a new dimension to the earnings function analysis by hypothesizing the features of colleges which might yield financial payoffs later in life, and then testing to see which of these traits actually do add most to the explanatory power of the traditional earnings function