A new study by scholars from the University of Connecticut and Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has found an association between racial diversity among business and law school cohorts and higher earnings for students post-graduation.
For their study, the authors examined 2,964 MBA cohorts across 141 business schools over 29 years and 3,386 juris doctorate cohorts across 200 law schools over 21 years. Even after controlling for student quality, universities, and years, cohorts with higher racial diversity at matriculation had higher median salaries at graduation.
Notably, having just one additional student of color for every 100 students in a graduating cohort impacted starting salaries across the entire cohort by some $13,000 for MBA students and $30,000 for law school students. According to the authors, this initial increase translates to $1.6 million and $3.8 million in additional lifetime earnings for MBA and juris doctorate cohorts, respectively.
“Our results indicate that policies promoting racial diversity boost salaries for the entire cohort of students,” said co-author Peter Golder, professor of marketing at Dartmouth College. “The key implication of our study is pretty clear, namely that efforts to reduce racial diversity by outlawing affirmative action and dropping DEI initiatives will make us all poorer.”
