Human capital attainment, university quality, and entry-level wages for college transfer students

This paper examines the returns to institutional quality for all institutions attended by college transfer students and asks whether such an analysis provides insight into the role of human capital accumulation in determining a college graduate's entry-level earnings. Exploiting panel data techniques, I find that the quality of both a transfer student's initial and graduation universities have significant, positive, and nearly identical effects on his or her future earnings. Such evidence suggests that the return to quality is similar across all institutions attended and thus can be consistent with the human capital theory of educational attainment.