Work for a diploma – Newspaper Kommersant No. 140 (7102) from 08/10/2021

by time news

Graduates of master’s degrees earn more than holders of bachelor’s degrees – the average salary difference ranges from 2% to 21%. This conclusion was made by experts of the Higher School of Economics, who for the first time evaluated the return on education in a master’s program using a special database of the Ministry of Labor and Rosstat on the employment of university graduates. In addition to the “salary bonus”, graduates of the master’s program are also more likely to find their first job compared to those who have graduated only from the bachelor’s program. The data obtained refute the widespread opinion that Russian employers do not distinguish between bachelors and masters in employment.

Employees with master’s degrees have an advantage in the Russian labor market. This follows from the work “Return on Master’s Degree in the Russian Labor Market” (authors – employees of the Labor Market Research Laboratory of the Higher School of Economics Ksenia Rozhkova, Sergey Solntsev, Pavel Travkin, as well as Vice-Rector Sergey Roshchin). The sample included almost 400 thousand undergraduate graduates in 2017, of which more than 100 thousand continued their studies in the magistracy and entered the labor market in 2020.

Researchers were able to access a sample of this size thanks to the joint project of the Ministry of Labor and Rostrud “Base for monitoring the employment of graduates.” It was launched to analyze the career trajectories of recent students using information on diplomas from universities and data on official employment from the Pension Fund.

As explained to Kommersant in the Ministry of Labor, the database reflects in aggregate the percentage of employment of graduates of a particular specialty, their average salary, the type of employing organization and the proportion of those employed outside the region.

As one of the authors of the work, Ksenia Rozhkova, notes, information from various government sources makes it possible to assess the return on education in the labor market based on all graduates of the corresponding year, which gives a more accurate picture. “Prior to the Ministry of Labor’s database, empirical research on this issue was usually based on surveys of a limited number of recent graduates and could be inaccurate,” she notes.

According to the research, in recent years, the popularity of the master’s degree program has grown rapidly. From 2013 to 2020, the number of holders of a master’s degree more than tripled, from 56 thousand to 185 thousand. Last year, 20.1% of the total admission to universities were those who entered the magistracy, and more than 60% continued their studies immediately after completing their bachelor’s degree …

As it turned out, such a high demand for continuing education on the part of students is justified: having a master’s degree makes applicants more attractive in the labor market.

Thus, the probability of finding a job for male masters is 3–8% higher than that of holders of a bachelor’s degree. The difference between the graduates is even greater – 10–16% in favor of those who have graduated from the magistracy. Also, a master’s degree is associated with a higher salary. For women, this difference is 5-21%, for men – 2-11%.

Ksenia Rozhkova notes that although the “master’s awards” may seem insignificant, it should be borne in mind that this is an additional increase in comparison with the salary of workers who already have a bachelor’s degree, and therefore a higher basic level of earnings. “On average, one year of study at a university increases wages by 8% in comparison with the salaries of those with only a school certificate,” she notes.

It should be noted that the results of the work of the experts of the Higher School of Economics refute the conventional opinion that Russian employers do not distinguish between bachelors and masters in employment and that continuing education in a master’s degree does not bring special benefits to employees in the labor market.

Anastasia Manuilova

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