Given that a highly-educated workforce is the prerequisite of economic prosperity, the importance of increasing college degree holder has been widely recognized (Blondal, Field, & Girouard, 2002; Perdue, 2008). In Taiwan, both the upgraded and newly-born 4-year colleges/universities doubled the availability since 1990s (Yang, Lin, & Lin, 2011). Accordingly, the issue of college quality has been under heated as scholars strive to learn the college impact on graduates’ earnings. Without any objective measures indicating college quality in Taiwan, this study aims to explore the applicable criteria of college equality. Specifically, the relationship between the criteria of college equality adopted and the wages of early-career undergraduates is investigated. As such, we ask “Does college quality matter on wages for entry-level undergraduates?”          

With an initial attempt to disclose personal income distribution, Mincer (1974) proposed in his book Schooling, Experience, and Earnings about the crucial role of schooling quality. Namely, college quality can enhance the explanatory power of schooling since it is regarded unmeasured component in Mincer’s equation (Mincer, 1974; Ono, 2004). In terms of the variance in wages for college graduates, Pascarella& Terezini’s comprehensive review of literature for decades suggested institutional selectivity and graduating from a large school has positive effects on earnings (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). In this sense, institutional selectivity presents one type of college equality, which is usually indicated by entry student performance such as SAT/ ACT (Zhang, 2005). A study conducted by Zhang (2005), which compared four different measures of college quality, including Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, the average SAT score of entering undergraduates, the institution’s Carnegie classification, and tuition and fee, found that the effect of college quality is generally positive and significant based on the U.S. data (Zhang, 2005). Gaining insight from this, the aim of this study is to find the measures of college quality embedded in Taiwan and further to learn the impact of college quality on earnings for early-career college graduates.

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