Professional school grads from diverse classes get higher salaries
Professional school grads from diverse classes get higher salaries
多元化班级背景的专业学院毕业生薪资更高
Even before the Trump administration went to war against DEI and attempts to address historical discrimination, diversity efforts in the US were controversial. A pivotal moment came in 2023, when the Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action programs violated the Constitution. The decision partly rested on universities’ inability to clearly measure the benefits of diverse student bodies and the lack of defined standards to determine when equity had been achieved and such programs should end.
早在特朗普政府向多元、公平与包容（DEI）倡议及旨在解决历史性歧视的努力“宣战”之前，美国的多元化举措就一直备受争议。2023年，美国最高法院裁定基于种族的平权行动计划违反宪法，这成为了一个关键转折点。该裁决的部分依据在于，高校无法明确衡量多元化学生群体带来的益处，且缺乏明确的标准来界定何时已实现公平，以及何时应终止此类计划。
A new paper highlights the uncertainty. “Learning theory argues that racial diversity promotes student learning, which should increase salaries,” its authors write. “However, well-documented racial wage discrimination indicates that higher racial diversity should decrease salaries.” But the authors—Debanjan Mitra, Peter Golder, and Mariya Topchy—have developed a metric suggesting that graduates benefit financially if they graduate with a diverse peer group. The researchers argue that this evidence should be sufficient to prompt courts to reconsider earlier rulings.
一篇新的论文强调了这种不确定性。作者写道：“学习理论认为，种族多元化能促进学生学习，从而提高薪资。然而，有据可查的种族工资歧视表明，更高的种族多元化反而可能降低薪资。”但作者 Debanjan Mitra、Peter Golder 和 Mariya Topchy 开发了一种衡量指标，表明如果毕业生在多元化的同伴群体中毕业，他们在经济上会受益。研究人员认为，这一证据足以促使法院重新考虑此前的裁决。
Diversity and salaries
多元化与薪资
Doing this sort of research is challenging, largely because there are no clear metrics. Outcomes also vary widely based on factors like school quality, baseline diversity, and the economic conditions at graduation, which can overshadow potential benefits. So while some research has suggested advantages to more diverse cohorts, the evidence remains limited. The new paper responds to these challenges by both narrowing and expanding its focus. It narrows the analysis to business and law schools, tracking only a single outcome: starting salary.
进行此类研究极具挑战性，很大程度上是因为缺乏明确的衡量指标。研究结果也会因学校质量、基准多元化程度以及毕业时的经济状况等因素而产生巨大差异，这些因素可能会掩盖潜在的益处。因此，尽管一些研究表明多元化群体具有优势，但证据仍然有限。这篇新论文通过缩小和扩大研究重点来应对这些挑战：它将分析范围缩小到商学院和法学院，仅追踪单一结果——起薪。
At the same time, the researchers broaden the research, drawing on decades of data from nearly 350 schools, including nearly 3,000 business school grads and even more from law schools, spanning over 20 years of graduating classes. The data doesn’t include every graduate of these programs, typically covering about 75 percent of each class. But Mitra, Golder, and Topchy assess diversity by analyzing the available student data and examining the overall diversity of the school’s admitted classes.
与此同时，研究人员扩大了研究广度，利用了近350所学校数十年的数据，涵盖了近3000名商学院毕业生以及更多的法学院毕业生，跨度超过20年的毕业班级。这些数据并未包含所有毕业生，通常覆盖每个班级约75%的学生。但 Mitra、Golder 和 Topchy 通过分析现有的学生数据并考察学校录取班级的整体多元化程度来评估多元化水平。
The authors took a deceptively simple approach, examining the correlation between racial diversity in a school’s cohort and graduates’ starting salaries. In business schools, high-diversity cohorts earned starting salaries that were a standard deviation or more above the median 966 times out of 3,964 cohorts. For low-diversity cohorts, that number was just 534. For relatively low starting salaries, high-diversity cohorts showed up 531 times, while low-diversity ones appeared 933 times, largely reversing the numbers.
作者采用了一种看似简单的方法，即考察学校班级种族多元化与毕业生起薪之间的相关性。在商学院中，在3964个班级样本中，高多元化班级有966次起薪高出中位数一个标准差或以上；而低多元化班级仅有534次。在起薪相对较低的情况下，高多元化班级出现了531次，而低多元化班级出现了933次，数据呈现出明显的反转。
The pattern held for law schools. High-diversity groups saw high salaries in 1,128 of 3,386 opportunities, compared with 490 for low-diversity cohorts. The same was true for both types of graduate programs when the authors measured diversity using data for the entire entering class rather than only the students being analyzed. Plenty of confounding factors could still explain the results, so Mitra, Golder, and Topchy implemented a few controls. More than a few, actually—it’s not often you see the word “thirteenth” in a paper’s list of potential caveats.
法学院的情况也遵循同样的模式。在3386个样本中，高多元化群体有1128次获得高薪，而低多元化群体仅为490次。当作者使用整个入学班级的数据而非仅分析特定学生群体来衡量多元化时，两种研究生项目的结果依然一致。尽管仍有许多混杂因素可以解释这些结果，但 Mitra、Golder 和 Topchy 实施了一些控制变量。实际上，控制变量的数量相当多——在论文的潜在局限性列表中看到“第十三点”的情况并不常见。
The alternative explanations
其他解释
The authors provided a long list of possible confounders. For example, they removed the top and bottom 5 percent of starting salaries to rule out outliers (which didn’t affect the results). They gave each school a separate time trend to see if there were local economic factors, but the results stayed largely the same. They also tested various measures of diversity, examined different diversity thresholds, and controlled for university prestige, size, and urban settings. None of those changed the trends.
作者列出了一长串可能的混杂因素。例如，他们剔除了起薪最高和最低的5%以排除异常值（这并未影响结果）。他们为每所学校设定了独立的时间趋势，以观察是否存在地方经济因素，但结果基本保持不变。他们还测试了各种多元化衡量标准，检查了不同的多元化阈值，并控制了大学声誉、规模和城市环境等变量。这些都没有改变研究趋势。
They also plotted each school’s cohorts individually and found that the diversity/salary correlation was positive and significant 40 times and negative and significant 19 times. For law schools, the numbers were 64 positive and 28 negative. Switching from median starting salary to mean starting salary had no effect. Only one of the 13 added any nuance to the big picture. In that case, the trend was stronger for students entering the public sector or joining large companies. Otherwise, there was little evidence of factors that might be throwing off the results.
他们还绘制了每所学校班级的个体图表，发现多元化与薪资的正相关且显著的情况有40次，负相关且显著的有19次。对于法学院，正相关为64次，负相关为28次。将中位数起薪改为平均起薪也没有影响。在13个控制变量中，只有一个为整体情况增加了一些细微差别：对于进入公共部门或加入大公司的学生，这种趋势更为强烈。除此之外，几乎没有证据表明有其他因素会干扰研究结果。
Is there a way these two factors are linked that isn’t causal and wasn’t considered by Mitra, Golder, and Topchy? Possibly. But the effect appears robust and seems to show up no matter how the analysis is done. The big unanswered question is how this effect arises. It’s unlikely to be driven simply by employers’ preference for schools with historically diverse student bodies or by the fact that prestigious schools tend to have more diverse classes, as both are accounted for in the analysis. It’s entirely possible that people who experience more diverse perspectives present as more impressive during the hiring process, but it’s not clear how.
这两个因素之间是否存在非因果关系且未被作者考虑的联系？有可能。但这种效应看起来很稳健，无论采用何种分析方法，它似乎都会出现。目前尚未解决的大问题是这种效应是如何产生的。它不太可能仅仅是因为雇主偏好历史上多元化的学校，也不太可能是因为名校往往有更多元化的班级，因为分析中已经考虑了这两个因素。完全有可能的是，经历过更多元化视角的人在招聘过程中表现得更令人印象深刻，但具体原因尚不清楚。
Advocating change
倡导变革
It’s obvious that the study was motivated by the Supreme Court ruling blocking affirmative action. The authors note that the court’s decision rested on three points: that the benefits of diversity were difficult to quantify, that they weren’t directly connected to the goals of education institutions, and that there was no clear standard for determining when an affirmative action program had accomplished enough to be ended.
显而易见，这项研究的动机是最高法院禁止平权行动的裁决。作者指出，法院的裁决基于三点：多元化的益处难以量化；多元化与教育机构的目标没有直接联系；以及缺乏明确的标准来确定平权行动计划何时已达成目标并应予以终止。
The authors argue that they’ve cleared those objections by providing a measurable goal that serves as a valid endpoint for professional education. They also note that the measurement itself provides an indication of when diversity is sufficient that all entering classes benefit from it. On that basis, they argue that the ruling ending these programs should be reconsidered. “Courts should revisit affirmative action on the basis…”
作者认为，他们通过提供一个可衡量的目标，为专业教育提供了一个有效的终点，从而消除了这些反对意见。他们还指出，这种衡量本身就提供了一个指标，表明何时多元化程度已足够，从而使所有入学班级都能从中受益。在此基础上，他们主张应重新考虑终止这些计划的裁决。“法院应在……的基础上重新审视平权行动。”