The Wage Premium on Higher Education: Evidence from the Polish Graduate Tracking System

The paper justifies the possibility of estimating wage premiums that higher study education graduates may receive based on the administrative data from the Polish Graduate Tracking System. The data on wages in the year preceding the admission to a given study cycle were used, along with the data from the year after graduation. For the first first-cycle full full-time study programme, the average growth in wages in relation to every each subsequent year of education ranged from 20% to 40% depending on the area of study under which a given field of study was classified. For full-time second second-cycle studies, the rate of return was 50%–60%. In the case of part-time studies, these growth rates were considerably lower.