1 More Minority Student = $13K More In MBA Salaries. New Study Puts A Price On Diversity

The benefits of racial diversity in professional school classrooms have long been asserted but rarely measured precisely. A new study published in the journal Nature changes that calculus – and the numbers are not small.

The paper, Racial Diversity in Higher Education Is Associated With Higher Student Salaries, authored by Debanjan Mitra of the University of Connecticut School of Business, Peter Golder of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and Mariya Topchy, a UConn doctoral alum, finds that higher racial diversity in MBA and law school cohorts is directly associated with higher starting salaries at graduation – not just for students from underrepresented groups, but for entire classes.

Published April 30, the study is the first multi-school, multi-decade investigation to track educational cohorts from matriculation through graduation and document the objective economic benefits of racial diversity in the labor market.

THE NUMBERS

The researchers compiled two large data sets: 2,964 MBA cohorts across 141 business schools over 29 years, and 3,386 law school cohorts across 200 law schools over 21 years – more than 6,000 cohorts in total. After controlling for student quality and school-specific differences, they found a consistent positive relationship between cohort racial diversity at matriculation and median starting salaries at graduation.

The marginal effect is striking. Adding a single underrepresented minority student to a cohort of 100 is associated with a cumulative first-year salary gain of roughly $30,000 across a law school class and $13,000 for an MBA class. Because starting salary differences compound over a career, those initial gains translate into $3.8 million and $1.6 million, respectively, in additional lifetime earnings for the full cohort – all attributable to that one additional student.

“When we started our work, we expected to uncover the opposite finding,” Mitra says in a news release from UConn School of Business announcing the findings. “This is a very, very robust finding. The data spoke – and it did so loudly.”

WHY IT PAYS

“It’s the most comprehensive study of its kind to date,” Golder says. “We compiled data from true student cohorts over many years and across two different educational contexts so that we could confidently assess the role of racial diversity in higher education.”

The researchers’ analysis isolates the impact of racial diversity itself rather than the reputational advantages of attending a prestigious or well-endowed institution. The proposed mechanism is largely educational: students in diverse environments encounter a broader range of experiences and perspectives, strengthening adaptability, critical thinking, and communication skills that employers reward.

Diverse cohorts also generate richer professional networks at graduation, the study found, opening access to job opportunities, mentorships, and contacts. And the benefits extend to all students, regardless of background.

“Our results indicate that policies promoting racial diversity boost salaries for the entire cohort of students,” Golder says. “The key implication of our study is pretty clear, namely that efforts to reduce racial diversity by outlawing affirmative action and dropping DEI initiatives will make us all poorer.”

A DIRECT ANSWER TO JUSTICE ROBERTS

The study’s framing in Nature engages the charged legal and policy landscape. In June 2023, the Supreme Court, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, struck down race-conscious admissions at most colleges and universities. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. acknowledged the diversity rationale institutions had long advanced but concluded that its educational benefits were “inescapably imponderable” – in other words, unverifiable in practice.

Poets&Quants covered the ruling extensively at the time, reporting on the immediate reactions from business school deans and admissions directors who – certain of the benefits of diversity in their classrooms – vowed to pursue it through race-neutral means. P&Q‘s July 2024 analysis documented the enrollment fallout: year-over-year declines in minority MBA enrollment at a large majority of top-ranked programs; but a 2025 follow-up found a more uneven picture, with some schools posting significant gains after retooling their recruiting strategies while others fell further behind.

Mitra’s paper takes direct aim at Roberts’s “imponderable” framing, arguing that policies to increase or leverage racial diversity – affirmative action and DEI programs among them – demonstrably enhance human capital and benefit society. The study offers concrete market evidence, Mitra has said, that employers themselves put a premium on graduates trained in diverse cohorts. “I’ve never found such a robust finding,” he told The Washington Post. “We kind of beat at it in every way.”

Mitra said he hopes the new empirical evidence will reignite public conversations about the role of racial diversity throughout society. “It’s not in anybody’s interest that classes lose racial diversity,” he said.

THE POLICY MOMENT

The paper lands as federal pressure on campus diversity programs has intensified sharply. The Trump administration has warned schools that receive federal funds they face potential funding cuts if they maintain DEI initiatives or apply any form of race preference in admissions. The Justice Department has opened investigations into more than 50 universities, law schools, and medical schools, according to a PBS investigation, to determine whether race is still being factored into admissions decisions. A coalition of state attorneys general is fighting in court the administration’s attempts to compel schools to turn over admissions data.

Not everyone finds the study’s conclusions persuasive. Jonathan Butcher, acting director of the Center for Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told The Washington Post that affirmative action harms the students it is intended to help by placing them in environments for which they may be underprepared. He cited research suggesting DEI programs have failed to improve attitudes or behavior.

DON’T MISS AFTER AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, SOME MBA PROGRAMS BOOST DIVERSITY – OTHERS FALL BEHIND