Even before the Trump administration’s controversial stance on diversity, efforts to promote diverse student bodies in US universities were fraught with debate. A 2023 Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action programs violated the Constitution marked a pivotal moment, citing the difficulty in measuring their benefits.

A new study challenges this notion by suggesting that graduates of diverse classes may indeed earn higher salaries. The research, led by Debanjan Mitra, Peter Golder, and Mariya Topchy, argues that financial gains for students from diverse peer groups could be significant enough to prompt a reconsideration of earlier court rulings.

However, the path to understanding this connection is fraught with challenges. Research on diversity’s impact is complicated by factors such as school quality, baseline diversity levels, and economic conditions at graduation time. While some studies have suggested benefits from diverse cohorts, evidence remains limited.

The authors narrow their analysis to business and law schools, focusing solely on starting salaries over 20 years of data from nearly 350 institutions. Despite only covering around 75% of each graduating class, the researchers argue that their metric provides a robust basis for assessing diversity’s financial impact.