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.

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.

Diversity and salaries

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. 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.