My paper analyzes the impact that different levels of education and undergraduate degree fields have on earnings. I use Census data from the 2017 American Community Survey and employ OLS regression specifications that include control variables such as gender, age and industry of job. Overall, I find that a professional degree and an undergraduate degree in a STEM field have the highest returns on earnings. My research can be used to better understand the returns from the different levels of education and degree fields from a comparative perspective. This is especially important at a time when the costs of higher education are increasing.
