Racial diversity in higher education is associated with higher student salaries.

. As highlighted in the recent Supreme Court decision, there is no empirical evidence on racial diversity's association with student cohort salaries. Here, to address this gap, we compile two unique and comprehensive datasets: 2,964 Master of Business Administration cohorts across 141 business schools over 29 years and 3,386 Juris Doctor cohorts across 200 law schools over 21 years. In both datasets, we find that higher cohort racial diversity is associated with higher cohort median salaries at graduation across numerous model specifications and after controlling for student quality, universities and years. The key implication is that policies to increase or leverage racial diversity (for example, affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion programmes) enhance human capital and benefit society.