Meta-Analyzing the Relation between Grades and Salary

Academicians and business people have disagreed about whether grades predict occupational outcomes such as training success, job performance, and salary. Recent meta-analyses have suggested that grades are useful predictors of training success and job performance. Unfortunately, the results of meta-analyses examining the grades–salary relation were limited by methodological problems. These problems included confusing income and salary as the same dependent variable, not conducting moderator analyses, using unorthodox schemes of weighting correlations, and not correcting for research artifacts. The current meta-analysis focused only on studies that reported salary as the dependent variable and found uncorrected correlations of .13 for grades and starting salary, .18 for grades and current salary, and .05 for grades and salary growth. The correlations for grades and starting salary rose to approximately .20 when corrected for relevant artifacts and the corrected grades–current salary correlations rose to the mid- to high .20s. Moderator analyses are also reported.