We identify the location of an executive's undergraduate university education as a proxy for their geographic preference. Executives whose university education took place near a firm's headquarters are paid 4.40% to 11.01% less than their peers, suggesting the transparency of university education allows firms to use the location of their headquarters as a form of intangible compensation. This geographic preference discount persists across all levels of the C-Suite, corporate governance quality, time periods, and after controlling for opaque measures of where the executive grew up. Our study shows the location of an executive's undergraduate university is a consequential component of his or her geographic preference, and that such preference has meaningful implications for his or her compensation.