Choosing root domain for a subdomain

[UWPCE]

We own two root domains in the .edu space. According to Open Site Explorer, one has a domain authority of 76, while the other has a DA of 94.

We operate a collection of degree microsites as subdomains of the lower-ranking root domain, e.g. www.degreename.domain76.edu. All other things being equal, would these sites benefit if we migrated them to www.degreename.domain94.edu?

The question seems to hinge on whether subdomains inherit any of the root domain's authority, and the answers I have seen to that question are "sometimes" and "maybe".

Lastly, as an alternative, would we realize greater SEO improvements by moving the degrees to a directory structure under domain94, i.e. www.domain94.edu/degrees/degree-name?

Thank you for your help!

[OlegKorneitchouk]

From my experience*, using a subfolder structure will yield the best results.

I think the more important factor is how these pages are linked to from within other pages on your website. You need to build links from high authority internal pages to your degree pages using keyword rich anchor text. If you do this from both websites, I don't think it will make much of a difference which domain the pages are hosted on. i.e. if you link to the degree pages sitewide from both domains, you will see similar results hosting them on either domain.

So if you are going to move the degrees to the other domain, you might as well switch to a subfolder structure. If not, focus on building a stronger internal link profile.

*As you said, this topic is highly debated. Google's official stance is that there is no difference for ranking between subfolder/subdirectory. They also say that if the content on the subdomain is highly relevant to the content on the root domain, they will be treated as the same domain (authority overflows).