This paper examines the heterogeneous effects of education and work experience on job quality of migrant workers measured from income, working hours, and social insurance in Chinese cities. Results show that both the years of schooling and work experience are positively correlated with the overall job quality. The years of schooling affect all three dimensions of job quality, while work experience does not significantly influence working hours. The marginal returns to years of schooling are 9 times higher than those to work experience. Further, education has indirect effects on job quality through influencing occupational levels and formal/informal employment while work experience does not. Education not only fundamentally sets the starting point of job quality by influencing the attributes of migrant workers' first job, but also indirectly affects the further improvement of job quality as indicated by the significant differences between the returns to human capital (i.e. years of schooling and work experience) in jobs at different levels.