Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification Using an Information Experiment

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper studies the determinants of college major choice using a unique "information" experiment embedded in a survey. We first ask respondents their self-beliefs-beliefs about their own expected earnings and other major-specific outcomes conditional on various majors, their population beliefs-beliefs about the population distribution of these characteristics, as well as their subjective beliefs that they will graduate with each major. After eliciting these baseline beliefs, we provide students with information on the true population distribution of these characteristics, and observe how this new information causes respondents to update their beliefs. Our experimental design creates unique panel data. We first show that respondents make substantial errors in population beliefs, and logically revise their self-beliefs in response to the information. Subjective beliefs about future major choice are positively and strongly associated with beliefs about self-earnings, ability, and spouse's earnings. However, cross-sectional estimates are severely biased upward because of the positive correlation of tastes with earnings and ability. The experimental variation in beliefs allows us to identify a rich model of college major choice, with which we estimate the relative importance of earnings and earnings uncertainty on the choice of college major versus other factors, such as ability to complete coursework, spouse's characteristics, and tastes for majors. While earnings are a significant determinant of major choice, tastes are the dominant factor in the choice of field of study. We also investigate why males and females choose different college majors.

What Drives Enrolment Gaps in Further Education? The Role of Beliefs in Sequential Schooling Decisions

“…As advocated in previous studies (e.g. Blass et al 2010;Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner 2014b;Wiswall and Zafar 2015a), we also allow students to express uncertainty about their future choices by asking them to state how likely they believe it is that they will continue in full-time education, on a 0-100% scale. Given that students may be subject to different shocks that may not yet have been realized at the time of the survey, it is important to allow students to express this uncertainty.…”

“…Second, our study relates to the literature that investigates how beliefs about pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits affect students' choice of major (Zafar 2013;Wiswall and Zafar 2015a, 2018, 6 high-school track (Giustinelli 2016), and which specific university to attend (Delavande and Zafar 2019). In contrast to these studies, our analysis focuses on students' decisions to continue in further education (i.e.…”

Survey Measures of Family Decision Processes for Econometric Analysis of Schooling Decisions

“…Dominitz and Manski sequentially elicited 13. These include Arcidiacono et al (2012), Giustinelli (forthcoming), Stinebrickner (2012, 2014), Wiswall andZafar (2015a, 2015b), and Zafar (2011and Zafar ( , 2013, some of which we describe further below.…”

“…He uses the data to study gender differences in observed college major choices and expectations formation by students. In a follow-up study with NYU students, Wiswall andZafar (2015a, 2015b) also analyze college major choice and formation of students' expectations about their college major choice In studies concerned with schooling expectations, Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner (2012Stinebrickner ( , 2014) collect a panel of beliefs about own grade performance and ability from Berea College undergraduates. Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner (2012) use the data to model and analyze college dropout behavior and find that learning about own academic ability and grade performance plays a prominent role in determining observed college dropout.…”

“…Similarly, Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner (2014) find that learning about own academic ability and grade performance is an important determinants of students opting out from Science and choosing less academically challenging majors. Wiswall and Zafar (2015b) perform an experiment informing a sample of NYU undergraduates about realized earnings in relevant subpopulations of college graduates. They use the data to study whether and how study participants revise their baseline subjective expectations about own future earning and college major choice, as a function of the received information.…”