Up in Stem, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions With the Great Recession

Liu, Shimeng; Sun, Weizeng; Winters, John V.

doi:10.1111/coep.12396

Cited by 18 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Most prior work at the four-year college level finds that, to some extent, expected wages influence students' choices (Altonji et al, 2016). Consistent with this finding, a recent line of work shows that the composition of college majors changed following the Great Recession, with more students pursuing "recession-proof" majors (Shu, 2016;Liu et al, 2018;Ersoy, 2019). Choi et al (2018) also show that the occurrence of "superstar" firms with abnormally high stock returns increases the number of four-year college students majoring in related fields.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Community College Program Choices in the Wake of Local Job Losses

Acton

2021

Journal of Labor Economics

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Deciding which field to study is one of the most consequential decisions college students make, but most research on the topic focuses on students attending four-year colleges. To understand how students attending community colleges make field of study decisions, I link administrative educational records of recent high school graduates with local mass layoff and plant closing announcements. I find that declines in local employment deter students from entering closely related community college programs and instead induce them to enroll in other vocationally-oriented programs. I further document that students predominantly shift enrollment between programs that lead to occupations requiring similar skills.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Community College Program Choices in the Wake of Local Job Losses

Acton

2021

Journal of Labor Economics

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“…Our study also extends existing studies conducted only with current Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) students (Roach and Sauermann 2017;Sauermann and Roach 2012), many of whom face a very different job market than do non-STEM students, by surveying students from both non-STEM and STEM fields. And our study advances a literature on how recessions affect college major choice among college students by considering how a negative job market shock affects a wider range of outcomes, from aspirations to priorities to program satisfaction, among PhD students of different years (Ersoy 2019;Liu Sun and Winters 2019;Shu 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Through Their Own Eyes: The Implications of COVID-19 for PhD Students

et al. 2020

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COVID-19 is expected to radically alter higher education in the United States and to further limit the availability of tenure-track academic positions. How has the pandemic and its associated fallout affected doctoral students’ career aspirations and priorities? We investigate this question by comparing responses to a PhD career survey prior to and following significant developments in the pandemic. We find little evidence that the pandemic caused substantial shifts in PhD students’ aspirations and priorities. However, some differences emerge when considering later dates in our survey period, particularly among more senior students who express a greater interest in some non-academic careers and job characteristics. Contrary to expectation, we also find evidence that the pandemic improved some students’ perceptions of their academic departments. In our conclusion, we speculate whether steps taken by the comparatively well-resourced institution that we study helped to mitigate some of the more negative consequences of the pandemic.

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“…We followed the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) classification to group college majors into eight categories [ 44 ]. If a major appeared that was not on the NSF list, we followed the definitions of Liu, Sun, & Winters [ 45 ] because they expanded the NSF classification to include as many majors as possible in their study. If a respondent reported more than one major and the two majors were in the same field, we placed that respondent in the corresponding category (e.g., social sciences or STEM).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“College fields of study and substance use”

Chen

2020

BMC Public Health

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Background Numerous studies have documented factors that are associated with substance use behaviors among college-aged individuals. However, relatively few studies have considered the heterogeneity of the college experience by field of study (i.e., college major) and how that educational context might affect students’ health behaviors differently. Drawing from theories and prior research, this study investigates whether college majors are associated with different substance use behaviors, both during college and upon graduation. Methods The study analyzed longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97 (N = 1031), specifically data on individuals who obtained a bachelor’s degree, to examine the associations between college fields of study and trajectories of three substance use behaviors: smoking, heavy alcohol use, and marijuana use. Results The results indicate that social science and business majors were associated with more substance use behaviors than arts and humanities and STEM majors. However, social science majors were associated with a faster decrease in substance use behaviors over time. Importantly, the differences we found in mean levels of substance use behaviors and trajectories were not explained by demographic characteristics, family SES background, childhood health conditions, and employment experience. Further analysis that examined college major and each substance use behavior individually suggests that the associations were stronger for heavy alcohol use and marijuana use. Moreover, we found the associations were more pronounced in men than women. Conclusions The study finds that not all college majors show the same level of engagement in substance use behaviors over time, and that the associations also vary by (1) the specific substance use behavior examined and (2) by gender. These findings suggest it is important to consider that the different learning and educational contexts that college majors provide may also be more or less supportive of certain health behaviors, such as substance use. Practical implications are discussed.

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Up in Stem, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions With the Great Recession

Cited by 18 publications

References 44 publications

Community College Program Choices in the Wake of Local Job Losses

Community College Program Choices in the Wake of Local Job Losses

Through Their Own Eyes: The Implications of COVID-19 for PhD Students

“College fields of study and substance use”

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