California Accepted Papers Paper:
Ability, Beliefs and College Major Choice
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Economists have demonstrated over the past several years that the choice of college major matters, particularly for post-graduation outcomes such as income. What is still unknown is how students choose majors. While there is a growing literature on the effect of students' beliefs about future labor market outcomes, there has been little work studying students’ beliefs about their ability to complete a field of study. I address this issue using a field experiment in which I elicit beliefs about students' own ability in fields they list as being their top two choices of major. Students are then randomized to receive information about their relative ability in those fields. I find that students in my sample often have large errors in their beliefs about their ability in their top two choices of major. I also find that 20 percent of participants believe they're relatively bad at their top choice of major when they are in fact relatively good. Also, a quarter of students who list a non-STEM field as their top choice of major but list a STEM field as their second choice believe they are relatively bad at the STEM field when they are in fact relatively good. I will also discuss the use of coursework and demographic administrative data, which includes gender, parental income, high school class rank as well as other important background characteristics in measuring the effect of the intervention on important higher education outcomes such as grades, major choice and degree completion.
