Full Citation

Title: Are Changes of Major Major Changes/ The Roles of Grades, Gender, and Preferences in College Major Switching

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2017

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: The choice of college major is a key stage in the career search process. About 40% of college students switch majors at least once, suggesting that major choice is a process rather than a single decision. This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of major switching, modeling the choice process as a complex matching problem between student and major. We posit that both academics and preferences can lead students to switch majors, and our results confirm this. We first show that low grades serve as a signal of academic mismatch. Low grades predict switching majors - and the lower the grades, the larger the switch in academic terms. When students switch majors, their grades improve - and the larger the switch, the greater the improvement. Academics are only one factor in major switches, however. Overwhelmingly, when students switch majors, they are drawn to majors that look like them: females to female-heavy majors, blacks to black-heavy majors, and so on. Women also flee competitive majors - especially STEM majors - at much higher rates than men, even controlling for grades, and this includes women who enter college with high test scores. Women who leave STEM switch to majors that are much less male-dominated and competitive, suggesting that leaving STEM is more about fleeing the culture and makeup of STEM majors than it is about fleeing science.

Url: http://www.sole-jole.org/17322.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Astorne-Figari, Carmen; Speer, Jamin D

Publisher: University of Memphis

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Gender

Countries: