Why Majors Matter: Occupation Specificity, Job Skills, and College Selectivity

Autor: Neil Chin, Colton Cronin, Deborah M. Weiss, Matthew L. Spitzer
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: SSRN Electronic Journal.
ISSN: 1556-5068
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3946507
Popis: We provide new evidence on the returns to college majors and institutional selectivity. Using unique resume data, we devise new groupings of majors and use these to construct five measures that characterize majors. Applying these measures to the National Survey of College Graduates, we find that majors that lead to jobs that are math-intensive or writing-intensive have higher earnings and also a higher return to selectivity. Majors that are occupationally specific also have higher earnings but have a lower return to institutional selectivity. We find that the value of selectivity relative to major increases as selectivity rises. Keywords
Databáze: OpenAIRE