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Stereotypes about Fields of Study [pdf]
- jefftk 4y agoFinally, our results may help to partly explain several striking and perhaps puzzling facts about students’ human capital decisions. For example, more American undergraduates are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in journalism than there are journalists in the entire country. Psychology majors outnumber accounting majors in the United States, and yet there are eight times as many accountants as psychologists. Students take on considerable debt to fund Master’s programs with appealing but unlikely associated careers (e.g., film studies). Ex ante, of course, rational mechanisms could have fully explained these patterns: e.g., students with correct beliefs might rationally pursue certain career paths which, though very unlikely to pan out, they feel are worth the risk (e.g., journalism or film), or students may realize that certain majors (e.g., psychology) provide a general education not intended for use in any particular sector. Our findings suggest that mistaken beliefs may also contribute to these patterns: certain fields of study may appear especially appealing because students believe they lead to their stereotypical jobs with exaggerated likelihoods.