Race and Gender Differences in College Major Choice

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5741322
AutoresLisa Dickson (University of Maryland, Baltimore County, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen627
Número1
Páginas108-124
Fecha de publicación2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0002716209348747
OpenAlexW2096403412
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas39
Referencias citadas16

College major choice varies substantially by gender, race, and ethnicity among college graduates. This study investigates whether these differences are present at the start of the college career and whether they can be explained by variation in academic preparation. It estimates a multinomial logit to evaluate whether students of similar academic backgrounds make similar college major choices at the start of their college career. The results demonstrate that significant differences by gender, race, and ethnicity persist in initial college major choice even after controlling for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score of the student and the high school class rank of the student. Gender differences in major choice are much larger than racial and ethnic disparities. Furthermore, women are significantly more likely to switch away from an initial major in engineering than are white men

Aptitude · Class (philosophy) · Demographic economics · Developmental psychology · Econometrics · Economics · Ethnic group · Logit · Multinomial logistic regression · Race (biology) · Racial differences · Rank (graph theory) · Sociology · Test (biology) · Variation (astronomy) · Demography · Gender Studies · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Higher Education Research Studies · Labor market dynamics and wage inequality · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology