Race and Gender Differences in College Major Choice

Bibliographic Data

ID5741322
AuthorsLisa Dickson (University of Maryland, Baltimore County, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume627
Issue1
Pages108-124
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0002716209348747
OpenAlexW2096403412
LanguageEN
Citations received39
References cited16

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