Download This PaperThe Role of Learning in Returns to College Major: Evidence from 2.8 Million Reviews of 150,000 Professors
39 Pages Posted: 9 Dec 2022 Last revised: 22 Mar 2023
Date Written: November 12, 2022
Abstract
Why do some college majors have much higher returns? I ask if differences in returns are due to differences in quality of education across majors. I use a novel dataset where college students rate courses for academic difficulty, and show that academic standards are highly heterogeneous by major. In Molecular Biosciences 84% of professors are rated as average difficulty or higher, while just 36% are in Sociology. Major difficulty explains the majority of variation in survey measured study hours, suggesting grade inflation has negative effects on learning, and supporting the use of difficulty as a proxy for learning. I show that major difficulty predicts earnings in the ACS. Using an event study approach in the NLSY97 and university-major fixed effects with the College Scorecard, I give evidence that the effect is causal. I estimate that one-third of the variation in major premiums can be explained by differences in learning.
JEL Classification: I26, J24, J31
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