Download This PaperUp in STEM, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions with The Great Recession
Liu, Shimeng, Weizeng Sun and John Winters, 2019. “Up in STEM, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions with the Great Recession,” Contemporary Economic Policy 37:3, 476-491.
35 Pages Posted: 9 Jun 2019
There are 2 versions of this paper
Up in Stem, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions with the Great Recession
Up in STEM, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions with The Great Recession
Date Written: May 22, 2019
Abstract
We use the American Community Survey (ACS) to investigate the extent to which college major decisions were affected during and after the Great Recession with special attention to business and STEM fields, as well as the heterogeneity across demographic groups. Several conclusions are reached. First, the Great Recession increased the frequency of STEM majors but decreased the frequency of business majors. Second, the increase for STEM fields spreads across several detailed STEM majors, while the decrease in business majors is especially concentrated among finance and management. Third, we find strong heterogeneous effects of the Great Recession by gender and race/ethnicity.
Keywords: Great Recession, College Major, Business, Finance, STEM
JEL Classification: I20, J24
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation