Major Decisions? Estimating the Signaling Effect of a College Major

A large body of work demonstrates that attending college provides secure avenues for the upward mobility of socioeconomically disadvantaged people. An increasingly relevant issue is how college returns vary by the major a student declares while attending college. Doctoral student in sociology Aleksei Opacic will estimate the impact of college major choice on adult earnings. He will construct an original dataset comprised of seven cohorts of students who graduated from a Georgia public high school between 2007 and 2013, their college and course trajectories, and the nature of their postsecondary skillsets for his study.