High school human capital portfolio and college outcomes

Guy Tchuente

Studies in Economics from School of Economics, University of Kent

Abstract: This paper assesses the relationship between courses taken in high school and college major choice. Using High School and Beyond survey data, I study the empirical relationship between college performance and different types of courses taken during high school. I find that students sort into college majors according to subjects in which they acquired more skills in high school. However, I find a U-shaped relationship between the diversification of high school courses a student takes and their college performance. The underlying relation linking high school to college is assessed by estimating a structural model of high school human capital acquisition and college major choice. Policy experiments suggest that taking an additional quantitative course in high school increases the probability that a college student chooses a science, technology, engineering, or math major by four percentage points.

Keywords: human capital; discrete choice; college major (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-edu and nep-hrm
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https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/repec/1516.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: High School Human Capital Portfolio and College Outcomes (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:1516

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