 College-major choice to college-then-major choice: Experimental evidence from Chinese college admissions reformsLiping Ma, Xin Li, Qiong Zhu and Xiaoyang Ye Economics of Education Review, 2023, vol. 94, issue C Abstract: One of the most important mechanism design policies in college admissions is to let students choose a college major sequentially (college-then-major choice) or jointly (college-major choice). In the context of the Chinese meta-major reforms that transition from college-major choice to college-then-major choice, we provide the first experimental evidence on the information frictions and heterogeneous preferences that students have in their response to the meta-major option. In a randomized experiment with a nationwide sample of 11,424 high school graduates, we find that providing information on the benefits of a meta-major significantly increased students’ willingness to choose the meta-major; however, information about specific majors and assignment mechanisms did not affect students major choice preferences. We also find that information provision mostly affected the preferences of students who were from disadvantaged backgrounds, lacked accurate information, did not have clear major preferences, or were risk loving. Keywords: College major choice; Behavioral economics; Information friction; Randomized experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:94:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000274 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102380 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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