College Major Choice and Ability: Why is General Ability not Enough?

Tjasa Loga and Sašo Polanec

LICOS Discussion Papers from LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven

Abstract: The choice of college major is one of the most important decisions students make. In this paper we study the impact of ability on college major choice,using a data set for full-time students enrolled in four-year business and economics programs offered by the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana. We distinguish between general and major-specific ability, which measure different dimensions of cognitive ability. We show that both measures are important in explaining individual decisions and that misleading results can follow from observing only commonly employed general ability. We also find important gender differences as males are more likely to base their major choice on the ability to complete coursework, while females are more likely to decide according to unobserved preferences.

Keywords: College Majors; Ability; Gender Differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-hpe, nep-lab, nep-neu and nep-spo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.econ.kuleuven.be/licos/publications/dp/dp274.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: College major choice and ability: Why is general ability not enough? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lic:licosd:27411

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