Up in STEM, Down in Business: Changing College Major Decisions with the Great Recession 

Contemporary Economic Policy

Shimeng Liu, Weizeng Sun, John V. Winters

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 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (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.

JEL classification: I20; J24

Read more: https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.12396