Most public colleges and universities rely heavily on state financial support. As state budgets have tightened in recent decades, appropriations for higher education have declined substantially. Despite concerns expressed by policymakers and scholars that the declines in state support have...

For-profit providers are becoming an increasingly important fixture of U.S. higher education markets. Students who attend for-profit institutions take on more educational debt, have worse labor market outcomes, and are more likely to default than students attending similarly selective public...

Males and females are markedly different in their choice of college major. Two main reasons have been suggested for the gender gap: differences in innate abilities and differences in preferences. This paper addresses the question of how college majors are chosen, focusing on the underlying...

Because students rely on their subjective expectations when choosing a college major, understanding this process of expectations formation is crucial for education policy recommendations. This paper focuses on how college students form expectations about various major-specific outcomes. I...

This paper studies the determinants of college major choice using a unique "information" experiment embedded in a survey. We first ask respondents their self-beliefs - beliefs about their own expected earnings and other major-specific outcomes conditional on various majors, their population...

When students fund their education through loans, changes in student borrowing and tuition are interlinked. Higher tuition costs raise loan demand, but loan supply also affects equilibrium tuition costs - for example, by relaxing students' funding constraints. To resolve this simultaneity...

Despite a robust college premium, college attendance rates in the United States have remained stagnant and exhibit a substantial socioeconomic gradient. We focus on information gaps - specifically, incomplete information about college benefits and costs - as a potential explanation for these...

Standard observed characteristics explain only part of the differences between men and women in education choices and labor market trajectories. Using an experiment to derive students’ levels of overconfidence, and preferences for competitiveness and risk, this paper investigates whether these...

This paper studies how individuals believe human capital investments will affect their future career and family life. We conducted a survey of high-ability currently enrolled college students and elicited beliefs about how their choice of college major, and whether to complete their degree at...