3 Questions
Dr. Kim Weeden
The Link Between a Student's Family Income and Their Choice of a College Major?
@WeedenKim
Dr. Mike Robinson host of 3 Question interviewed Dr. Kim Weeden, Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Cornell University The Link Between a Student's Family Income and Their Choice of a College Major?
Dr. Robinson: Dr. Weeden in your research you have indicated there is a correlation between a student’s family income level and their choice of college majors.
Dr. Robinson: Why is the family income influential? And what are the types of college majors’ students from high income families pursue compared to students from low to moderate income families?
Dr. Weeden: My research shows that students who major in the arts and humanities come from families with higher mean income than students who choose vocationally oriented majors, like public administration, education, or law enforcement. The disciplinary social sciences and the sciences fall somewhere in the middle. There are certainly exceptions: food and culinary arts majors come from the highest-earning families, on average. The average family income of business majors – often touted as a “practical” degree – exceeds that of math majors. On the other hand, theology majors tend to come from fairly low-income families.
I think there are three reasons why family income is associated with major. First, family income has an enormous effect on the academic preparation that students have when they enter college, their exposure to different types of potential majors, and the types of institutions into which they are admitted. This is partly because higher-income families live in neighborhoods with better-resourced schools, and partly because higher-income families can, and do, spend much more money on extracurricular enrichment activities, tutoring, private schools, educational summer camps, computers, and so on for their kids.
Whatever the reason, kids from higher-income (and wealthier) families tend to score higher on standardized tests, so they are more likely to get into highly selective colleges that offer majors like German Studies and not majors like Law Enforcement. And, kids from more advantaged families are more likely to have had the chance in high school to cultivate an interest in the arts, work in a well-stocked chemistry lab, or travel abroad and become fascinated by international relations. It’s not surprising that low-income students are less likely to enter college as music majors, given many went to high schools that cut their music programs decades ago (if they ever had them).
Second, parents who are high earners also tend have college degrees themselves. College-educated parents are more likely to be familiar with the wide range of majors and opportunities that are offered in college, and they can help their children navigate this terrain. College-educated parents can also impart what Alvin Gouldner long ago called a culture of critical discourse, which is a way of thinking, speaking, and making arguments that is very compatible with the pedagogies of the liberal arts and sciences. And, college-educated parents may also have first-hand knowledge that, in the end, it’s most important to complete the degree, in any major. I’ll return to this idea.
Third, kids from higher-income or wealthier families are more likely to have a financial cushion – even if it’s just free room and board -- to support them while they are transitioning from school to work. This gives students from higher-income families a kind of freedom that low-income students don’t enjoy: high-income kids are able to make riskier educational decisions, because they know that they have a viable fallback if Plan A doesn’t work out, or if they can’t pay off their loans immediately. It’s the same phenomenon in entrepreneurship: many of the high-profile tech giants in the US, even those who didn’t finish college, come from middle or upper middle class families, because these are the kids whose parents who could support them while they were building computers in a garage. Their parents’ garage.
Dr. Robinson: Dr. Weeden, research has shown students from lower income families select majors with higher opportunities for employment and success than those from higher income families. Is there any data that suggest the family income and its correlation with a student’s choice of college majors are adversely impacting those students? And to what extent if any are students of color impacted by their choice of majors?
Dr. Weeden: The best major that a student can choose is the one that she loves enough to complete. Even if you just look at education in purely instrumental terms, as a means to the end of financial success, completing college is a much stronger predictor of employment prospects and future earnings than the major. One reason is that the linkage between majors and particular jobs is, at least in the United States, fairly weak. For example, according to Census Bureau data, only about 50% of engineering majors end up in engineering or even math-related occupations. For most majors, the percentage is even lower. The problem with choosing a “practical” major is that if it’s not also a major that the student loves or is good at, the odds of dropping out of college are higher.
“Practical” majors also vary enormously, and some aren’t especially rigorous or offer the most learning “bang for the buck.” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, using longitudinal data that tracked college students over time and measured their skills at the beginning and end of college, show that on average, business majors show less improvement in thinking, writing, and reasoning skills over the course of the college careers than other majors. Perhaps not surprisingly, business majors also spent less time studying, again on average, than other majors.
There’s also a question of what’s “practical” and what’s not. A culinary degree is practical -- what could be more practical than learning to cook well? -- but as any struggling chef can tell you, that doesn’t necessarily translate into solid employment prospects or high earnings. Other “practical” majors (e.g., nursing, education) are pipelines to jobs that are currently in high demand and that pay decent wages right out of college, but that have very modest long-term earnings potential.
On the flip side, there’s a tendency in American popular discourse to bash the humanities as being ““impractical” or “worthless.” However, as a recent Forbes article highlighted, many employers in technology actively seek liberal arts majors, because these students are especially good at solving problems, finding holes in arguments, and communicating well. These skills are in high demand, and are likely to be in the “knowledge economy” of the future.
The issue of race is interesting, because a lot of what look like racial differences in college major choice may be income effects in disguise. For example, we know that African American students are overrepresented among education majors, relative to their share of all college degree earners. (I like to point this out whenever I encounter an undergraduate student who says that the black-white test score gap occurs because “blacks don’t value education.”) Once you factor in gender and family socioeconomic status, net race differences in the likelihood of majoring in education largely disappear. We also know, though, that residential segregation by race means that students of color often have very different pre-college educational experiences and opportunities than white students, even given similar income levels. It isn’t entirely an income story.
Dr. Robinson: Is it safe to say, the practicality of selecting majors with career opportunities and growth ultimately will result in many of these students having higher incomes than their parents and thus impacting the type of college majors their children will select?
Dr. Weeden: You’re really talking about a three-generation effect: the grandparents, the adult children, and their kids. Sociologists have shown that advantages are “passed on” across multiple generations, where advantages might include attaining a college degree, having a high income, or working in a professional or managerial occupation. The effect of family background tends to weaken with each successive generation, which is just another way of saying that transmission of advantage between parents and children isn’t perfect. Unfortunately, there really aren’t any nationally representative, multi-generation data sets large enough to let us figure out how much of the upward (or downward) mobility we see in the data is due to college major choices of the earlier generations.
The other thing to keep in mind is that majors go in and out of fashion, not only in response to job market conditions but also to broader cultural trends. Right at the moment, we’re in an historical moment when kids and their parents are very anxious about the job market, and when higher education is being corporatized. This tends to push students into majors for purely instrumental reasons (“how much money can I make”), and to push universities to shift monies away from the humanities and toward business programs, which is one of the fastest growing majors. Even though, as I noted above, there’s little empirical justification for this based on assessments of learning outcomes.
In another 25 years, when today’s college students have college-aged kids of their own, the cultural and economic context may have shifted again. There will likely still be an association between family income and major choice, unless we figure out a way to eliminate inequalities by class and race in access to high quality schools and other educational opportunities. But, the form that this association takes – which students major in which fields -- may look very different than it does today.
About Dr. Kim Weeden:
I am a Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, where I also serve as the Robert S. Harrison Director of theInstitute for the Social Sciences and the Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality. I’m an affiliate of theCornell Population Center, the Center for the Study of Economy and Society, and the Cornell Institute for Compensation Studies. Until recently, I was a co-director and co-PI of CU-ADVANCE (now the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity) and the chair of the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility section of the ASA.
I’m also a founding member and one of the Deputy Editors of Sociological Science, a new, open access, peer-reviewed journal for the very best sociological research on general social processes. Our journal model eliminates R&Rs and lengthy review times (we’re averaging 12 days to decision, and promise no more than 30 days), brings intellectual exchanges about research out from behind the anonymity of the review process, and offers scholars, journalists, and policy makers immediate and free access to high-quality, peer-reviewed sociological research.
In my own research, I study income inequality, gender, social class, and education. Most of my research is quantitative, and uses large-scale, nationally representative surveys. I also teach courses on inequality, some for the Minor in Inequality Studies. For more details, please see the Research, Manuscripts, or CV pages on this web site.
I live in Ithaca with Jeff, who is a financial writer and homebrewer, and our son Quinn, who is currently into baseball, math, and Magic the Gathering (I know, I know …).
People occasionally ask me if I’m a triathlete. I might be, if only triathlons didn’t involve running or swimming. Instead, I lift heavy things and put them back down again. Filed under “activities that I like but don’t do often enough” are hiking, biking, skiing, gardening, and otherwise getting outside, often with a camera in hand.
Dr. Robinson: Dr. Weeden in your research you have indicated there is a correlation between a student’s family income level and their choice of college majors.
Dr. Robinson: Why is the family income influential? And what are the types of college majors’ students from high income families pursue compared to students from low to moderate income families?
Dr. Weeden: My research shows that students who major in the arts and humanities come from families with higher mean income than students who choose vocationally oriented majors, like public administration, education, or law enforcement. The disciplinary social sciences and the sciences fall somewhere in the middle. There are certainly exceptions: food and culinary arts majors come from the highest-earning families, on average. The average family income of business majors – often touted as a “practical” degree – exceeds that of math majors. On the other hand, theology majors tend to come from fairly low-income families.
I think there are three reasons why family income is associated with major. First, family income has an enormous effect on the academic preparation that students have when they enter college, their exposure to different types of potential majors, and the types of institutions into which they are admitted. This is partly because higher-income families live in neighborhoods with better-resourced schools, and partly because higher-income families can, and do, spend much more money on extracurricular enrichment activities, tutoring, private schools, educational summer camps, computers, and so on for their kids.
Whatever the reason, kids from higher-income (and wealthier) families tend to score higher on standardized tests, so they are more likely to get into highly selective colleges that offer majors like German Studies and not majors like Law Enforcement. And, kids from more advantaged families are more likely to have had the chance in high school to cultivate an interest in the arts, work in a well-stocked chemistry lab, or travel abroad and become fascinated by international relations. It’s not surprising that low-income students are less likely to enter college as music majors, given many went to high schools that cut their music programs decades ago (if they ever had them).
Second, parents who are high earners also tend have college degrees themselves. College-educated parents are more likely to be familiar with the wide range of majors and opportunities that are offered in college, and they can help their children navigate this terrain. College-educated parents can also impart what Alvin Gouldner long ago called a culture of critical discourse, which is a way of thinking, speaking, and making arguments that is very compatible with the pedagogies of the liberal arts and sciences. And, college-educated parents may also have first-hand knowledge that, in the end, it’s most important to complete the degree, in any major. I’ll return to this idea.
Third, kids from higher-income or wealthier families are more likely to have a financial cushion – even if it’s just free room and board -- to support them while they are transitioning from school to work. This gives students from higher-income families a kind of freedom that low-income students don’t enjoy: high-income kids are able to make riskier educational decisions, because they know that they have a viable fallback if Plan A doesn’t work out, or if they can’t pay off their loans immediately. It’s the same phenomenon in entrepreneurship: many of the high-profile tech giants in the US, even those who didn’t finish college, come from middle or upper middle class families, because these are the kids whose parents who could support them while they were building computers in a garage. Their parents’ garage.
Dr. Robinson: Dr. Weeden, research has shown students from lower income families select majors with higher opportunities for employment and success than those from higher income families. Is there any data that suggest the family income and its correlation with a student’s choice of college majors are adversely impacting those students? And to what extent if any are students of color impacted by their choice of majors?
Dr. Weeden: The best major that a student can choose is the one that she loves enough to complete. Even if you just look at education in purely instrumental terms, as a means to the end of financial success, completing college is a much stronger predictor of employment prospects and future earnings than the major. One reason is that the linkage between majors and particular jobs is, at least in the United States, fairly weak. For example, according to Census Bureau data, only about 50% of engineering majors end up in engineering or even math-related occupations. For most majors, the percentage is even lower. The problem with choosing a “practical” major is that if it’s not also a major that the student loves or is good at, the odds of dropping out of college are higher.
“Practical” majors also vary enormously, and some aren’t especially rigorous or offer the most learning “bang for the buck.” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, using longitudinal data that tracked college students over time and measured their skills at the beginning and end of college, show that on average, business majors show less improvement in thinking, writing, and reasoning skills over the course of the college careers than other majors. Perhaps not surprisingly, business majors also spent less time studying, again on average, than other majors.
There’s also a question of what’s “practical” and what’s not. A culinary degree is practical -- what could be more practical than learning to cook well? -- but as any struggling chef can tell you, that doesn’t necessarily translate into solid employment prospects or high earnings. Other “practical” majors (e.g., nursing, education) are pipelines to jobs that are currently in high demand and that pay decent wages right out of college, but that have very modest long-term earnings potential.
On the flip side, there’s a tendency in American popular discourse to bash the humanities as being ““impractical” or “worthless.” However, as a recent Forbes article highlighted, many employers in technology actively seek liberal arts majors, because these students are especially good at solving problems, finding holes in arguments, and communicating well. These skills are in high demand, and are likely to be in the “knowledge economy” of the future.
The issue of race is interesting, because a lot of what look like racial differences in college major choice may be income effects in disguise. For example, we know that African American students are overrepresented among education majors, relative to their share of all college degree earners. (I like to point this out whenever I encounter an undergraduate student who says that the black-white test score gap occurs because “blacks don’t value education.”) Once you factor in gender and family socioeconomic status, net race differences in the likelihood of majoring in education largely disappear. We also know, though, that residential segregation by race means that students of color often have very different pre-college educational experiences and opportunities than white students, even given similar income levels. It isn’t entirely an income story.
Dr. Robinson: Is it safe to say, the practicality of selecting majors with career opportunities and growth ultimately will result in many of these students having higher incomes than their parents and thus impacting the type of college majors their children will select?
Dr. Weeden: You’re really talking about a three-generation effect: the grandparents, the adult children, and their kids. Sociologists have shown that advantages are “passed on” across multiple generations, where advantages might include attaining a college degree, having a high income, or working in a professional or managerial occupation. The effect of family background tends to weaken with each successive generation, which is just another way of saying that transmission of advantage between parents and children isn’t perfect. Unfortunately, there really aren’t any nationally representative, multi-generation data sets large enough to let us figure out how much of the upward (or downward) mobility we see in the data is due to college major choices of the earlier generations.
The other thing to keep in mind is that majors go in and out of fashion, not only in response to job market conditions but also to broader cultural trends. Right at the moment, we’re in an historical moment when kids and their parents are very anxious about the job market, and when higher education is being corporatized. This tends to push students into majors for purely instrumental reasons (“how much money can I make”), and to push universities to shift monies away from the humanities and toward business programs, which is one of the fastest growing majors. Even though, as I noted above, there’s little empirical justification for this based on assessments of learning outcomes.
In another 25 years, when today’s college students have college-aged kids of their own, the cultural and economic context may have shifted again. There will likely still be an association between family income and major choice, unless we figure out a way to eliminate inequalities by class and race in access to high quality schools and other educational opportunities. But, the form that this association takes – which students major in which fields -- may look very different than it does today.
About Dr. Kim Weeden:
I am a Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, where I also serve as the Robert S. Harrison Director of theInstitute for the Social Sciences and the Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality. I’m an affiliate of theCornell Population Center, the Center for the Study of Economy and Society, and the Cornell Institute for Compensation Studies. Until recently, I was a co-director and co-PI of CU-ADVANCE (now the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity) and the chair of the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility section of the ASA.
I’m also a founding member and one of the Deputy Editors of Sociological Science, a new, open access, peer-reviewed journal for the very best sociological research on general social processes. Our journal model eliminates R&Rs and lengthy review times (we’re averaging 12 days to decision, and promise no more than 30 days), brings intellectual exchanges about research out from behind the anonymity of the review process, and offers scholars, journalists, and policy makers immediate and free access to high-quality, peer-reviewed sociological research.
In my own research, I study income inequality, gender, social class, and education. Most of my research is quantitative, and uses large-scale, nationally representative surveys. I also teach courses on inequality, some for the Minor in Inequality Studies. For more details, please see the Research, Manuscripts, or CV pages on this web site.
I live in Ithaca with Jeff, who is a financial writer and homebrewer, and our son Quinn, who is currently into baseball, math, and Magic the Gathering (I know, I know …).
People occasionally ask me if I’m a triathlete. I might be, if only triathlons didn’t involve running or swimming. Instead, I lift heavy things and put them back down again. Filed under “activities that I like but don’t do often enough” are hiking, biking, skiing, gardening, and otherwise getting outside, often with a camera in hand.