College major, college coursework, and post-college wages

Abstract

Abstract We ask whether estimated wage payoffs to college majors change when we account for skills acquired in college by including college major dummies and detailed coursework measures in log-wage models. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that students in all majors differ considerably in the percentage of credits taken within-major, as well as in their overall credit distributions. When credit distributions are taken into account in modeling log-wages, estimated coefficients for college majors often fall by 50% or more. Moreover, estimated log-wage gaps between select pairs of majors often change by orders of magnitude depending on whether we compare individuals whose overall credit distributions correspond to obtaining a low, medium, or high level of credit concentration within the major.