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This paper uses administrative student and expenditure data from Florida public universities to describe a) how the cost of producing graduates varies by major, b) how the inclusion of major-specific instructional costs alters the estimated net returns to different fields of study, and c) how major-specific instructional expenditures changed between 1999 and 2013. We find that the cost of producing graduates in the highest cost major (engineering) is roughly double that of producing graduates in low-cost majors, such as business. Cross-major comparisons of per graduate earnings returns net of costs differ from comparisons based on earnings outcomes alone in economically significant ways for a number of fields. Differences between net returns and earnings returns per dollar of instructional spending are even more pronounced. Our analysis of trends in instructional expenditures shows that per credit expenditures for undergraduate classes dropped by 16% in Florida universities between 1999 and 2013. The largest drops occurred in engineering and health, where per credit spending fell by more than 40%. Observed spending changes have little relationship with per credit costs or earnings outcomes.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. institutions of higher education began to address long-standing patterns of exclusion. Initial efforts to improve the access of black students to engineering education focused on six historically black engineering colleges, and evolved into a truly nationwide movement. Later, a larger group of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) expanded educational opportunities in engineering, computer science and other technical fields, "to prepare their students for expanded career choices." Geographic and institutional features of the higher education infrastructure led to differential impacts of these policies on students born in different states. A data panel assembled for the project links changes in educational opportunities to current outcomes. The panel includes more than 30 years of complete counts of the number of bachelor's degrees conferred in each field by each U.S. institution of higher education (collected by the U.S. Department of Education and the Engineering Manpower Commission), merged to current labor force data. These data facilitate description of the geography and timing of changes in opportunities for black college students to choose engineering or computer science college majors, and current labor market outcomes among those born in the right place and time to pursue careers in these fields.

Though labor market conditions steadily improved following the Great Recession, underemployment among recent college graduates continued to climb, reaching highs not seen since the early 1990s. In this paper, we take a closer look at the jobs held by underemployed college graduates in the early stages of their careers during the first few years after the Great Recession. Contrary to popular perception, we show that relatively few recent graduates were working in low-skilled service jobs, and that many of the underemployed worked in fairly well paid non-college jobs requiring some degree of knowledge and skill. We also find that the likelihood of being underemployed was lower for those with more quantitatively oriented and occupation-specific majors than it was for those with degrees in general fields. Moreover, our analysis suggests that underemployment is a temporary phase for many recent college graduates as they transition to better jobs after spending some time in the labor market, particularly those who start their careers in low-skilled service jobs.

Using a novel database on high school careers, college careers and labor market outcomes for a panel of young Italians, this chapter analyzes the role of choice of college major as a determinant of gender gap in income. It finds that the very large difference of choice of college major by females, in favor of Humanities and shunning Engineering and Business majors, explains one third of the gender gap in income. Those differences are very persistent.

This chapter presents Jonathan Z. Smith's views about the college major, which he calls the great, unexamined aspect of undergraduate education. He says that although majors consume more than half of a student's college career, and more than half of a faculty member's teaching effort, the major is held largely unaccountable to the wider faculty or institution except in the most ceremonial sense. He also calls on faculty to cease passing off their responsibility to students and their high schools. It is not the careerism of students that has disfigured liberal learning, but that of the faculty and their colleagues.

Chapter 1 introduces some facts and summary statistics on gender gap in wages and employment for several countries. It systematically compares labor market outcomes across countries, across education groups, and age groups. It identifies some interesting regularities and differences. It then analyzes the gender gap in educational achievement and college major choice, documenting a growing advantage of women in graduating and attending college, but also a very different preference between genders in the choice of major.