College–Major Choice to College–Then–Major Choice: Experimental Evidence From Chinese College Admissions Reforms

• In Event: International Experiences and College Access

Abstract

This paper provides one of the first experimental and natural experimental evidence on the heterogeneous impacts of college-major to college-then-major reform on students’ college application preferences and behaviors. We conducted a randomized informational intervention on student college major choice by providing individuals with detailed information about meta majors, which is one of the most important components of the college-then-major choice reform in China. Our results show that providing the benefits information statistically significantly improves students’ willingness to apply to the meta majors by about 5 percentage points, while information about specific majors and risks has negative but insignificant effects on application probability. Consistently, the supplemental DID/event study and synthetic controls analyses using administrative college admissions data show similar results.

Authors

• Li Xin, East China Normal University

• Liping Ma, Peking University

• Xiaoyang Ye, Brown University