Peter, Frauke; Schober, Pia; Spiess, C. Katharina (2023)
European Sociological Review (online first)
DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcad055
This study investigates whether an intervention that provided high school seniors with information on costs and economic returns to tertiary education and on the long-term earnings prospects of college graduates from different study fields enhances the probability that male and female students opt for financially more rewarding study fields and for business-related or STEM fields with a lower share of women. It extends our understanding on the potentials of information interventions for reducing gender segregation in tertiary education. We draw on a field experiment in one German federal state, Berlin, which included a randomized information intervention, and analyse longitudinal data from 1,036 students in schools with a high share of less privileged students. Our results show that a short and low-cost information intervention on costs and returns to college education, including returns in different fields of study, can substantially reduce women’s enrolment in care/social subjects, increase their enrolment in other, non-technical fields while also increasing men’s enrolment in technical fields with above-average earnings. The overall effects appear limited in challenging the gender-typicality of enrolment choices, as students tend to choose more profitable majors while avoiding gender-atypical fields.