Pathways to College Majors: Decomposing the Effects of Family Background through High School STEM Experiences

This paper investigates how family background shapes college major choices through high school experiences in STEM. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS: 2009-18) to measure college majors and high school experiences in STEM course-taking and extracurricular activities, I use OLS regression, multinomial logit regression, and KHB decomposition to examine the effects of family background on college major choices. First, I found that parents’ education and occupation fields explain differences in major choices better than common measures of family socioeconomic backgrounds, such as family income and parental education. Family income and parent’s education level are important factors, in whether the student can enter a four-year college or not. However, there is no significant and consistent influence on students’ major choices. In contrast, having parents with STEM backgrounds could significantly encourage students into STEM majors. Second, I find that using the traditional binary oppositional classification of STEM or non-STEM majors is insufficient to support a more nuanced analysis. There are differences in financial returns even among STEM majors, which are traditionally expected to be more financially rewarding. Students with parents in STEM fields prefer vocational STEM majors rather than Art & Science STEM majors. Third, I found a specific pathway through which parental STEM background influences major choice, namely using high school STEM experiences. Students with a parental STEM background are more likely to take additional STEM courses and participate in extracurricular STEM activities, which in turn increases their likelihood of majoring in vocational STEM fields.