Abstract
The Effect of Georgia's Hope Scholarship on College Major: A Focus on Stem
Highlights
There is a substantial literature spanning several disciplines that attempts to explain students’ choice of and persistence in a college major
To the extent that the effect is driven by inelastic supply at selective universities, states with or considering adopting merit aid programs should be aware that the potential benefits may not be realized if their program crowds some students into less selective institutions with weaker STEM programs
Our baseline specification gives a coefficient of −0.025, which corresponds to a 12.6 percent decrease in the number of STEM graduates
Summary
There is a substantial literature spanning several disciplines that attempts to explain students’ choice of and persistence in a college major. We consider how Georgia’s merit-based financial aid program, i.e., the HOPE Scholarship, affects student decisions to major in STEM fields. In this paper we use administrative records from the University System of Georgia (USG) to first examine the effect of Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship on students’ college major choices, focusing on STEM majors. For earned major we find no effect of HOPE on the probability of being a STEM major if we do not control for student quality; the ability to control for SAT score is an important feature of our data. Θ measures the effect of the HOPE program on the probability of being a STEM major holding student quality and demographics constant We consider both the major at time of matriculation (initial major) and the final major (earned major).
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