The use of major-related knowledge by early career college graduates

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper develops a distance score that measures the extent to which college graduates work in jobs requiring knowledge that is related to their college major. For a given individual, this distance score is estimated by taking the Euclidean distance between the knowledge requirements of an individual’s occupation, and the knowledge requirements of the perfectly matching occupations that their major trains individuals for. Using this measure, it is documented that non-perfectly matched graduates of majors with high perfect match rates tend to use major-related knowledge in their jobs to a greater extent than non-perfectly matched graduates of majors with low perfect match rates. This indicates that cross-major differences in perfect match rates tend to understate cross-major differences in major-related knowledge use. Furthermore, average hourly earnings are found to be continuously decreasing in the value of the distance score. This earnings penalty persists when controlling for an individual’s demographic characteristics, as well as their college major.