Major Malfunction: A Field Experiment Correcting Undergraduates’ Beliefs about Salaries

In a field experiment at a flagship state university in the United States, I test whether providing college students salary information can affect their choices of major and classes. I find that undergraduates are substantially misinformed about mean salaries by major. On average, students in my sample underestimate mean salaries, but there is also large heterogeneity in beliefs across individuals. I also find that providing information to correct these errors has a large impact on students’ choices; studentsin the treatment group were nine percentage points (16 percent) more likely to major in a field about which they received information.