Essays in Economics History of American Higher Education

Zhao, Yiling

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-jreg-c181

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Essays in Economics History of American Higher Education

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This thesis contains three chapters studying the evolution of the American higher education landscape, the different forces that shaped their organization, and how they, in turn, influenced human capital accumulation. The chapters are organized into three time periods: 1850-1900, 1910-1940, and 1980-2010. In the first chapter, joint with Heyu Xiong, we investigate the founding of American colleges in the latter half of the 19th century. During this period, America experienced a significant expansion in its college infrastructure. By 1890, more institutions of higher learning existed in the United States than in all of Europe. In this paper, we study the role of denominational competition in the market provision of higher education. Specifically, we argue that denominational affiliation facilitated greater enthusiasm to build colleges through gains from differentiation. We document that nearly all colleges established in this period had denominational roots or origins. Empirical analysis using a panel of US counties reveals a robust positive relationship between religious fragmentation and the number of colleges established locally. The results using an IV strategy show that areas that became more religiously diverse experienced greater subsequent growth in the number of colleges. We conclude by estimating a model of school choice and show that students exhibited a strong preference to attend same-denominational colleges in terms of willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-travel. Religious diversity softened the extent of tuition competition between institutions and precipitated an ``excess'' entry of schools. In the second chapter, joint with Mike Andrews, we study a particular aspect of the land-grant colleges: the institutionalization of Home Economics. The land-grant colleges offered practical majors that contrasted with the historical practice of a liberal arts curriculum provided by private colleges. Home Economics was such a practical field for women. Even though Home Economics built on women's traditional vocation as homemakers, we argue that it served as a gateway to bring women into science. Specifically, we propose that women came to dominate life sciences and chemistry because they were exposed to these subjects in large numbers through college home economics curricula in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As more women learned these subjects and entered these fields, they increasingly became known as women’s subjects, reducing social stigma. We document three sets of facts. First, the science fields in which women constitute a majority today are the same fields that entered home economics curricula during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time of rapid increase in college enrollment. Second, we use data from the Report of the Commissioner of Education to show that colleges with larger home economics programs had more women enrolled in science. Since home economics programs were often designed to train farmers’ wives, we verify these results using an instrumental variable based on a college’s land grant funding towards agriculture. Finally, we use data from historical college yearbooks to show that, at an individual level, women who major in home economics are more likely to double major in the sciences than are women who major in other subjects, such as music and education. The third chapter connects integrally to the second chapter, as I explore how gender norms can influence contemporary college major choices. I explore the hypothesis in the setting of the computer science major from 1980 to 2010. In this period, women's representation increased in STEM fields overall, yet the percentage of women in computer science declined. I take advantage of computer science's shifting departmental affiliation from mathematics to the traditionally masculine domain of engineering. Using a novel panel dataset on the university hierarchy from 1980 to 2010, I found that the percentage of women earning computer science bachelor's degrees decreased when the computer science department moved from colleges of liberal arts and sciences to engineering schools. I document that computer science's increasing affiliation with engineering school had more to do with following the trend of higher-ranked programs than reflecting a change in the curriculum.

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