Research Proposal

Topic:

My paper will focus on degree programs offered by universities. What particularly interests me is the diversity and origin of degree programs. For example, when did music go from an enjoyable hobby, to a mandatory degree program for those who want to  pursue a career in it?  The paper will also take a look at the individuals who enroll in college or university, and what influences their choices, particularly in respect to the degrees they choose. The final topic my paper will address will an attempt to analyze the quality of life and happiness of those individuals, and what impact their education and degrees had on them.

Research Question

Why do undergraduates make poor decisions when it comes to choosing a degree? Could it be a possibility that their predisposed notions of college is created by the media and society? Or perhaps is it a broader problem of colleges and universities intentionally manipulating undergraduates into those lackluster degree programs.

Theoretical Frame

The principal agency problem, as described by Barry M. Mitnick of the University of Pittsburg was first discovered by himself and his associate Stephen Ross, is defined as “agency in terms of problems of compensation contracting; agency was seen, in essence, as an incentives problem.” Fundamentally it describes the inverse incentive of contracted individuals like lawyers and consultants to bill and fee for more hours, as opposed to getting their jobs done as efficiently as possible. This is extremely relevant to university. While a university’s mission should always be to foster the growth of its constituents, the modern university is highly incentivized to force undergraduates to take needless and unnecessary coursework, as well as providing unemployable and low income degree programs. I hypothesize that the universities do this for the sole purpose to keep the undergraduates enrolled as long as possible, ultimately paying their tuition, and obscene amounts of administration fees.  The alternate hypothesis is that undergraduates are willingly choosing their degree programs knowing full well their outcomes.

I have particular interest in this field as I am concerned with my generation’s perception on the correlation between degree choice and career possibilities, and I question my peer’s foresight when choosing their degree.

Research and Plan

My first step when doing my research was to use the internet to do a broad search of my topic. I found some online, non-scholarly articles that briefly discussed some of the topics in my questions. Most of the non-academic sources didn’t have anything too quote worthy, as it mostly was a group of millennials complaining about the price of college, as well as older generations complaining about the skills gap that exists in the employment market place.

Then, I used Rutgers Library in order to find scholarly sources. Although I found these to be far more complex and much more difficult to understand, they were the sources that I needed. Often times, these sources were riddled with bizarre and foreign terminology, as well as gibberish mathematical formulas that absolutely no real application, outside of the article itself. Although the majority scholarly articles I found were completely incomprehensible to me, there were some articles that I was able to quote mine from. In Wiswall and Zafar’s article, Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification using an Information Experiment, there were some nuggets of information I was able to comprehend that may be of use when constructing my argument, like “We find that the residual unobserved taste component major is the dominant factor in the choice of field of study” (Wiswall, Zafar, 3) Although the article doesn’t directly address or define what this taste is, it does state that “These “tastes” for majors have a strong year in school component, and play a much larger role for older than younger students” (Wiswall, Zafar, 3) Fundamentally, my understanding of this concept is that the strongest factor influencing undergraduates in their majors is their interest in it. This poses another question, as now I am curious as to what could possibly influence this ‘residual unobserved taste’.

Working Bibliography

Mitnick, Barry M. "Re: Origin of the Theory of Agency." Re: Origin of the Theory of Agency. University of Pittsburgh, Jan. 2006. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

WISWALL, MATTHEW, and BASIT ZAFAR. "Determinants Of College Major Choice: Identification Using An Information Experiment." Review Of Economic Studies 82.2 (2015): 791-824. Business Source Premier. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Artabe, A., and J. Gardeazabal. "Degree Choice Evidence From Stated Preferences." Empirical Economics (2016): 1-30. Scopus®. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Ashkanasy, Neal M. "International Happiness: A Multilevel Perspective." Academy Of Management Perspectives 25.1 (2011): 23-29.Business Source Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2016. 

Carnevale, Anthony P., Ban Cheah, and Center on Education and the Workforce Georgetown University. "From Hard Times To Better Times: College Majors, Unemployment, And Earnings." Georgetown University Center On Education And The Workforce (2015): ERIC. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Literature Review 1

Carnevale, Anthony P., Ban Cheah, and Center on Education and the Workforce Georgetown University. "From Hard Times To Better Times: College Majors, Unemployment, And Earnings." Georgetown University Center On Education And The Workforce (2015): ERIC. Web. 4 Oct. 201

This article is purely a summary of the current market for human capital in reference to people's degrees, what types, and how advanced. It compares two years worth of data to contrast earnings & unemployment between recent and experienced high school graduates, recent and experienced bachelor degree holders, and recent and experienced graduate degree holders. There is no argument in this article, as it simply presents the facts as they are. 


Authors

Anthony. P. Carnevale currently serves as research Professor and Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, a position he has held since the Center was created in 2008. Between 1996 and 2006, Dr. Carnevale served as Vice President for Public Leadership at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). While at ETS, Dr. Carnevale was appointed by President George Bush to serve on the White House Commission on Technology and Adult Education.

Ban Cheah is a Research Professor and Senior Economist at the Center on the Education and the Workforce. He serves as the main programmer and analyzes data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in support of the Center’s research.

There are really only two key terms in this article that are worth mentioning: Income and Unemployment. Income is defined as how much money the individuals surveyed made in a given year. The unemployment is defined as to what the overall proportion of a sample population earned no income at all.

“Communications and Journalism majors, whose unemployment rates are still rising” (Carnevale, Cheah, 5)

“Earnings among recent college graduates with Bachelor’s degrees aged 22 to 26 vary from $31,000 among Arts and Psychology and Social Work majors to $57,000 among Engineering majors” (Carnevale, Cheah, 15)

“Recent high school graduates aged 22 to 26 have fared worst of all; the unemployment rate for them peaked at 18.9 percent and remains high at 17.8 percent” (Carnevale, Cheah, 9)

This source adds value to my paper because it focuses on one the key questions asked in my paper, particularly as to the outcome of choosing certain degrees as your major. This source clearly outlines that what degree you choose will have a direct impact on your income and unemployment prospects post graduation. 

Research blog 3

This article, "From Hard Times to Better Times", is very similar to the one in the previous blog post. Although it does't have very much qualitative information regarding degree choices and outcomes, it does contain numerous statistics and quantitative appendices regarding the the post-graduate statistics. Primarily in regards to income and unemployment. 

Carnevale, Anthony P., Ban Cheah, and Center on Education and the Workforce Georgetown University. "From Hard Times To Better Times: College Majors, Unemployment, And Earnings." Georgetown University Center On Education And The Workforce (2015): ERIC. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

The next article I found, "International Happiness: A Multi Level Perspective", looks at the correlation between many quantifiable factors and happiness. Although I am not directly researching income and happiness, I do believe that taking a look at the quality of life for people who studied 'fun' and 'easy' majors and comparing their happiness to those who took on more challenging degrees may help my argument.  

Ashkanasy, Neal M. "International Happiness: A Multilevel Perspective." Academy Of Management Perspectives 25.1 (2011): 23-29.Business Source Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2016. 

The next two articles discuss factors that affect degree choice. When I first read the abstracts for these articles, they seemed to make sense, as some of the factors in their experiments discussed variants like race, ethnicity, family income, gender. Upon further inspection of these two articles they seemed to be full of mathematical nonsense and unintelligible formulas with little or no practical use for the arguments in my paper. However, looking past the ivory tower jargon, there are some summarizing statements that stand out that may be of use in my paper.  

Artabe, A., and J. Gardeazabal. "Degree Choice Evidence From Stated Preferences." Empirical Economics (2016): 1-30. Scopus®. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

  

WISWALL, MATTHEW, and BASIT ZAFAR. "Determinants Of College Major Choice: Identification Using An Information Experiment." Review Of Economic Studies 82.2 (2015): 791-824. Business Source Premier. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Scouting the Territory

In my previous post, I mentioned the breadth and diversity of degree programs and how colleges created all of those fields. What particularly interested me wasn’t the amount of programs, but instead what factors lead students to choose those degrees. I originally intended to research the history of college degrees and their fields, as well as the evolution of new fields of study. Instead of focusing on the evolution of the new fields and degree programs, I will instead focus my paper around the factors that influence undergraduates to choose those said career paths. In addition to the influences, I will also analyze the outcomes of those choices, particularly in the realm of employment potential.

Part of my reasoning to why I am switching my focus is the amount of research on undergraduate choices, as well as their careers after. On the flipside, there is less research done in regards to the history and origin of college degree programs. (Or that research has been difficult to find). My first course of action was to search for scholarly articles on Google Scholar, find an article, and read the entire article in one sitting. I lied. Instead what I did was open up Google, and type in ‘useless college degrees’. I then spent the next hour reading through dozens of non-academic articles and blog posts about how some recent graduate on the other side of the country was in a mountain of debt with no career due to her poor choice of study in college. One of which particularly interested me because it discussed the over qualifications of the said graduate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jami-demuth/my-degrees-make-me-unempl_b_7548824.html

After getting frustrated vicariously through those authors, I then searched Google for ‘useful college degrees’ and then spent the next hour reading through non-academic articles and blog posts written by Gen-Xers. Those authors, writing primarily for sources like Bloomberg, Forbes, and Business Insider spent the majority of their time arguing (and berating) that millennials like myself for being too lazy, and not astute enough to chose a more successful degree like engineering or computer science. There were a number of these, and they provided some insight as to the issues in what they called ‘the skills gap’ where although people were graduating college, they didn’t posses adequate enough skills to get employed. There are two articles that discuss that:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3059810/the-future-of-work/the-class-of-2016-is-both-practical-and-idealistic-about-their-job-prospe

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unemployable-graduate-crisis-how-we-can-fix-alistair-cox

            After getting my fill of online noise regarding college degree choices, I went to Google Scholar to see what I could find regarding undergraduate’s choices in their degrees. I found one article: (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.606.4138&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

In the Economics of Education Review that attempts to use a formula to predict what an undergraduate will eventually choose. The formula, although complex and confusing, didn’t help directly; but the article discusses the various factors that influence degree choice, such as income, family income, gender, and race to name a few. In addition there was another article that was provided to me by professor Goeller: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/college-major-rich-families-liberal-arts/397439/

This article builds off of the material in the Economics of Education Review, but primarily focuses on the relevance that family income plays as a deciding factor in degree choice. I particularly like this article because it implies that there is a possibility that happiness is derived from factors other than post graduate income.

            I found another scholarly article from the Center on Education and the Workforce: (https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/559308/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)

That briefly discussed the fact that ‘not all college degrees are created equally.’ The authors include a multitude of statistics that will help my paper, as those statistics included very detailed values on unemployment and earnings based on college degrees.