College Major and Career Inequality: Implications for Black Students

Abstract

Over the past decade, interest in women and racial minorities in higher education has been primarily in their access, retention, and patterns of distribution throughout higher education, and the implications of these processes for their career attainment. More recently, this interest has been extended to consider the internal stratification processes within higher education and the academic and social experiences of women and racial minorities in these institutions. The type of college major that students choose (or get selected into) is an important stratification variable within higher education that has direct implications for race and sex inequality in the labor market. For the past three decades, black and female college students have been consistently overrepresented in education, the humanities, and the social sciences. These fields offer lower income for B.A. degree recipients than the natural and technical sciences. The data in Table I reports the annual starting salaries for B.A. recipients in various majors in 1978 and 1982. In both years, students who majored in the humanities and the social sciences received lower salary offers than students who majored in engineering, the computer sciences, and the physical and earth sciences. Thus, part of the race and sex differences in occupational and income attain-