This paper reports results from a controlled trial of the effect on knowledge and subject choices of providing upper secondary school students with information about average graduate earnings in mathematics and science. It is widely asserted that OECD countries are suffering from a shortage of graduates in STEM subjects. For the UK, this claim is consistent with the relatively high average salaries for graduates in mathematics and engineering although it is called into question by the relatively low average salaries for graduates in physical science. The trial provided students in intervention schools with information about these differences and the analysis examines effects on students’ beliefs about graduate salaries, their preferences towards studying mathematics and science and their actual subject choices in their final two years of secondary school.

The data for the study were collected as part of a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The project focuses on schools providing education for students in the age group 11-18 to facilitate data collection before and after age 16 which is a key transition point in schooling in England. Forty schools were included in the trial, with just over 4,000 students participating. 

If there is a shortage of mathematics and science graduates we should expect to find relatively high earnings for upper secondary and university students who study shortage subjects. There is some, contested, evidence suggesting that students who study mathematics in upper secondary schools in the UK have higher earnings (Dolton and Vignoles 2002, Johnes 2005). Estimates (e.g. Chevalier 2011, O’Leary and Sloane 2011, Walker and Zhu 2012) of differences between subject graduate wage premia in the UK indicate that the returns to maths and engineering graduates are high relative to most other subjects. Returns to physical science graduates are relatively low.

Education policy in many OECD countries is placing increasing emphasis on the scope for ‘informed choice’ to motivate increases in educational effectiveness. This study provides evidence of (i) the extent to which students are currently ill-informed; and (ii) the extent to which providing additional evidence is likely to change preferences and behaviour in relation to studying mathematics and science.

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