It’s widely believed that among the data gathered for the American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, the inclusion of college major choice as a data point has proved critical to a better understanding of the value higher education attainment has in the U.S. economy and workforce.
This conviction is driving researchers, such as economist Jeff Strohl, to oppose a Census Bureau proposal that the agency drop the college major question from the American Community Survey (ACS). As director of research at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), Strohl can point to influential research studies the center has undertaken that have relied extensively on college major survey data.
Since 2009, following a push by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation, the bureau has collected college major data for the ACS. The ACS, which is conducted in the years between the decennial censuses, collects demographic and social trend information from more than three million American households.
“We were probably one of the first [organizations] off-the-block using the American Community Survey on the [college] major question,” he said. “And we produced a report called ‘What’s It Worth,’ which details the economic returns to 171 [Bachelor of Arts] majors and the impact of getting a graduate degree for those majors by race, ethnicity, and gender.”
The ‘What’s It Worth’ report has been widely cited in federal and state government reports, in the news media, and by education policy researchers, according to CEW director Anthony Carnevale. In 2012, CEW began producing annual editions of the “Hard Times” report, which is a compendium of recent college graduates’ unemployment rates and wages by major.
The college major query is “a very valuable question that we don’t have anywhere else and in fact, rather than pulling back on the survey, [the Census Bureau] should be expanding the question because the question on majors is only asked about people with a bachelor’s degree and it’s not asked of people with an associate’s, a certificate, or what you major in your graduate degree,” Strohl said.
This past October, the Census Bureau invited public comments on its proposal to eliminate the college major question, along with proposals to remove six other questions. All the questions were deemed in an ACS content review to be “Low Benefit and Low Cost.” The public comment period ends on December 30, 2014.
