There, researchers from Princeton and Brown universities discovered that providing students with information about earnings from a particular degree program more commonly led low-income students to choose programs that will likely enable them to earn about a million more pesos by age 30 than they might have otherwise.
That only translates to about $1,923 in U.S. currency, but when you consider all the students involved in the experiment — 37,747 — it accounts for an increase in aggregate earnings of about $72 million.
Thus, the researchers conclude, even if it cost $1 million to construct a data system that would enable students to see how much they are likely to earn if they pursue a particular program major, it would be well worth the effort.
“This value far exceeds the costs of administering the treatment, even including one-time fixed costs,” the researchers say in the paper, titled “The Effects of Earnings Disclosure on College Enrollment Decisions.”
The paper — released Monday through the National Bureau of Economic Research — was written by economics professors Justine Hastings, of Brown University and Seth Zimmerman and Christopher Neilson, of Princeton University.
Mark S. Schneider, vice president and institute fellow at the American Institutes for Research, says the Chile experiment holds important lessons for higher education policy here in the United States.
