Relationship between college major choice and labor market outcomes in Turkey

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1819807 (Table of Contents)

This study aims to investigate how major specific quota and labor market outcomes are associated with the college major choice of students, reflected by average rankings. We use a large scale nationwide data from Student Selection and Placement Centre (OSYM) which contains information on all the students in Turkey who are placed into an undergraduate program and data from Household Labor Force Statistics conducted by Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK). Results from both national and regional analysis show that an increase in the major specific quota, real wage and employment probability is associated with an increase in the ranking of that major, which can be interpreted as an increase in demand, while an increase in major specific unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in ranking. National labor market outcomes are found to be more effective than the regional labor market outcomes on the major choice of the students. We find that students respond relatively more to unemployment rate information on their major choice than wages and employment probability. Our findings also suggest that unfavorable macroeconomic conditions lead to lower rankings, while university programs in more developed regions and the majors with a high share of English Medium Instruction (EMI) display higher rankings.