Doctoral Dissertation Resarch: Women's College Completion Rates and the Value of Higher Education

该项目探讨的问题是，女性在获得大学学位方面的进步是否会导致大学学位的贬值，以至于大学学位对获得高薪工作的重要性越来越低。如果是这样的话，女性在教育上的进步可能会在劳动力市场上导致意想不到的劣势。过去的研究发现，女性比例较高的职业，男女的平均工资都较低。当女性获得更高比例的大学学位时，是否也会发生类似的过程？更具体地说，这个项目旨在提高我们对学院和大学的性别构成如何影响美国人赋予四年制大学学位的价值的理解。通过研究男性和女性的大学完成率与大学学位价值之间的关系，该项目将增强我们对社会进步可能导致社会劣势的复杂和意想不到的方式的理解。通过确定性别进步如何导致意想不到的劳动力市场劣势，本项目的研究结果将为希望理解和解决持续存在的男女不平等问题的政策制定者提供重要的研究证据。通过一项原始调查实验，该研究将调查高校的性别构成如何影响赋予大学学位的文化和经济价值。因此，当美国人得知女性完成大学学业的比率高于男性时，他们是否会降低对四年制大学学位的文化价值的评价？当招聘经理同样了解到女性在大学毕业方面具有优势的信息时，是否不太可能雇佣女性申请人？为了解决这些问题，我们通过实验操纵了女性在四年制大学学位完成率上超过男性的程度，以确定其对几个结果的因果关系，包括大学毕业生的感知能力、招聘偏好和薪资决策。综上所述，本项目中使用的调查实验设计推进了影响性别不平等的因果机制的社会人口学理论，并提供了令人信服的数据，表明四年制大学学位估值的可观察差异是由真实的估值差异驱动的，这种差异直接取决于美国人对高校性别构成的看法。这项研究通过识别和解决性别不平等的新形式，为社会学探究做出了贡献，并为政策制定者和招聘经理提供了实际意义，这些决策者和招聘经理都对促进家庭和工作场所的性别进步感兴趣。

This project asks whether women's gains in earning college degrees leads to a devaluing of a college degree, such that college degrees become increasingly less important for securing high paying jobs. If so, women's gains in education might lead to unintended disadvantages in the labor market. Past research has found that occupations with higher proportions of women have lower average wages for both women and men. Does a similar process occur when women earn a higher proportion of college degrees? More specifically, this project seeks to improve our understanding of how the gender composition of colleges and universities may impact the value Americans assign to the four-year college degree. By examining the relationship between college completion rates of men and women and the value of the college degree, the project will enhance our understanding of the complex and unintended ways in which social progress can lead to social disadvantage. By identifying how gender progress can result in unintended labor market disadvantage, this project's findings will provide important research evidence for policymakers who wish to understand and address persistent inequality between women and men.Using an original survey experiment, the research will investigate the ways in which gender composition of colleges and universities influences cultural and economic value assigned to the college degree. Accordingly, do Americans rate the cultural value of the four-year college degree lower when exposed to information that women complete college at higher rates than men? Are hiring managers less likely to hire female applicants when similarly exposed to information of women's advantage in college completion? To address these questions, the extent to which women outpace men in four-year college degree completion is experimentally manipulated to establish its causal effect on several outcomes, including perceived competency of college graduates, hiring preferences, and salary decisions. Taken together, the survey experimental designs utilized in this project advance social demographic theories on the causal mechanisms that impact gender inequality and provide compelling data that observable differences in valuation of the four-year college degree are driven by true valuation differences directly conditional on Americans's perceptions of the gender composition of colleges and universities. This research contributes to sociological inquiry by identifying and addressing emergent forms of gender inequality, as well as providing practical implications for policymakers and hiring managers alike interested in promoting gender progress at home and in the workplace.