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

该项目询问妇女在获得大学学位方面的收益是否导致大学学位贬值，从而使大学学位对于获得高薪工作变得越来越不重要。如果是这样的话，女性在教育方面的收益可能会导致劳动力市场上意想不到的劣势。过去的研究发现，妇女比例较高的职业男女平均工资都较低。当女性获得更高比例的大学学位时，是否会发生类似的过程？更具体地说，该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对四年制大学学位的价值的理解。通过研究男女大学毕业率与大学学位价值之间的关系，该项目将加强我们对社会进步可能导致社会不利地位的复杂和意外方式的理解。本研究通过对性别进步如何导致劳动力市场的非预期劣势进行分析，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。本研究将通过独创的调查实验，对大学的性别构成如何影响大学学位的文化和经济价值进行调查。因此，当美国人接触到女性完成大学学业的比例高于男性的信息时，他们是否会认为四年制大学学位的文化价值较低？当招聘经理同样接触到女性在大学毕业方面的优势信息时，招聘经理是否不太可能雇用女性申请人？为了解决这些问题，在何种程度上，女性超过男性在四年制大学学位完成实验操纵，以建立其因果关系的影响，包括大学毕业生的能力，招聘偏好，和工资决定。两者合计，在这个项目中使用的调查实验设计推进社会人口统计学理论的因果机制，影响性别不平等，并提供令人信服的数据，可观察到的差异，在四年制大学学位的估值是由真正的估值差异直接取决于美国人的看法的性别组成的学院和大学。这项研究有助于社会学调查，确定和解决新出现的性别不平等形式，并为有兴趣在家庭和工作场所促进性别进步的决策者和招聘经理提供实际影响。

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.