Search

Abstract: Using a sample of youth who graduated from high school in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this paper examines the impact of high school math curriculum on the decision to go to college. Results that control for unobserved differences between students and their families suggest that a more rigorous high school math curriculum is associated with a higher probability of attending college and of attending a 4-year college. The household fixed effect results imply that students who take an advanced academic math curriculum in high school (algebra II or precalculus, trigonometry, or calculus) are about 17 percentage points more likely to go to college and 20 percentage points more likely to start college at a 4-year school by age 21 compared to those students whose highest math class was algebra I or geometry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the impact of stricter high school math requirements on the likelihood of completing a degree in STEM fields. Exploiting cross-state variation in the timing of math reforms, I find that stricter math curriculum requirements significantly increased the proportion of the college-educated population earning a STEM degree. Within STEM, the increases in degree completion are concentrated in math and science while there is little discernible impact in technology and engineering. Further analysis suggests that high school graduation, college attendance, and overall degree completion are largely unaffected by the implementation of math reforms. Instead, stricter math curriculum requirements appear to have shifted some students away from non-STEM fields into STEM fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]