Who Can Afford to Be an English Major? Economic Origins, Debt, and Public Beliefs about Higher Education

Abstract

In recent years, many Americans have grown critical of the cost of college, often drawing distinctions between which degrees are more and less worthwhile. These discussions have emerged at the same time that working-class and indebted students have become increasingly prevalent in higher education, underscoring vast differences in social origins and economic resources even among students at the same institution. Do Americans tend to make sharp distinctions between degrees they consider worthwhile and not? Or are these considerations reserved mostly for students with social and economic disadvantages? In this article, we assess how social class and educational debt affect public beliefs about what students should study in college. We conducted a nationally representative survey experiment (N = 1,121) that asked respondents how likely they would be to recommend fields of study for students with different combinations of social class background and educational debt. We find that Americans make clear class-based distinctions in recommending fields of study. Working-class students, much more than upper-middle-class students, are expected to study majors with high pay and employability. By comparison, we find few effects of student loans net of social class. Data from the open-ended portion show that Americans are more likely to consider upper-middle-class students’ skills and interests and working-class students’ chances of getting a good job, suggesting that working-class students face a societal emphasis on attaining financial security that encourages their restraint in young adulthood. Implications for the study of social class and higher education are discussed.