Advancement to Candidacy Presentation: “Does Greater Curriculum Flexibility in High School Affect STEM Participation?”, Ying Zhou

Speaker

Ying Zhou, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biography

Ying Zhou is a PhD student in Economics at UC Santa Barbara. She obtained her BS degree from UC San Diego and her Master's degree from the University of Chicago. Her research interests lie broadly in labor and experimental economics. Her current research focuses on the effect of educational policy and also focuses on personnel economics using field and lab experiments.

Title

“Does Greater Curriculum Flexibility in High School Affect STEM Participation?”

Abstract

We study the effects of a high school curriculum reform in China. Under the long-standing old system, students chose between two academic tracks, each with three fixed subjects: science (physics, chemistry, and biology) or humanities (history, geography, and political science). The reform instead allowed students to select any three subjects from these six. On average, students are more likely to take at least one science subject but less likely to take two or more. Girls reduce their enrollment in physics and increase it in biology, while boys decrease their enrollment in all three sciences. Because physics is required for admission to many high-paying college STEM majors, the reform may reduce student's; eligibility for these fields and their future earnings.

JEL codes: I21, I28, J18

Event Details

Ying will be presenting her Advancement to Candidacy paper, “Does Greater Curriculum Flexibility in High School Affect STEM Participation?”. To access the Advancement paper, you must have an active UCSB NetID and password.