Getting the Message—to Study Economics

A new study finds that a light-touch intervention—what one of the authors calls a “classic nudge”—can increase the share of first-generation college students majoring in economics.

In this particular experiment, nudging students once about the benefits of studying economics increased the share of first-generation students majoring in the discipline by five percentage points. The effect size was enough to reverse the gap in first-gen economics majors in the sample.

The student success link: Co-author Todd Pugatch, professor of economics at Oregon State University, says that more first-gen students majoring in economics means that more of these students will land the relatively high-paying, secure jobs associated with the degree.

“It’s not just that good students study economics—they do—but also that employers value the skills economics majors bring to the workplace,” Pugatch says. He cites another research team’s 2022 study finding that students who barely meet the grade point average threshold to major in economics end up earning $22,000 more annually in early-career wages than they would in their second-choice majors.

Beyond individual student success, Pugatch notes that increasing first-gen representation in economics matters to the profession, since the discipline has relatively low socioeconomic diversity. In a separate 2022 study, for instance, economics Ph.D.s were substantially more likely than Ph.D.s in other fields to have highly educated parents and less likely to have parents without a college degree, with this gap increasing over the last two decades.

“The profession is missing these important voices,” Pugatch says, listing influential first-gen economists including Harvard’s Susan Dynarski, who studies financial aid, free tuition proposals and other topics.

Nudging works (kind of): Nudge theory, rooted in behavioral economics, proposes that even simple interventions can guide people toward certain predictable choices—typically those in their best interest. Nudging hasn’t ended up being a silver bullet in student success contexts. One 2019 analysis of a large-scale student texting and online messaging campaign found no significant influences on academic outcomes, for example. But it has proved promising in some cases, like Pugatch’s study.

The study, co-authored with fellow Oregon State economist Elizabeth Schroeder, randomly assigned 2,200 undergraduates to receive an email message about studying economics from their introductory economics instructors near the end of an academic term, or to receive no email at all (the control group). The pro-economics messages ranged from including basic information about economics to salary information for economics majors to video testimonials from current economics majors. Ultimately, even the most basic messages were effective enough to reverse the first-gen major gap.

Calling the outreach a “classic nudge,” Pugatch says the messages provided “information and encouragement but didn’t change choices available to students.”

He adds, “Our intervention was a single email—simple, nearly costless and scalable. The results suggest a promising way to diversify a field that could really benefit from broader representation.”

More to know: Nevertheless, Pugatch cautions, “We should also be wary of simplistic solutions.” The nudge wasn’t conclusively effective for underrepresented minority students, he says, and even exacerbated the gender gap in economics by being more effective for men than for women. (Read more about that last finding here.)

“Nudges must be part of a broader strategy to engage students and demonstrate the relevance of our discipline,” Pugatch says.

Tell us about an effective nudging effort at your institution. How did the outreach to students help solve a problem or challenge?