Specialized degrees tend to run in families
Most recently, parental influence on college majors was examined in a 2024 working paper by Adam Altmejd, a researcher at the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University. Using data for people who applied to Swedish universities between 1977 and 1992, as well as data for their children, the study revealed that 3 out of 4 students were more likely to graduate from a particular field if one of their parents did.
By focusing on parents who were just barely admitted into their fields versus those who just barely missed the cutoffs, the study helps isolate the impact of a particular parent's degree on a student's choice of major while controlling for factors such as family background or wealth. In other words, the study found that people majoring in fields such as engineering are likelier to do so because one of their parents has an engineering degree, rather than just coming from a mathematically inclined family.
This method also controls for other factors like family background or wealth.
The study also found that parents are especially influential when it comes to specialized fields. For instance, Swedish students were more than five times as likely to study agriculture if at least one of their parents did, as compared to other students. In contrast, students were only 1.2 times as likely to study social science, a much more general major, if at least one of their parents did.
Parents of the same gender as their child had a more significant impact on their career choice, the study found. Fathers have a particularly strong influence on their sons, while mothers exert a greater influence on their daughters. In male-dominated fields, a mother's profession significantly influences her daughter's professional outcome. For instance, young women whose mothers were engineers are more likely to go into engineering despite it being a male-dominated field, according to the study. That is, parents can positively influence their children as role models, particularly in "gender incongruent" fields.
The Stockholm University study provides a lesson for policymakers hoping to improve social mobility. While parents, consciously or not, can steer their children in a particular direction, role models generally have a profound impact on the young people in their lives, especially if those role models come from similar backgrounds.
A 2021 study by researchers at New York University found that the most effective role models tend to reflect a student's identity. Adults who serve as exemplars for students tend to share the same race or ethnicity or psychological similarities, such as struggles, preferences, and values, with the students who look up to them.
Freeman encourages students to "explore and make the best decision for themselves." Choosing a major based on their parents' profession can be limiting. He said there are students who trust their parents to tell them what to do and, in some cases, make the decision for them. "This can be very limiting and restrictive when college is supposed to be the opposite in many ways," he said. "It takes the experiential aspect of college for a young adult out of the equation."
Additional reporting by Kelly Glass. Story editing by Alizah Salario. Copy editing by Sofía Jarrín. Photo selection by Lacy Kerrick.
This story originally appeared on Learner and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
Comments