Can High School Counselors Help the Economics Pipeline?

Abstract

We evaluate the impact of an intervention aimed at informing high school counselors about the field of economics, with the aim of attracting a more diverse student population into the major. Our study involves 234 Texas high schools that send a large number of students to Texas A&M University. Half of the schools were randomly selected and invited to send a guidance counselor to an in-person informational counselor workshop. While the intervention did not significantly increase applications into the major in the full student population, it significantly increased the economics applications of top-performing women and underrepresented minority students.