Does Your Subject Make You Sick? How Academic Majors Shape Students’ Self-Rated Health

Higher education can expose young people to various health challenges, yet potential disparities in health across academic disciplines remain underexplored. This study analyzes panel data on self-rated health of 14,022 German university students across nine subject groups employing both random- and fixed-effects regression models to examine selection and potential causal mechanisms. The results show that students of medicine and health sciences reported consistently good health throughout their studies. By contrast, law students exhibited the highest initial health scores but experienced the steepest decline over time. Students in arts and humanities started with the lowest health scores, but no significant change was observed during their studies. Although initial health inequalities suggest selection effects, the observed within-change heterogeneity raises the possibility that academic majors influence student health trajectories. Field specialization could represent an important dimension of health inequality in higher education, potentially extending into later life stages.