University expansion, academic fields, and the match between the degree and the job
2026-07-20
Academic knowledge—such as biology, psychology, and economics—is found both in university majors and specific occupations. When educational attainment expands in the population, does it improve or weaken the academic match between university majors and occupations? Using nationally representative data from Great Britain and Canada, we find heterogeneous effects by field of study that are consistent across countries. Increases in the proportion of individuals with university degrees improves matches for economics, mathematics, and fine arts majors, such that they enter occupations that utilize more of their major-specific academic knowledge. The reverse is true for graduates in philosophy and theology, sociology and anthropology, and several majors in the natural and physical sciences. While some high-status fields see stronger matches between major and occupation as education expands, the natural and physical sciences remain a clear exception. These idiosyncratic results suggest that field-level prestige partly explains the heterogeneous effects of educational expansion on major-occupation matching, but that more research is needed on shifts in academic knowledge usage in the labor market.