Social Learning and Course Choice

We use a broad sample of students to examine the course selection process and find evidence of social learning from peers.We also find that as the number of times students solve the course selection problem increases, they rely less on social learning and more on their own experience, limiting the potential for herd behaviour. Our results give insight to instructors about the reasons why students may be in their classes and suggest that information about courses and help in evaluating this information is especially important for students early in their college careers.This work is supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.We are grateful to Christophre Georges,Gail Hoyt, KimMarie McGoldrick,Jeffrey Pliskin,Peter Schuhmann, Robert Turner, Julio Videras and Stephen Wu for helpful comments. Leslie Jensen and Take Kaminogo provided excellent research assistance.