“(Un)informed College and Major Choice”: Verification in an alternate setting

•I evaluate Hastings et al. model of costly information about college.•I test predictions of the model using subjective expectations data from the United States.•I find strong support for two predictions of the model, and weak support for another two.•The costly information model likely has broad applications for the study of education.

In their recent paper “(Un)informed College and Major Choice: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data,” Hastings, Neilson, Ramirez, & Zimmerman (2016) provide an informal costly-information model, linking family background to students’ beliefs about educational costs and benefits. They verify predictions of their model using a data set of beliefs about college institutions and majors among Chilean college applicants and students. I test some of those same predictions using a data set of beliefs about college institutions and different levels of college education among high school students in the United States. I verify their predictions, with some exceptions, supporting the use of their costly-search model.