What can you do with that degree? College major and occupational status of college graduates over time

While income inequality among college graduates is well documented, inequality in occupational status remains largely unexplored. We examine whether and how oc-cupational specificity of college majors is related to college graduates ’ transition into the labor market and their subsequent occupational trajectories. Analyses of NLSY79 indicate that occupationally specific degrees are beneficial at the point of entry into the labor market but have the lowest growth in occupational status over time. Stu-dents earning credentials focusing on general skills, in contrast, begin in jobs with low occupational status but subsequently report the greatest growth. These findings illuminate specific ways in which educational and occupational systems interact and provide a novel approach for understanding inequality in labor market outcomes among college graduates. College graduates have emerged as winners in the modern economy. Strong de-mand for more educated workers, coupled with a relative slowdown of their supply, has led to a sharp increase in the wage premium of college degrees in the United States since the 1980s (Goldin and Katz 2008). This increase in the returns to postsecondary education has not only produced greater wage inequality between college educated and other workers but also growing wage dispersion among highly educated workers (Autor, Katz and Kearney 2006; Lemieux 2006). Thus, while the importance of college degrees has been rising, so has inequality among degree holders, drawing increasing attention to the qualitative differences among college graduates, such as their fields of study. Previous research provides ample evidence of income differentials among students majoring in different fields of study. Inequality in occupational status, however, remains largely unexplored. College graduates differ not only in how much money they make, but also in the occupations they pursue, and further-more, in whether their chosen fields lead to desirable occupational trajectories over time. Stratification scholars have dedicated much attention to the study of occupational status and more recently to changes in occupational status ove