About This Project

In the UK, students specialise in particular subjects at a relatively early stage in their education, and this may mean that early decisions can close off careers in which they might have been productive. We plan to study people's choices along the pipeline to mathematical careers, and study at what stage different groups tend to be discouraged from participating, using data on GCSE exams, A-Level exams, and university applications, as well as surveys of secondary school students in the UK.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Mathematical skills are the foundation of many privately and socially beneficial careers, but finding a career that uses these skills requires students to make the right decisions during their secondary and tertiary education to fully realise their talents. In the UK, this involves pursuing mathematical subjects in A-Level exams, applying to universities that will best nurture their talent, and selecting mathematical majors. These decisions have high stakes, but students make them based on limited information and potentially subject to biases that may lead them not to make the best decisions for themselves. These forces may contribute to gaps on dimensions such as gender in mathematical participation.

What is the significance of this project?

The UK provides a useful environment to study the development of mathematical talent, and the role that students' choices play in the pipeline to mathematical careers. We will be able to develop a coherent picture of students' educational choices between taking GCSE exams, when students have not specialised between subjects, and age 18, where they will have chosen a university course to attend. We will observe and be able to disentangle a large number of potential determinants of these decisions with a combination of administrative data, surveys, and quasi-experimental variation. This will provide new, more comprehensive evidence on the extent to which students are making decisions that allow them to best fulfill their mathematical potential, and what drives their decisions.

What are the goals of the project?

The project has three specific components.

First, we will use the administrative data on university applications in the UK to describe the points at which different groups tend to stop studying mathematics, and predict some of the drivers of choice.

Second, we will use the removal of AS-Levels in England as a natural experiment to study how removal of information about students' math performance affects selection into applications for mathematical courses and university.

Third, we plan to work with two educational non-profits, Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) and Causeway Education, to work directly with a few secondary schools to survey students about their university application choices and randomise the provision of information about courses to students.