Consumption value in higher education, the price of preferences

This paper examines the price that individuals pay for choosing fields of study with high consumption value instead of choosing fields of study with higher future earnings. The institutional setting for further education in Denmark allows us to analyze a situation where all individuals included in our sample could have freely chosen fields within humanities and business, where access criteria were very equal fora long period of time. After controlling for a rich set of observable characteristics, including scores from a range of high-school courses, we find that individuals who chose to enroll in humanities gave up roughly 29 % of disposable income 10 years after enrollment for their choice of humanities instead of business.