Remote delivery of STEM and entrepreneurship role models at scale changes college major choice in Ecuador

Abstract

Youth often decide what to study with limited exposure to many high-paying careers. In-person visits from role models can change behaviour but are difficult to scale and typically expose youth to only one person in one career. We test the impact of exposing youth to multiple role models, in both science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and entrepreneurship careers, using online video interviews to intervene at large scale in a randomized trial with 29,243 students in 813 Ecuadorian high schools. Girls treated with multiple role models reduce their likelihood of choosing a STEM major, increasing enrolment in business majors instead. Boys also shift their major choice away from STEM and move towards other majors such as agriculture. The contrast between fields appears to shift youth away from what they see as the more challenging career and reinforces girls’ stereotypical college major choice.

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Subjects

• Economics
• Science, technology and society

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Acknowledgements

We thank the technical teams of the Ministry of Education of Ecuador and the National Direction of Bachillerato for their collaboration, and the Ministry of Higher Education of Ecuador (SENESCYT) for providing us with administrative data on college majors. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the World Bank’s Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund funding Nimble Evaluations—received by I.A., T.A., G.B., B.C., D.M. and M.M.; the funding call COVID-19 Emergency Window received by I.A., B.C., D.M., M.M., and M.S.; the Innovations for Poverty Action ‘Path-to-Scale’ award (TEM0280-X1)—recevied by I.A., T.Å., G.B., B.C., F.P.F.T., D.M., M.M., and M.S.; the Laboratory of Excellence in Economics and Decision Sciences, Ecole Nationale de la Statistique (Labex ECODEC–ENSAE) Paris, the HEC Foundation—recevied by T.Å. and B.C.; the International Center for Higher Education Research (Kassel) Innovation Fund-2018—received by I.A., G.B. and F.P.F.T.; and the Innovation Growth Lab—received by I.A., T.Å., G.B., F.P.F.T., D.M. and M.S. M.M.’s work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy—EXC 2126/1–390838866. A.-M. Noha provided excellent research assistance. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Authors and Affiliations

Contributions

I.A., T.Å., G.B., B.C., F.P.F.T., D.M., M.M. and M.S. designed the research. I.A. and F.P.F.T. performed the research. F.P.F.T. analysed the data. T.Å., B.C., F.P.F.T. and D.M. wrote the paper. I.A., F.P.F.T. and D.M. revised the paper.

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Competing interests

D.M. is employed by the World Bank, which works with country governments to improve development policies. The intervention evaluated here was not the result of a World Bank country engagement, and the World Bank only had a role as a funder of this work. The authors declare no other competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Noam Angrist, Fabricio Guevara-Viejó, Marion Monnet and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–3, Supplementary Discussion and Supplementary Tables 1–26.

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Asanov, I., Åstebro, T., Buenstorf, G. et al. Remote delivery of STEM and entrepreneurship role models at scale changes college major choice in Ecuador.
Nat Hum Behav10, 1223–1233 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02421-8

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  :https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02421-8