We examine the effect of a student loan information intervention on changes in college major using administrative data from the Montana University System from 2002-2014. Our difference-in-difference-in-differences strategy exploits the relative trends for students at Montana State University above and below the cutoff for receiving a warning letter about their student debt, compared to their counterparts at the University of Montana. We find that students who receive information suggesting they may be unlikely to be able to repay their loans are more likely to switch to higher earning majors, with higher academic performers most likely to choose STEM fields.

We study the rapidly growing literature on the causal effects of financial education programs in a meta-analysis of 76 randomized experiments with a total sample size of over 160,000 individuals. Many of these experiments are published in top economics and finance journals. The evidence shows that financial education programs have, on average, positive causal treatment effects on financial knowledge and downstream financial behaviors. Treatment effects are economically meaningful in size, similar to those realized by educational interventions in other domains, and robust to accounting for publication bias in the literature. We also discuss the cost-effectiveness of financial education interventions.